Gender Equity: Part 2

 March 16,2026

Gender Equity !

Personal Anecdotes from a woman of today

 Part 2

This includes a large portion of the second half of my presentation on gender equity to the weekly zoom class , plus some more thoughts that were excluded from that session either due to limitations of time or because they didn’t need to be discussed with that audience. These are mostly personal deductions that one would write in one’s own journal to bring clarity for one’s own journey ahead. 

Like last week, today’s session was followed by comments from the audience which brought some great insights into the topic. These included the need to bring in men into the conversation about gender equity, about women inspiring women with their personal stories and struggles and much more. One of the senior men from the group,  Mr Bharat Parekh, shared the story of his mother’s transformation from a strong willed woman whose dreams that her sons would carry on meaningful service in India were shattered when both of them decided to settle abroad and how that disillusionment became instrumental in diverting her energies towards spiritual pursuits. She also became a vocal advocate for women to have equal rights as men. John, who is another senior member in the group and a frequent speaker who brings unique perspectives from his background as a physicist, told us how his late wife’s father influenced her to prioritize a career that would ensure a livelihood over pursuing artistic inclinations. After a career as a botanist she devoted herself to her talent as a painter in her later years. My father had stressed similarly about choosing medicine over literature for the sake of financial independence. My natural leanings towards writing have taken a more prominent role only after I began to ease the time commitments towards my medical practice. Anyways. 

 A prayer to begin with 🙏🏼

sarvamaṅgalamāṅgalyē śivē sarvārthasādhikē |
śaraṇyē tryambakē gauri nārāyaṇi namō:’stu tē || 

Last Sunday March 8th was International Women’s Day. Dr Sane gave me an opportunity on that important day to present my views as a present day woman who grew up in Maharashtra India, was fortunate enough to be trained as a medical professional, then able to move here to the USA, my new country, at an early age of 25. I shared with you my personal life story, my arranged marriage, the practice of arranged marriages in India, my personal upbringing and lives of other women in India, my personal life experiences here as a recently married woman from a different culture in a totally alien country.

In this second part of the talk, I will share some experiences I had in the context of my work, as well as in the context of traditional religious rituals. I will give you insights into the thinking that I gained in my journey.

In the end I will leave ample time for the audience, particularly women, to chime in and express their invaluable thoughts from their own experiences, in India and here in the USA. That way we will all be better informed and try to be even better human beings.

I mentioned last week that we live in Bakersfield, California. Abhay( my husband) had moved there in 1996. Kaiser Permanente had hired him to start their department of Hematology Oncology. 9 months later I completed my residency and started looking for jobs. The department of Internal Medicine at Kaiser had no openings at the time. I interviewed with another local group but was hesitant to join them. Even before I signed their contract they prematurely announced my recruitment at a hospital joint meeting. The chief of internal medicine at Kaiser was at that meeting. He had seen my CV but his hands had been tied because no position was open. When he realized the other group was gaining a candidate who had impressive recommendations, he got restless. He spoke to the regional office and made them open a position for me instantly. Kaiser definitely had a better reputation. It is a physician owned and governed group with over 5000 physicians spread across the state of California. I was happy I didn’t have to work elsewhere. Like all new hires, I was hired as an associate. I would be closely observed for my work ethics and clinical competence for 3 years before getting advanced to partnership.

In those days we would have to work shifts at the urgent care, usually from 6-10 pm, in addition to the 8-5 job. The additional work was compensated with extra money. The same chief who had gone out of his way to hire me would frequently work in urgent care. He was a good guy, friendly but everyone knew him to be lazy. He would get administrative time during the day( that is no patients to see in paid time) and then volunteered to work in the evenings for extra pay at a premium rate. Nothing wrong with that except when he worked he would just stand there chatting with the staff while the rest of us would be seeing patients nonstop till the end of our shift. I shared last week an example about how I lacked diplomatic skills. I could be trusted to speak out the truth without thinking of consequences. Notwithstanding the fact that I was a newly hired associate, I confided with my mentoring physician, and told him about what I observed at urgent care. He in turn passed on my complaint to the larger partnership. They were hearing from an associate how we took home the same money after evening shifts but rest of us worked in actuality and our chief didn’t. Speaking up against my own chief could have potentially cost me my job. Surprisingly that didnt happen. He made lame excuses like “ I chat because I get bored “ but he realized he was watched and soon changed his behavior. I give him credit that he never held it against me, never retaliated against me, even though he was in the position to do so.Not only did he not retaliate, he gave me great evaluations year after year, and stood behind me at every step since then. One of his comments in an annual chief’s evaluation was “she speaks her mind”! 

