Singlehood and Womanhood
Surprisingly, I seldom feel lonely.
I think it’s just mainly because I know how to entertain myself. I know how to make myself feel at home by reconnecting with my community, and people who matter to me and to my passion. There are more times in life when I was rather annoyed having so many people around me and felt the need to tend — maybe it’s because women were conditioned to be caretakers in every aspect of life.
Women are expected to take care of the children, the husband, the aging parents, the aging parents-in-law, or even probably other extended family members or total strangers — because we are so conditioned to take roles of nurturing human beings regardless of professional or personal life.
When we claim the freedom of choice, of speech, of life decisions as a woman, what we get is abhorrence — from men and even from our fellow women.
The human rights for women that our ancestors fought for so long to achieve seem to be not enough — to be valued, to be seen, or to be heard. Society still needs more understanding about womanhood and how it should be treated.
Men constantly feel like alpha women are threats to them, hence they feel the need to defend themselves by downplaying us women.
Our fellow women project their insecurities and negative experiences onto us by insisting on their old ways of doing and being so affected by freer and happier women — because they did not get to taste that level of freedom.
I would like to say that I am so blessed to be born in this era — where women are now given a lot of options to choose how they want to live their lives.
Our life as a woman is not only limited to house chores, taking care of people we love, and being domesticated.
We have now more opportunities to explore the world, discover passions, excel in our careers, be financially stable, connect with our communities, to nurture our loving sisterhood — these are all now possible, thanks to those brave women who sacrificed their lives to bring better change to our modern society.
Hope we all had a chance to honor strong women in our lives. Hope we all had a chance to soothe each other’s intergenerational trauma caused by toxic masculinity and patriarchy.
Hope we all had a chance to empower each other as women.
Originally published at https://erinne0217.wordpress.com on October 14, 2023.
