Was it coincidental that I wrote the introduction to the Chicken Soup for the Indian Woman’s Soul on the eve of Woman’s Day? As I wrote it many years ago, I recalled women who have triumphed in big and small ways and changed lives and perceptions without ever being acknowledged. Women who don’t bail out easily on relationships, life. I know so many of them.
Today yet again on the eve of another Woman’s Day, I want to thank all the women I know and even those I don’t for being unapologetically strong. Women who are lone rangers in spirit and yet connected to roots, family, friends and even strangers who may need help. Women who are always the first ones to ask the question, “So how are you?”
These women know that everything serves a purpose. Suffering most of all because it almost always births something new. As a woman, you go from one skin to another. You search. You find. You keep. You lose. You become. You cease to be. Everything leads to something. To someone. And everyone comes or leaves or stays for a reason. To give something. To take something. To teach something. To learn something from you. Everything that happens to you has one purpose. To show you your real strength.
So the boy who broke your heart at 18 did it because you needed to learn that there was life beyond him. That you could be more than you. A failed marriage enabled you perhaps to look beyond the formula that works most of the time and was supposed to work for you. The formula that sums you up as a little x in a mathematical equation made up of relatives, parents, extended families, neighbours, children and where everything depends upon whether you are an even or an odd number. Whether you add up. Or not. All this so you would figure out that you are more than a number. That you are you.
Do you remember the times you held your bleeding heart in both palms, trying to stem the pain that you thought would never heal? You probably did not know then that you were going to be fine. And that you would smile again and the pain would become just a twinge. Still sometimes, the question will return. Why? There will be no obvious answers. No signs chalked on the blackboard of the universe saying, “because…..” But then one day the questions will cease to matter because you would have walked away from them. And you will look at yourself in the mirror and say, “Is this me? Did I pick myself up and walk this far, to look like this? Feel like this? Who did this?” So maybe that was the whole point. You were hurt so that you would know that nothing really can break a woman without her consent. And that a woman always has a choice to soar or to suffer.
A woman lives out many stories. Stories of loss. Pain. Failures that jeopardise careers. Lives. Relationships. Illnesses that she or her loved ones suffer. Stories about the children she has. Or could not have. And all those stories shape her and those around her. But all the inspirational stories have one thing in common. The woman in them chose to soar. And now it’s your turn. Your story. Your choice. Your chance to soar. Because its your life and no one runs it but you.
Perfect Reema! Here’s to all the women, who choose to soar!