3 years later when I was up to be confirmed as a partner, an incident happened that surely made me speak my mind. Whenever an associate was being considered for partnership there would be first a meeting with all partners and associates, to gather a general opinion from everybody. Then associates would leave the room and partners would confer in a closed door meeting. By the time my partnership evaluation came up, Abhay was already a partner. So ideally he would be in the closed door meeting. There was a senior male colleague who had reservations and strong opinions about me. He had arrived at the conclusion that I am not a good doctor and I treat my patients badly. Whether being a woman or immigrant or person of color, had anything to do with his thinking I would never know. During a staff meeting he came all fired up to make sure I don’t become a partner. In my presence and Abhay’s presence he made an allegation of nepotism. In his mind, Abhay’s good standing was the sole reason for me to be hired. He urged the partnership to carry the closed door meeting without Abhay in the room so partners would not feel uncomfortable to speak the hard truths about his wife. In other words, he insinuated that without Abhay, the partners would never vote for me. 

My pride had been hurt. My parents never even had to help me with school homework. No one from my family ever had to put in a word for me to get into medical school or this job. I didn’t rely on Abhay for medical decisions or to further my career. I told my colleagues and our medical director that day that we Risbuds are not, a buy one get one free deal. As I stood there defending my record and my qualifications, nobody, not even Abhay, spoke up. It was making me more furious as we both left the room. In that closed door meeting my chief read out the glowing letters of recommendations from my professors during residency, based upon which he had hired me. Other colleagues spoke about their experiences with me. I was voted into the partnership with only one colleague voting no. That same man who had an issue with me. My public humiliation, I realized later, had nothing to do with who I was or how I was performing. If I knew better at the time I would have remained cooler. ( 10 mins) 

But the incident remains ingrained in my memory for several reasons. It serves as a reminder of the contrast between men. Out of the two white American men, one was my chief who was supportive and objective despite me pointing out his fault one day. The other was a colleague who I had never done any wrong, but he saw me in a different light. And thirdly, my Indian husband who chose to remain silent when I was being insulted. Does it remind you of a well known episode from the Mahabharat? The time when Draupadi was being humiliated in the court after the dice game and learned men in that court sat silent. 

But there was an even more important lesson I learned from this episode so many years later when I reflected on it. 

The day after the incident at the partner meeting, my medical director had come to my office. He was a very sensitive man, a psychiatrist by training. He was a witness to what had happened at the meeting and was feeling really bad about how I had been treated. He urged me over and over again to go talk to the colleague who had insulted me, tell him who I am so his bias would be erased. I had immense respect for my director but alas, I wasn’t prepared for approaching a hostile colleague at the time. Perhaps I was too proud. Also somewhat intimidated by the colleague who was physically, a tall hefty man weighing around 300 lbs, and who always spoke in a thundering tone. I am not the same person now as I was in my thirties. If that incident were to happen today, I would see the wisdom of my medical director, set aside my ego and fear, and open the door for discussion with that colleague, who obviously didn’t know me. But then I was also unsure of myself at the time. What would I have told him? I was just a young woman in a foreign land trying to establish an identity for myself through my work. 

Challenges kept coming not only from the attitude of this colleague, but also from patients and occasionally the staff I worked with. For me, the patient culture dramatically changed when I took up a job. My residency in Los Angeles was at a county hospital where patients were poor, often unemployed or even homeless. The irony is that poverty rendered them to be polite and show genuine gratitude for staff and doctors. Patients who had the money to pay for high premiums for their insurance, often showed entitlement and arrogance. Not infrequently, the doctor’s gender became a sticky issue. There were men who were outright rude and disrespectful. Some forgot basic manners and talked to female doctors in a vulgar manner. Dr Sane mentioned about an incident from 60 years back when his wife, an extraordinary endocrinologist, was asked by a patient “ when will the doctor come?” That stereotype has not been washed off even today. A much younger colleague of mine now wears a plaque on her white coat that says “ Doctor, not nurse”. My husband and my son, who are both doctors, may never know that these stereotypes exist in the USA, unless they hear from me or their female peers.

I will add here that, even in my mom’s era, women doctors in India were not only recognized as doctors, they were highly respected and to a large extent even equated to Gods. Several decades after her retirement when my mom visits our hometown or meets her old patients anywhere around the world, she enjoys the same status. 

