When I started my Empowerment Series on Instagram I got immediate response from many fierce women who have blazed the trail. They contacted me and I contacted some of them. The journeys I have heard and witnessed so far are inspirational and sometimes downright scary. But these women have come out on top against all odds. I wondered how they made it out of darkness and fear but they did. That’s the power of this gender. The oppression that my gender has faced has led to some Mama Bear, Wolfpack and some Hawkeye traits in us. Survival has been so hard for many of my kind that they have made it to their destiny by sheer tenacity. Nothing else worked for them.
I have listened to special needs mothers who have vowed to fight a lifelong battle for their kids. I have listened to women who finally found salvation and love in a non marital relationship after being through a string of abusive husbands. I have listened to daughters who fought patriarchy to get education and now their families depend on them to feed them. A woman’s middle name is scrappy. Her whole belief system is resilience.
But some women won’t be able to tell me their journey, I know that. Some women will never live a life of resilience or tenacity. Some women will live a short life of fleeting moments of love and harmony cut shorter by their murder. Some women will be victims of FEMICIDE.
Three women out of ten face intimate partner violence. Famous men in history have killed women and walked away unscathed. Our system doesn’t support women. Our system doesn’t work to amplify our voices.
So we will have to amplify the voices of the less privileged. We will have to form our own Wolfpack that guards the weak and the underprivileged, all the while empowering the ones we protect so they can be protectors when we are no more.
Empowerment! It’s a word we use without much attention to its effect on people. We know how to empower but we don’t really see, just because of our sheer altruism, what empowerment does. We are so busy empowering that we can’t stand still to see the fruit of our efforts but let me show you a snapshot of what empowerment of a woman comes out as on the other end.
When we remove a woman actively from an environment that could be potentially dangerous and give her the tools and the support to continue being separated from danger, we save a life. When that woman gets into a healthy relationship later and chooses to have a baby girl and that girl doesn’t face gender-based violence, we save another life. That’s two lives. If this woman gives birth to four girls, it’s five lives. When this woman removes another woman from a toxic and potentially lethal environment just because she is now empowered by us, that’s us saving six lives. This new woman becomes an ally also. This new woman escapes gender-based hate and violence also. This new woman escapes FEMICIDE also.
I don’t want to miss out on all the stories that murdered women had. Those stories need to be told. But of course when someone is dead, they can’t speak. They can’t love, breathe or avenge themselves. So it’s on me to raise my voice as their voice and make this their story. Their story could be an active stance against FEMICIDE and how it affects humanity. Sometimes we have to write stories for our mothers and sisters and daughters. Sometimes the living can write the story of the dead. It’s not accurate but it’s something. And when that something becomes something big then we know that many women lost lives to save their kind in the future. That’s how many women in spirit and in their death made a Wolfpack. That’s how we honor their life and their death. That’s how the sisterhood of womanhood brings its murdered sisters into the fold.
My mind as a woman 