Assumptions: A Rebuttal

(This post is in response to a blog that was brought to my attention yesterday, which I shall not name.)

I am perfectly calm.

I am not operating from a place of maliciousness.

I simply provide another point of view.

A woman is driving. She is a mother. As she looks next to her and sees her daughter beside her, happily singing along to the childish music coming out of the speakers, her heart swells to the size of the ocean. The mother cannot believe how blessed she is to be consumed by love. And then, nothing.

The woman wakes up. She still feels like a mother, but when she is told, in the confines of her hospital bed, that her daughter did not survive, the mother stupidly runs her fingers over the bandage on her forehead. It is explained to her that fifteen stitches were required--her head busted open when it forcefully hit the steering wheel.

She doesn't understand. It makes no sense. Because now she is a mother without a child.

She is home. She must find a way to climb out of bed every morning. When she looks in the mirror, her scar is a constant reminder of what she has lost, and the hole that resides in the middle of her. The thirty minutes it takes in the morning to apply the base and powder to her forehead is gut wrenching. Her hands shake. Her heart beats faster and faster. The tears are on stand by. But she knows that the torture she spends each morning is worth it because it saves her from going through the entire day feeling that way. Once it is complete and the scar is covered, she can glimpse herself in the mirror and not be immediately reminded of what she once had and loved.

A little girl is playing in the kitchen. Her father keeps telling her to stop running around the table, but it is too late. The little girl brings the pot of hot water down onto her head. She is burned to the point that on one side of her face the skin is bright red. Over the years, the color will dull, but it will always look like leather. Make-up allows her to balance the two sides of her face.

While these examples are extreme (but relevant), they can be, and often are, boiled down. A woman's internal strength is brought out in a multitude of ways. No one gets to decide how she finds it but her.

I am a firm believer that everyone has the right to find their own way, using whatever means they deem necessary.

To assume that women do what they do because of men is irresponsible, irrational, and ignorant. I am no more qualified to tell a man who has been kicked in the scrotum to stop rolling around on the ground and stand up already than any man is to assume they know why a woman wears make-up or high-heels.

Until you have had a vagina, you do not get a say in the business of women.