Now let me tell you about the female patients I see in my practice. Basically I see women starting the age of 18 and my oldest living patient is 104 now. I have had the privilege to be a primary physician for some truly remarkable women, one of them being Dolores Huerta, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who is in her 90s now and is an activist since she was in her 20s. She was one the frontline leaders joining in the fight for the rights of farm workers in California along with Cesar Chavez. Even today she shows up in her office and champions causes she passionately believes in. One such cause is to eliminate middle management and establish a single payer system for healthcare. She has already enforced it for the farm workers union. 

On one hand there are women like her who constantly inspire me. On the other hand there are women whose lives show an entirely different picture. 

I saw a female patient once who wanted a female as her primary doctor. But not just any female doctor. She was specific. She wanted a female Internist, not a female family medicine doctor. And she had presumed it would be a white American female internist. So it was a surprise for her when I entered the room. That same day she requested to switch to another doctor. A female internist who was American. One who looked and sounded American. One without a foreign accent and foreign features. She did not hide her disappointment about getting an Indian female doctor! I joked about it to my colleagues that where accent was concerned, she had an exotic menu available to choose from. We were 3 of us in my building and a few more at other locations. Of the two other female internists working with me at the time one was Bulgarian and the other was Burmese. In the other buildings one was Gujarati, one Malayali, one Punjabi, one Chinese, one Philipino, and another Burmese. All had thicker accents than me. The fact is that it is difficult to lure individuals born and raised in the USA to commit to a life in smaller towns like Bakersfield. If immigrants too showed unhappiness about living here, there would be no happy and competent doctors available for folks who live here. America has been generous to welcome legal immigrants but lagged behind in adapting in healthy ways to the diversity that it created.

Let me switch to another important topic.There are women who I see from time to time, for injuries that I recognize immediately as occurring from domestic violence. One such young woman was herself a police officer. Came with bruises around her eyes and a broken nose. Spousal abuse is more prevalent than you would like to think. In my observation, women who are uneducated and/or unemployed are often voiceless, to resist exploitation and oppression. Yet sometimes, even women in jobs of authority like the police officer, remain silent. 

Abuse occurs in many forms. Physical, psychological, financial, professional. A large number of abused women never find their own voice, or a way to get out of the situation. 

As a physician I have met women, not just in the USA but also in India, who are victims of abuse. Not sure of the laws in India, but here in the USA the law requires me to file a report if I even remotely suspect abuse. The reality is that even if the law is in place and the medical professionals do their part, the report of abuse brings no reprieve to victims of the abuse. Why? Because when the social worker and police respond to the report, the victim dismisses the report, denies abuse and refuses to identify or turn in the perpetrator of her abuse. Fear, intimidation, and lack of confidence of living independently are the main reasons for this denial to accept external help. Mind you these are women in the USA that I just mentioned.

While we are on this subject, let me briefly turn to my observations in India. A large part of the Preventive Medicine related task for last 3 years in India was to address tobacco and alcohol addiction as well as women’s health. In that capacity I saw a noticeably greater number of women smoking and drinking than in my generation. Sadly this has been an unintended outcome of education and financial independence. During my work I also met, both educated and uneducated women, who were victims of abuse. Alcoholic husbands who squander the earnings while the woman works multiple jobs, men who beat up their wives when they are drunk or when she refuses to give him money for the alcohol, men who don’t digest their wife’s success and make that an excuse to drown in alcohol or mock her at every opportunity, I saw many such cases. One of the staff nurses in the hospital, who was pregnant with her second child, came to me for advice about her husband who had severe anger issues and would insanely beat up their 8 year old son at the slightest fault of the boy. Even when the husbands are not amenable to intervention like counseling and other things, leaving them and seeking personal safety was not an option these women were willing to consider. If I even made an indirect suggestion to that effect, they would not return to see me. Social pressures are tremendous for these women. They rather suffer and even die at the hands of the perpetrators than seek freedom.

And then there is a whole different set I have seen where the women don’t have time to discuss freedom. They just live freely. They don’t negotiate. They simply choose to exercise their rights. Without a word. They don’t wait for the men to catch up with their concepts of freedom and equality, don’t bother to give such men another chance nor do they apologize for living life on their own terms. 

