The New Traditional Marriage
Walking in Her Shoes: A Reflection on Womanhood, Sacrifice, and Awakening
I came across a post on Facebook recently that stopped me in my tracks. It resonated so deeply, I felt like someone had reached into my chest and pulled out a piece of my story. For a moment, I assumed the artist behind it must have been a woman—so raw and intimate was the emotion. But then I saw the name. It wasn’t. That realization sparked my curiosity, and I found myself scrolling through the comments, absorbing every shared experience like oxygen.
It made me reflect on my own upbringing. I come from a country where women are expected to be submissive to their husbands. In my home, my father was the archetypal military man—stern, authoritative, and the sole breadwinner. My mother, on the other hand, was the quiet force behind the scenes. She gave up her career, her autonomy, and her personal joys to raise me and my three siblings. She served everyone’s needs without complaint. I never saw her go out with friends. I never saw her buy something just for herself. My father controlled the finances, allocating money strictly for groceries, bills, tuition—never indulgence.
As a child, I didn’t understand. I whined. I complained. I said things that must have hurt her deeply. I was ungrateful for the comfort she worked so hard to maintain. I thought this was just how parents operated.
Then I grew up.
I became a wife. Then a mother. And suddenly, I was walking in her shoes.
The sacrifices came fast and heavy—childbirth, sleepless nights nursing a newborn, chasing toddlers with boundless energy, navigating the emotional terrain of pre-teens. I was overwhelmed, overstimulated, and exhausted. I held a 9-to-5 job, tried to be a good daughter from across the world, shuttled my girls to afterschool activities, managed weekends packed with errands, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking, budgeting, planning birthdays and vacations, even gardening. The day was never long enough. Six hours of sleep became my norm.
And through it all, I began to understand my mother—not just as a parent, but as a woman. A woman who gave everything and asked for nothing. A woman whose strength was quiet, but unyielding.
