I am a woman

Born of a woman of struggle

The struggle of a time and place where choices not known kept the mind from soaring.

The struggle of cultural expectations that dictated a future less than unknown potential.

The struggle of being trapped by a fertile womb that neither time nor circumstance could hold at bay.

The struggle of captivity tied to hell by ceremony and need that held the crust of bread as a chain.

Never free because the trap was life itself.

I am a woman

Born into a life of struggle.

The struggle of not knowing a bigger world until bound to a smaller one by bodies fruit and love too deep to imagine gone.

The struggle of never enough time, money or self to stretch to the end of necessity, salvation blocked by gender.

The struggle of navigating the territorial grounds of testosterone dominated board rooms with only instinct and façade as armor.

The struggle of fighting the stranglehold of “acceptable” to breathe and stretch refusing explanations .

Seeing hope of futures unbound by ignorance and set free by knowledge.

I am a woman

With children born of struggles new.

The struggle of the perception of difference as wrong, to be shunned as if born of unclean or unholy rites.

The struggle of self as individual without the necessity of bowing to convention or religion without question.

The struggle of acceptance without peer approval for those not included in “their” categories of who deserves equality.

The struggle of standing for personal right against multitudes who in ignorance or anger challenge your souls sureness.

Struggle is constant and constantly changing as knowledge sends brilliant rays of light to shine on the unknown and feared making it familiar and friend.

About Patricia M Gil: Patricia M Gil is the National Finance Director for UniteWomen.org. Patricia lived the daily existence of single working mother taking what was thrown at her as life. One day life became a monster in a ski mask with a taste for her daughter. A warrior was born that day. Armed with unleashed anger and a vocabulary that did not contain fear a war was waged and still rages today.