Suffering and rebellion, I saw how both could operate in silence. Between these polar opposites, I saw a spectrum of chaos. This chaos was filled with constant grumbling and brewing resentment, active and passive resistance, fights for survival, fights for recognition and appreciation, activism, protests, debates, dialogues, education, critical analysis, in varying degrees and various forums. I have started to recognize that noise has its value. Had it not been for this noise many women would still not be getting college degrees or earning the right to vote. Many women would not have a right to inheritance. Many couldn’t have opened a bank account, had a credit card on their name or bought a house. Many would still be taking home a lesser salary for the same work as their male coworkers.  Many couldn’t have driven a car or flown a plane. Many couldn’t have run for office or sat on the Supreme Court. Many couldn’t have sought legal separation and settlement from an abusive spouse. Everything I am able to enjoy today is because someone fought for it. Taking any of these for granted would be a sign of ignorance. Even today I encounter men who believe that women have no rights to inheritance. I realize acutely how any of these rights that my generation doesn’t protect fiercely, will be lost for our daughters and granddaughters to enjoy. Which is why a good idea of history becomes essential for everyone. 

Patriarchy, as I have seen it, comes in many forms and has roots that run deep into the psyche of not just men but also women. As described from several incidents last week and today, I saw it in my home, and see it in the homes of my extended family and friends, I see it at work, I see it manifest bluntly on a daily basis in the sociopolitical scene. 

I spent a good amount of time trying to understand the conditioning of the minds of women who just endure the injustice meted to them. The fighter in me always resented educated and working women who suffered at the hands of men or other women. But slowly I realized that the problem was greater than the individual woman. It was the entire sphere, the broader scheme of things around her, that village around her, which was responsible for how she negotiated her circumstances. Sometimes mothers teaching daughters to tolerate injustice for the sake of guarding the honor of their families, often the society laying down different standards for men and women, sometimes misplaced fears about their own children, sometimes unquestioned religious beliefs, the fear of retaliation, fear of being ostracized, and a curious phenomenon of fear hidden under a cloak of affection. The suffering women had hundreds of reasons to tolerate and allow perpetuation of injustice and exploitation. Most had very few reasons to break free from the wrongs, let alone attempt to correct them. In short, I found that the voicelessness of many women is compounded by the blindness and deafness of the village around these women. The unpreparedness within many to lend themselves to change, adds to the problem. They lack courage to cross over the status quo.

The pathetic conditions of women I saw since an early age was the seed for my own rebellious nature and awakening. It taught me that awareness begins with oneself. I went through a phase where I faced frustration from the inability to bring awareness to women who lacked it. It took time for me to realize that, for them to listen to me, I needed to first listen to them. Just listen. Until they are ready to help themselves. My patient population I described earlier who were victims of violence and abuse, I realized much later that there was a common thread between those Indian and American women. They came to see the doctor not to get help but to share their stories with a woman who could understand. And instead I was trying to help them or so I thought. I was trying to tell them there was another and better way to live life, when the best help I could give them was to simply listen and not keep insisting on intervention. 

Dr Sane mentioned in his talk the stories of women who participated in religious discussions and rituals during Vedic times, how girls had upanayan ceremonies like their brothers, and many such good privileges that unfortunately were not consistently continued. Today there are very few families and institutions who conduct upanayan ceremonies for girls. I fault myself that I did not insist on one for our daughter like I did for our son . Didn’t know better at the time. During my lifetime, Hindu traditions have made some progress by having several women priests to conduct religious ceremonies like upanayans and weddings. My mother in law had officiated the upanayan ceremonies of her grandsons close to three decades back. 

I will share one incident today from my life that has to do with religious traditions. This is from five years back. November 2020.  My father had passed away after a short illness, not from Covid, though it was in the middle of the pandemic. I was the only one with him in his last days. The evening he passed away, local friends rushed to help arrange for the funeral. They had a priest in mind but someone brought up a doubt whether he would allow a female family member to conduct the rituals. What should we do if he asks for only a male family member to participate in these rituals as is the tradition?

My answer was quick, clear and final. 

Find another priest.

If the priest is unable to accept a woman to perform these duties then it is time to get a man who has adapted to better thinking with passage of time or simply look for a woman priest. No man, who meant less to my father than me, can be more qualified to assign my father’s body to the holy fire when I am alive and kicking. My father would watch in disbelief if I allow such a thing. 

Such gender wise distribution of roles by tradition and the need to take a fresh look at them applies to our roles not just in religious rituals but in day to day life as well. Presently most men are busy preparing papers for filing taxes. Most women never had to do this. I am one of them. I admit with much guilt and shame that I have no clue about how it is done. The same way that my husband never bothered to learn to make simple dal and rice in a pressure cooker for himself despite my repeated requests. But I feel it is never too late to wake up. As both of us are aging, we never know when only one will be left behind to take care of all essential tasks. Minimum skills required for survival in the modern world must be approached with more gender neutrality than the generations before us.

