Supporting those brave women who do it alone

I COULDN’T help but stare. The scene was so familiar to me. “So where is your husband?” asked the little girl. The beautiful young lady, trying to feed her 18-month-old son at a popular restaurant, was taken aback. The child had approached her randomly in order to see the “cute” baby.

The woman smiled and said: “I don’t have one.”

And with that she ran off to play.

My heart broke for the young mother. I remembered when I had become a widow at 29 and the questions I had to answer when I was out alone with my infant son.

I noticed many people staring at the lady, just like they did to me all those years ago. I felt a deep need to reach out to her, and I did. “Are you a widow?” I asked. I apologised for prying and being so intrusive. She smiled back at me and shook her head, while kissing her baby’s forehead.

“No, I am not a widow. I walked out on my marriage five months ago after nine years.”

She told me about the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband but how terrified she was to leave.

When things got worse, she fell pregnant, believing the baby would save their marriage and “change” him.

It didn’t do so, but she still tried to make her marriage work. Her family and society demanded it.

She told me how she believed she was nothing. She told me how she convinced herself that she was a failure, with neither worth nor value, and she needed him.

She endured the same scene of mental, emotional and physical abuse every single day for nine long years.

When things got worse, she fell pregnant again, hoping it would maybe change things around this time. It didn’t. It got worse.

“One day I looked into the eyes of my children and I decided I needed to be more. They needed more. I couldn’t be weak. I had to survive and I left. When elephants fight, the grass gets hurt,” she said with a smile, referring to her children.

“But it must be so hard,” I said.

“It is,” she said. “I looked at you and your family enjoying supper and I didn’t feel envy but a peace. I never had that it in my marriage and if I wasn’t going to have it after nine years and two children, I knew I would never have it.” “Are you okay?” I asked. “I have never been happier and my children have never been more content. Everything I was afraid of proved to be nothing. They are safe.

“I found strengths and talents I didn’t know I had. I am working and providing, and we finally have a good life. We don’t have everything but we have enough.

“The scenery I looked at every day became so distorted because I gave my power away but I took it back and changed the scenery to one that suits me.”

I felt an overwhelming pride for her. She was the mother and woman I fought so hard to be. I hugged this stranger I just met and told how amazing I thought she was.

Still I thought of the young, 35-year-old woman who lost her life in Phoenix earlier this month when she was stabbed and mutilated, allegedly be her husband.

I thought of the women who are held prisoners in their homes, unable to drive, go anywhere or do anything without consent.

I thought about the many women I know who stay in their extremely abusive marriages because of the fear of changing the scenery.

It has become their comfort zones and holds them back. So many women die every year at the hands of the person they love the most and it’s only because they’ve lost a sense of their worth and value.

One woman said to me: “Better the devil you know.”

Is that really why so many women have lost themselves?

That’s not who we are as women. We are so much more than that.

I love the quote by Diane Mariechild: “A woman is a full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.”

So often we don’t realise our true strength. I mean, I was the same at one point. I believed if anything happened to my husband, I would cease to exist.

I depended on him for everything and didn’t realise I had no idea who I was anymore or what I was capable off.

It was only when my scenery changed that I was forced out of my comfort zone. Everything I was afraid of suddenly had no importance.

Surviving was my only focus. Now I am amazed every minute at the courage and strength and power and grit I have, which I never knew was possible.

I have grown, evolved, learned and transformed into so many wonderful possibilities.

My comfort zone was no longer grief and pain but hope and power.

We are surrounded by so many women who have taken the world by its core and shaken it because they refused to be victims.

They refused to dance with the devil they knew and instead chose to sing like the angels they aspired to be.

As women, we possess an amazing strength, which surpasses all human understanding. We are masterpieces and when the scene starts to alter negatively, we need to change that scenery.

We need to celebrate ourselves first before we give the power to others to do it for us.

Remember this always: Our pain is our strength. Trouble will always come to us but so will triumph. There are two ways to respond: Fake it or face it.

Find it in you to change the scenery and you will find the right safe place.

You choose life.

Tash Reddy is a radio and film producer, motivational

writer and speaker and founder of Widowed

South Africa.