Letter from an independent woman

I've been working in the food truck for a few days because they needed help, and going back there, to those spaces that were mine, made me reflect a lot.

I saw how much I had to DO to validate my voice when I was in my role as a business partner, but also with customers, who often asked me who the owner was. Thinking that I was an employee, or the wife of... Let me give you some context: the food trucks are within American air bases.

To top it all off, I was speaking with a woman I knew, and during the conversation, the topic of my move came up, and her comment was: "Did you find a

man?" That's where the conversation ended, my desire to keep talking to her waned, and I remembered how deeply ingrained sexism can be among women.

UNTIL WHEN?

I've had many conversations with friends who are in positions where they are the only women on the team and the challenges they face when occupying spaces where they are the first woman or the only one on the team.

What to do? Run away, educate, insist, fight, stay silent, believe in yourself, create new business values. What to do?

Do you know how many times I've asked myself this question? A THOUSAND TIMES, on different occasions where, because I am a woman, I have had to...

I wish I had the courage to tell that woman: I'm leaving because I have very big dreams and this place has become too small for me.

What do women want in this social, political, and economic process where our rights, ideas, etc., are just being validated? What do women want from men in this process of understanding that we are willing to continue occupying leadership positions, while also being creators of lives, wives, and wanting to create changes in this era?

I take a breath and write down with faith some things I want:

• I wish you wouldn't ask me: "Why do you always want more?" but instead, encourage my aspirations!

• I wish you wouldn't see me as competition when I propose new ways of doing things because the old-fashioned way has expired.

• I wish you would insist on promoting educational spaces for us, whether you are the president of a country or the owner of a company.

• I wish you would remember that historically we have spent a lot of time in spaces like kitchens or homes and that we need more educational spaces.

• I wish you would challenge me WITHOUT HUMILIATING ME FOR BEING A WOMAN, I want you to trust in my knowledge. There is a big difference!

• I wish you would stop repeating that phrase: women don't know about numbers and sit down to educate me.

• I wish you would see my value without me having to fight so hard for it.

• I wish you would look me in the eye with the same respect you have for a businessman, because even though my voice isn't deep or even though I have different styles of handling situations, I have the same right to be heard.

• I wish you would understand that it's a fact that a woman's period days are very important and that doesn't make me vulnerable because remember that this is part of the process of creating a human. Women give birth!!!

• I wish you would understand that the performance of a team can be sustained over time if you take care of them, and care goes beyond money.

• I wish you would trust in my power to create community to help many people.

• I wish that if you decide to pay for my dinner or a drink, you understand that I'm not giving you the right to expect something from me because I told you I can also pay for it myself.

• I wish that together we would commit to validating my rights and those of our daughters.

• I wish you wouldn't see me as a sexual object because I don't want to see you as a financial object either.
  

Undoubtedly, throughout my years, I have seen the challenges that women face to validate our rights and voices, and I'm not going to give up!!!

My story began when I was very young when I reported my dad to Child Protective Services so that he would support us financially, and I remember how humiliated I felt when I left the place. My story began with the absence of a father who didn't take responsibility, something very typical in Latin America. My story began with the stories of my friends: where the stepfather abused them and their mothers didn't believe them, where one of my friends had to juggle to go out because being a woman on the streets wasn't safe, where a friend had no other choice but to get married to be able to live with her partner, my story of helping women believe in themselves began when from a young age I heard a thousand and one stories from my friends' moms that their husbands had other women and that made them feel more like men, my story begins in a macho country but 32 years later continues in a patriarchal world.

In the last meetings I had in the process of selling my shares, it was always me and the rest men, and this is still the world of business because we still lack belief in ourselves, believing that we can create great things. You don't know the thousand ideas I've heard from friends, women who don't carry out their ventures because they believe they're not ready.

Growing up in a family nucleus where I was surrounded by women, limitations have never existed for me, I just go and do it to the point that now I have to work on asking for help.

From a young age, we learned to change light bulbs, paint walls, cook, take care of ourselves, run away when necessary, defend ourselves. But I learned very little about what a man is like in a home.

I suffered abuse as a child, like the ice cream man who put a mirror in his shoes to see the intimate parts of the girls wearing dresses. My neighbor, who saw me as a sexual object.

I never understood why I had to stop wearing shorts in a country where the temperature was 40 degrees simply because a man couldn't control his lust and couldn't respect me as a woman. The issue of catcalling in Venezuela reaches disturbing levels.

Yes, as women, we have to stop doing many things to the point that we have developed a level of tolerance that annihilates us or where that tolerance does not allow us to demand what we want because this has been something that has been in our psyche, we have normalised it.

Why should a woman always be careful that a male friend will always see her as something more? Men justify it by saying that it's a natural instinct of men. Why do men have to abuse the trust a woman gives them? Why do we remain silent in the face of a man's aggressive abuses? Why a woman's household work is not valued, to the point that women who are homemakers and child educators all their lives do not have a pension plan or worse still are afraid to leave a marriage for not having their own savings or financial freedom.

Working with women for a year and a half in a women's circle has given me strength to continue believing in my vision: to empower women to fully in their personal growth, this is my dream, and from there social, political, and governmental changes will occur where things that have never been valued before will be valued.

It is true that I cannot lift weights in the same way as a man, but I have a powerful intuition that knows when to leave places or stay, an intuition that has helped carry out the action of opportunities, an intuition that moves mountains.

What do I want from women? That we DO NOT see each other as competition and that we help each other achieve our projects, sit down to have work meetings, talk about business, finances, emotions, growth, sex.

I've had the luxury of connecting with men who empower and want women's growth, who validate feminine energy, and it's divine to be in these places, they are very few but you grow a lot alongside these kinds of men.

I've been surrounded by men who have helped me grow, who have pushed me to think outside the box, and one of them is the one who encouraged me to start this blog and who still supports my ideas, gently insisting on my potential.

Two nights ago, a man made me see that I needed to rest because I had my period, and I didn't see it because of my high levels of self-demand. Today I understand that there are men who want to accompany us, empower us, and validate everything that being a woman entails.

This is a letter from an independent woman, this letter falls short, and the objective is to create awareness.

As a woman, what do you want from men?

As a woman, what do you want from other women? Leave your comments!!!

Naked Woman,

Amazonia Arroyo

Me in my crazy room, painting to connect with my creative side.