As a mother, I tried to raise my boy with the understanding of gender equity and gender neutrality. Simply because men can only understand the impact of gender disparities second hand. Women understand it firsthand.

Parents and elders can make or break kids, whether sons or daughters. Teach the kid to value themselves like my father did and nobody can devalue them. But that is only half the education. Valuing themselves and valuing others will give them the full set of skills needed to navigate their lives. 

The day I formally met the parents of my son’s future wife, I half jokingly announced, in their presence, a disclaimer to my son. I have tried my best to teach you to share responsibility for all chores at home whether in the kitchen or outside of it. If you behave in a way that is not equitable towards your wife, that will solely be your responsibility.

A special mention is needed for a special breed of men. These are men who are not part of the patriarchal culture. They are a minority but they do exist in every generation and every part of the world. They genuinely see women as equal partners. Women’s fight for equality would be even tougher if not for these men who are ready to stand up for their cause. I know many such men who deserve gratitude, respect and recognition for being who they are and seeing women for what they are, above and beyond the gonadal attributes. 

Having said that, I strongly feel that no woman should wait for a man to support her in exercising her rights and independence.

In the 1960s when my young parents started a family, they had seen how women were treated in their homes and in the community. They had both overcome a lot of adversities on their own to break the cycle of no education and no money and recognized that the conditions of women showed no signs of improvement unless daughters could be empowered. While arranged marriages were the norm, nobody could predict how the marriages would turn out. My father factored in the possibility of joint family problems, harassment for dowry, subordination, mistreatment, divorce and widowhood and figured out that the only security for his daughters could be guaranteed if they knew how to stand up alone if time forced them to. Those values of independence and the experiences of living alone away from home from an early age were so deeply ingrained in my brain that for a long time I didn’t think I need a man for anything other than to have kids. I would ignore unsolicited advice or orders that didn’t make sense to me. This made me look like “not a nice lady”. But as I said, diplomacy was never my forte. Survival and independence were. 

The opportunities I had in my life are simply endless. To grow up in an educated household, to get advanced education and have an individual career, to grow together with a man in a marriage partnership, to raise a daughter as well as a son, to experience life in a country with a whole different range of diversity than the country I grew up in, to travel to many places around the world, know about their history and culture, amongst other things. 

There were many opportunities that were missed either because of my ignorance or my ego or both. Not doing the upanayan ceremony for our daughter was an example of ignorance. Not taking the initiative to open a conversation with those who put me down were instances where ego stood in the way. Instead of “I don’t need you if you can’t respect me”, an attitude of “ we need to know each other better” would have sealed some cracks. I see many things that I would probably do differently today. But then age brings confidence and experience. Young people can’t be blamed for their mistakes. 

It is clear from history, both remote and recent, that awareness doesn’t appear easily for the majority. There is no incentive that is easily apparent for most men to allow equal status to women. Therefore any sustainable and meaningful experience of gender equality is unlikely to happen without overcoming resistance. Whether at an individual level or community, national or international level, it will have to be strategically and as a last resort, forcefully wrestled out of the hands of a historically patriarchal society. 

When young women begin to understand this, they will learn to recognize when men resort to gaslighting , name calling and slandering or when women are considered incapable of handling some things that men have been traditionally known to do. I would emphasize to both men and women that women’s rights and freedoms are not intended to turn the tables on men, and surely not for women to become perpetrators of abuse. They are simply necessary for society to function better.

I spoke earlier about religious freedom. A little bit about how I view spiritual freedom and its relevance in my life. Spiritual freedom, as we all here know, transcends both personal and social boundaries. Yet, once accessed, even if briefly, in that transcendental zone, its benefits trickle down to every aspect of life making life more meaningful and fulfilling in every way. I have worked within the capacity of my profession to raise awareness of health in general, amongst those who needed it. Above and beyond that, whenever there is an opportunity, I try to spread awareness from the lessons I learned in my own life. Lessons that came just by living. As, simply a woman, then as a married woman, as an immigrant, as a person of color, as a daughter of a working mother, as a working mother herself, as a parent thrust with the task of raising children in a culture that was vastly different from one she was raised in. What every role did was that it increased the range of people around me who I could understand better. For example, as an immigrant I could understand my fellow resident during residency who had come from China. Most people ridiculed her accent and imperfect grammar.  Most people were not aware that all life long, her education had been in Mandarin, even through medical school. Unlike me, she had only learned English a year before coming to the United States. And immediately she was thrust into a position that required her to communicate with patients, take a detailed history from them in English. Very few could see the grit it required to learn a foreign language in a short time and take challenging exams to fulfill a dream of pursuing a medical career in America. A career that required constantly speaking in English to professors, colleagues and patients. I couldn’t even imagine if I could handle so much if I didn’t know English since early age. The girl deserved respect. 

