Everyday Canvas

Women in My Life

Prompt: Let's talk about the women in your life: after all, it is Mother's Day weekend.

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Most memorable women who are related to me have passed on. Among them are my Grandmother and my aunts. The women who are living who are now in my life are my cousins, younger or older than me, mostly younger. I love and adore them all.

But then, there are and have been other women in my life who are not related to me or I have never met, dead or alive. Those are the women who had a great influence on who I am, today. One of them was my high-school Lit teacher who introduced me to serious literature. In fact, she took extra time to spend with me and encouraged my reading in different cultures.

Earlier, when I was in Junior High, the first woman who opened my eyes to the existence of who women really are, other than being there to live under the other gender, was Louisa May Alcott with her Little Women. Granted, her women still had to have men in their lives but they were their own persons. Then, I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, whose writing I admire to this day, and most anything by the Bronte sisters, since I commiserated with Jane Eyre, who out of necessity had to fight her own way in the world.

Later on, I met Madame Curie and Margaret Mead. I was so taken by Margaret Mead that I used to wish she were my mother. Funny, what teenage minds can come up with!

I am writing all this because it is difficult to write about the real women in my life who helped me with my everyday living. I have loved them with all my heart and my own mother, too, but when one is so close to people, it is impossible not to see the bad together with the good. That is why I can’t write about them in full. Sometimes, in my other work such as poetry and fiction, I take one of their assets and write about that, and that is fine by me.

In short, I think deep down, whether they are mothers or not, all women are strong but some don’t know it. As such, strong women always impress me, as long as they don’t flaunt their strength for flimsy reasons such as a wish for power or partisanship or for their own ends.