Freedom Activist

When I was a child my mother use to say to me “never depend on a man, go to college, get your degree and be able to stand on your own two feet”. I took that advice to heart. While in high school I attended classes day and night to finish a year early and after graduation went to nursing school. My dream was to be a nurse. I never wanted to marry; instead I wanted to travel with good friends of a like mind. Basically be on my own, doing what I wanted when I wanted, with a goal to change the world and the thinking of all mankind by converting everyone to feminism. After all isn’t that what the pioneer women who fought for suffrage wanted for all women as well?  My mother was proud of her independent free thinking daughter up until I became engaged. I guess she thought I would lose my independence, that instead of being “Angela”, I would be his wife, or their mother. She was right in that assumption but that does not make it a bad thing, after all even though my mother had never married she was still known as “my mother”, does that mean she lost her independence? I guess that depends on what your definition of independence is.

My idea of independence was and is to be an activist for women’s rights and freedoms, to have independent thoughts and actions based on my beliefs and not that of what society SAYS I should think or feel. I will say that my mother was once again right in that my marriage did cause me to lose some of my independence or at least how I defined it. I could not do what I wanted when and how I wanted; my independent thought instead became a “consensus” and of course there was that terrible and dreaded word, “COMPROMISE”. Surprisingly I became good at compromising, but as the years went by and the children grew up and my husband and I grew apart, the young lady in me longed for the dream of independent living with travel and friends as my companions. So here I am at 39 fulfilling my childhood dreams. I am a single and independent woman who is fortunate enough to be able to travel around the country with my job and have a new and fabulous home every 3 months. My friends and now my 18 year old daughter are my social circle of people who enjoy their freedom and independence as much as I do. 

On my journey through life I have discovered that what my feminist predecessors fought for was the right to choose to be a wife and mother or to choose NOT to be a wife and mother, the decision was and is ours and ours alone. I could do and be who ever or what ever I desired. As I grow older and accrue more life experiences I find my gratitude for their struggles grows in abundance. My daughter is a die hard feminist who rallies behind the ideas of our foremothers. Whether she ever marries or becomes a mother she will always have her freedom.