A Female Experience

Women, across cultures, have many different realities and backgrounds. Female youth can include periods of innocence, naiveté, piousness, abuse, shame, wealth, poverty, fun, sadness, fear, care, or neglect. But, one experience that perhaps is inescapable for a woman, is that by the time she has reached or during early adulthood, every woman has experienced some sort of predation or scorn because of her gender. It may be subtle, it may be forceful, but it comes. We all respond in different ways but beyond the anger, fear, shock, depression, and disgust, we need time to collect and gather strength from the nature around us or the nature within us. It seems, in almost every society and religion, women are not as highly valued or respected as equal to men. While many can rightly and hotly dispute this, it is hopeful that as cultures evolve or, within economies that are more highly developed, we are slowly changing this paradigm. Sometimes that shift of norm seems to follow an increased standard of living. But even among some of those men at the top of the top, they have been known to want to control the women in their lives and even across their society. There are many men however, who seek to live as equal to all others. This is a story of a daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, or a friend.