Women in the shadows

I am never lacking of women to honor or draw inspiration from every time we celebrate International Women’s Day.

I don’t have to look up to women world leaders, CEOs and trailblazers because in their own spheres of influence they are already revered as such. All I have to do is turn my gaze to my own circle and think of wives like me who, in their past lives, were practicing lawyers, doctors, academics or professionals in their own right. They who had opted to hang their power suits or scrub suits in favor of attires that, cliché as it sounds, suit the multi-faceted roles of a trailing wife. From slacks to puruntong – is how my get-up transformed as a laptop-toting manager in corporate Manila to a stroller-pushing mom on our early months in Hong Kong.

Like me, my friends must have felt how it was to momentarily remain in the shadows in order for the husband to shine and for the children to thrive, when thrust in a new environment. I say this not to diminish our role as women but to supportively hoist our occasionally overlooked persona.

The latest happenstance was at a doctor’s office where the Filipino staff asked if I also work with the Philippine Mission to the UN. I said no, I’m the wife. “Ah wife lang po pala,” she said. In our language, the word “lang” connotes reduction, but in my heart of hearts I know, we are beyond “lang.”

“The Year of Magical Thinking” is a moving and marvelously written memoir of grief by one of America’s most celebrated women writers, Joan Didion. Recollecting her life after the sudden death of her husband, while trying to make sense of a life-threatening ailment that kept her daughter in ICU for weeks, Ms. Didion wrote these powerful phrases: “Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information is control.” These, I think are intrinsically essential in our travails and the volatility attached to a life of being rooted and uprooted. To these I add another element: pray.

While not taken entirely from Ms. Didion’s context of grief, how my friends – fellow wives and mothers – read, learn, work it up, turn to information and pray make them my champions.

A friend whose husband was assigned from Germany to China shared, “The most challenging was to navigate my new environment, making sure I don’t get overwhelmed and not allow the changes to rock me so much for the sake of my family.” Here I see the determination of a mother and a wife to remain steadfast while traversing a new territory.

She remains the rock that refuses to be rocked by uncertainties and found self- actualization in reigniting her love for music and teaching.

Another friend, an academic who has retired as a senior lecturer in Ireland – their home for many years – then trailed her husband as he embarked into a career in research in China, looks at “the language and different culture (even compared to the Philippines)” as her hurdle. Despite the culture divide, she is a picture of enthusiasm because Beijing, their current home, “has improved in leaps and bounds so that it is ahead of many countries in many respects.” For her, “family and faith has always been a source of strength whenever one goes to a new country.” When she was in the US for studies, “the church was again a familiar haven.” When intellect, zest for life and faith merge, we celebrate the might of a woman.

I imagine another friend like a feather who smoothly glides with the wind. Unruffled, she looks at their transitions from US to China to Singapore back to the US (she had just unpacked then moved to India), as experiences for “broadening my perspective and views of the world.” Having given up a consultancy job, trailing for her means “gaining a much deeper understanding of commonalities and differences between and among peoples, and the local and global challenges and issues they face.” She has since cultivated her “interest in languages and in art, specifically in painting.”

In “I’ve Been Thinking … Reflections, Prayers and Meditations for a Meaningful Life,” New York Times best selling author Maria Shriver, a scion of the Kennedy clan, wrote about what her mother Eunice “often spoke of the power of women and motherhood and the pivotal role of Mary in the Catholic Church.”

The power of women, motherhood and Mother Mary is a recurring theme in my prayer group. As one friend intimated, “I take refuge in the group.” One believes “the camaraderie and help provided by the group is priceless,” while another friend is grateful for “finding a new set of friends who share my values, interests, passion, etc.”

Faith is the glue that binds us. Every week we share a sacred space in cyberspace. Here, we are touched by the “comforting balm, tenderness and faithfulness” of our Divine Mother.

I admire my friends who pioneered this group and how, for over 20 years, still remains as such, albeit smaller in number and partly meeting virtually. I am inspired by everyone’s grit and tenacity to wake up at 5:00 a.m., to sleep late, to take a break from a family holiday in order to log in and pray or to honestly admit she has forgotten to join because she was enjoying a TV show.

When women gather in faith and prayer we become stronger. I have seen many of my friends radiate this extraordinary strength, which I interpret as a band of women working in the shadows, silently yet confidently and powerfully.

As former first lady Michelle Obama aptly writes in her book, “The Light We Carry,” “When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it.” In my friends’ case, the light of faith complemented with the choice to be felt rather than to be seen, is what truly empowers them.