what the women before me endured so I could decide
I so often jokingly say that I am my mother’s and grandmother’s worst nightmare but in the same token their wildest dream. I don’t just mean that in the sense of trivial and spontaneous things, such as my piercings and tattoos. These are simple things that they’re against due to their own ideologies, but their wildest dreams in my way of living, being and thinking.
Having the ability to pivot my life in whichever direction I please, to get up and move cities, to have a choice in whether or not I want to do something when they did not have such choices. The ability to prioritize my independence, friendships, sisterhoods, sense of self, career, livelihood, mental and emotional state etc. Even at times being able to live in a state of lallygagging because the only person I am responsible for is myself. That in itself is a luxury. A luxury that I take granted at times due to the pressures of what’s next rather than being in this present state.
At a young age my grandmother was a mother of two, having to bare my father and my aunt on her own in Haiti, left to fend for herself. I remember a particular conversation with my grandmother where she told me at my age she was already a mother, handling a house all on her own and that I’m getting to an age where I should look towards that. Which I found absolutely so ironic because growing up, I wasn’t allowed to date, so to go from being completely sheltered to expecting to bring a potential suitor home, I found to be quite the juxtaposition. That is another conversation in itself entirely.
To her statement I responded “yes, well that’s if and when I choose.” I vaguely remember her silence stretched in that moment and me bracing myself for a lecture that I should be married by a certain age and have children before the age of 30. To my surprise the only word she uttered was “good.” My grandmother never talks about her past and I’ve always wondered what did she succumb to in her life and if those wounds have ever really healed. Similarly, my mother also lived to survive and did not get to enjoy her youth and womanhood to the fullest. It’s a joy, today, to see women choosing themselves over what society once named their sole duty, a reclaiming of identity, a return to self. It is revolutionary. Life reclaimed. The self restored.
Even in the nuances of dating, the ability to say “yes” or “no” is not insignificant. For many women before us, there was no choosing, only being chosen. Choice was not part of the equation. Marriage was less about love than survival, a transactional system of provision where daughter were exchanged for land, cattle, security, and fortune often with no consent. In countless cases, women were bound to abusive men, without the option to leave or live independently.
Leaving was not an option; it was a risk they could not afford.
To now be able to come and go, to travel, to have space of one’s own, to no longer having be sold to uphold your family name or image, and to decide partnership without obligation is, to me, a luxury. As young girls, we quickly learn that our worth is based on whether we are chosen. We are told that being chosen equates to wholeness. We dream of our weddings before we even know who we are, we see singleness as a form of imprisonment when really it’s life. A dark cloud hovering over our heads, never allowing us to catch a glimpse of the sun. The real loss is not solitude, but postponing your own existence. Waiting on a person before you start seeing that your life is worth living is a disservice to ourselves.
This is not to say desiring love and companionship is wrong but to see yourself unworthy because you do not have romantic love is where the problem lies. Love is too wide, too broad, to believe it stems from one place and that one place is enough to sustain you for a lifetime. It exists beyond romantic partnership, woven into community, creativity, faith and the way we learn to care for ourselves. Love is not locked to one person or one moment, it evolves, expands, it arrives and returns in any forms, across many seasons of life. It cannot be confined by one imperfect being.
We are the very embodiment of love when we pour ourselves into things we cherish. Being in love with your friends, sisterhoods, hobbies and the life you are steadily building is romantic if we would only open ourselves to seeing it as such. I carry the stories of women who survived without choice, and I live in a world where I am allowed to decide. I so often think of the women in Haiti, Iran, Palestine, Congo, Sudan; their choices have been stripped away, voices stolen, bodies discarded and yet their resilience cannot be replicated. I live for these women because I am them. I live for them because I know if they had the chance to live this life that I have, they would cease it with no fear.
I choose to live for them, and speak of them, daily. This freedom is not wasted on me, even when I forget how precious it is. I’m learning to stay present in the life the women before me made possible. This life I am living is unfinished but it is free. Free in ways my grandmother could only imagine and my mother sacrificed for. I’m learning to treat that freedom with the reverence it deserves.
Yours, in truth
Christina