A point I feel is important to make is that 

women should strive for spiritual freedom. Especially accomplished women. Because in the course of accomplishments, the ego gets strengthened. Spiritual growth and understanding is the antidote to the ego. In the absence of spiritual understanding, you can get anywhere in life. You can get strong, you can get independent, you can get anything you want. But you can’t get humility and harmony, deep within you until you are spiritually independent. A strong spiritual foundation helps to keep the ego in check while asserting equal rights.

As a woman I would tell myself on occasion of International Women’s Day or women’s month that I ought to speak up for a woman who is being wronged, and I ought to also speak out against a woman who wrongs. 

Stories from sixty years probably may never end. I will round up with 3 vital truths I learned as a woman. Who knows these may help women younger than me! 

 

First:

Every woman must know within herself that she is entitled to every freedom a man claims for himself. 

Second:

If she wants to enjoy it she must earn it by herself.

Earning and handling freedom is no different from earning and handling money. It is a skill to be acquired at a personal level. 

Also like money, if freedom comes from someone else, it cannot be guaranteed to last for a lifetime.

Third:

A woman must know that there is always a choice before her: to suffer or to stand up and assert her rights. Most reasonable men can hear when she stands up and speaks out. 

I want to thank Dr Sane again for giving me this opportunity to present my thoughts before such a special and learned audience as all of you. As you know, we share a set of grandparents. So this can be considered nepotism. I will not contest it. Nepotism or not, this was a very unique opportunity for me to reflect upon many issues in retrospect. 

What I  found during this exercise was how even under the most ordinary circumstances there are extraordinary lessons beneath the surface. How quietly behind the scenes life weaves a tapestry out of multiple individual lives. That’s just how life is. Rich, precious and unique. 

Even the women I had previously disapproved for quietly suffering in their lives, they each had something special about them. Even if they themselves didn’t know it and others couldn’t see it. Under the pretext of this talk I could see these women in a new light. 

I also got a second chance to appreciate the broad minded men who had stepped in to help me at various junctures and allowed me to advance in my journey without expecting any favors in return. One can observe from the incidents I have shared, it was a good thing in my organization that the men who had the real power, like my medical director or my chief of service, these men had respect for women and valued their role in the organization. That set the tone. If men like the man who randomly insulted colleagues had been in positions of power, someone like me could not have advanced in her career. Although society has flaws, it also has brighter spots.

The ego must step aside to be able to see life for what it is. And when it does that, it can’t help but simply marvel at the sheer beauty and vastness of life, and be grateful for the chance to tag along. To keep low and take the joy ride. 

How can I call it a joy ride when I have witnessed the suffering and pain and all other ugly things? Because that is only half of the picture. The other half consists of happier things and stories of people who are constantly working to alleviate the pain and suffering of others. The total picture is much much more than the sum of two halves. And it can be seen only when you step back and observe everything from a vantage point. And not get your head wrapped in either of the two sides. That’s when it becomes a joy ride. You don’t let your ego dip in the suffering or be the cause of suffering, nor do you let the ego get high with temporal happiness that comes from things outside of you or take credit for creating that happiness. 

Although I have recounted all the experiences as seen in retrospect and they have, at the time they happened, most certainly included a reaction from me (that is from the ego), when I describe them in present time I do so only as an observer who has the privilege of being neutral. What the observer has been equipped with now is an understanding of how it feels to be in the shoes of the person who was there at the time of those events. The observer also has the option to forgive those individuals from the past who disappointed the ego in whatever manner and to whatever degree. The ego still stands in the shadows of the observer. If better sense prevails both would forgive and move on with only what is precious from the past. And that is the lessons. 

One of the bigger lessons for the ego today is to use the lessons learned and respond, not react. And for that, it needs to practice a pause. Pause that allows for careful thought, assessment and strategy. Instinctive reactionary response was justified in survival mode. But that is unnecessary now. Negotiations can be done with a different approach at this stage. 

I guess this much enlightenment should be adequate moving forward as a woman. 

The last 2-3 paragraphs may need to be read over and over again to become part of manifest action.