Dear Woman - Michael E. Reid

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Unrequited love was almost the death of me.

      That night, I went to a gas station near my home and purchased thirty tablets of Tylenol. The thought of living without love was worse than living at all in my eyes. I took them. But before lying down for what I thought was going to be my last sleep, I called my mother, who had already lost her brother to suicide earlier that year. I told her what I had done, and my hysteria was matched by her thirty-plus years as a nurse. She told me to stick my finger down my throat and meet her at the hospital. I did not make it to heaven that night, but I did meet an angel.

      I arrived at my neighborhood’s psychiatric ward a while later, filled with hopelessness and despair. How could I go on with life? I thought. It was then that a nurse with a ward full of people with illnesses far more emergent than mine gave me a tour of what her facility looked like, sharing stories of the patients she had under supervision that night. “You don’t belong here,” she said, in a voice that was both soothing and stern. She ended up giving me a journal, with the instruction to trade my pills for a pen. With that pen, I released my most prized possession—my heart. Three years and three books later, that heart wrote out what has been my most beautiful masterpiece to date: Dear Woman, a letter to women all over the world who also know pain, and hurt, and despair. May these words lead you when you feel you can no longer lead yourself.

       “In the Beginning…”

      “From the moment she was born, the one title that could never be taken away from her was ‘Woman.’ It would be her first gift from the world and also her largest cross to bear.”

      Every time a child is born, it is a gift. It is a sign that God has not given up on the world, a sign that life must and most certainly will continue. When God decides to make that child a woman, the gift becomes even more special—special because women at their core are the guardians of our existence, the facilitators of life, and the rawest example of pure, unmanufactured, unadulterated beauty that we have the pleasure of encountering in the entire universe. As deep as that may sound, it is most certainly a true statement.

      This beauty is displayed in many different ways. From a woman’s shape, to the way she feels, her physical features, her mental capacity, and most certainly her emotional superiority. A woman is the world’s most prized possession and must be treated as such. While this is a job that can only be achieved by women accepting and perpetuating the challenge—and men acknowledging it, the foundation must be laid from within.

      “It is imperative that all women understand that no one, man or woman, can accurately love you until you love yourself first, and more importantly, love yourself most.”

      Being a woman is an opportunity to be fearless and feminine, brave and beautiful, strong and sensitive. All at once. As a woman, you have the power to be both the target and the missile in almost any situation or environment.

      We live in a world that puts women first and last. Historically, men have always treated women as their subordinates. The irony here is that the lion’s share of decisions men make, both long range and day-to-day, are in some way, shape, or form, whether subconsciously or knowingly, for women. The million-dollar question is, why? I’ll get to that. For now, understand this:

      Whether it be for their mother, the woman they desire, the woman who is their partner, or the woman they bring into the world themselves—the cars men drive, the clothes men wear, a man’s physical appearance, desire for social status, and just about anything else a man does are almost all done to impress some woman. That’s not up for debate. This gives a woman the opportunity to achieve the upper hand in almost any situation where her femininity is matched by a male presence.

      But women, please note: with great power comes great responsibility; responsibility to yourself, responsibility to the world, responsibility to your world—and everything you let in it. This includes a responsibility for you to protect yourself from anything that threatens your happiness, challenges your womanhood, or attempts to make you feel like you have to be someone different than who you are. Period.

      Dear Woman,

      Before you were anything,

      you were a woman.

      Before friend…

      Before lover…

      Before girlfriend, partner, wife, or other…

      You were woman.

      Let no title,

      whether it be manufactured by society

      to define your existence in the world,

      allow you to change whom you permit in your world.

      The title of “woman” came before,

      will never change during,

      and most certainly will remain after.

      You must never lose that title while in search for

      or trying to maintain any other.

      “Woman” is the crown.

      The titles are merely jewels.

       “The Crown…”

      “In a perfect world, a woman receives her crown from her father, and her mother shows her how it is to be worn.”

      As a woman grows, she becomes more exposed to the world: to its rawness, its realness, its beauty, its pain. Along the way, she learns how to be a woman in that world. In a perfect world, this is done at home by watching her mother and father work together and seeing how they raise their young woman and letting the love they have for each other set the example for how she is to be treated.

      In a perfect world, how a woman learns to be a woman is by first observing how her father treats her mother. This is followed by how her mother reacts and then reciprocates, returning that love, attention, respect, and admiration to him. If done correctly, a young woman will get a bird’s-eye view of what love means and what respect looks like, and she will have most of the necessary tools to prepare her for the real world.

      Sounds good, right? The truth of the matter is that sometimes our world is not so perfect. Many of us live in what society calls “broken” homes. I am not a fan of labeling these homes as broken, because whether we realize it or not, sometimes our minds subconsciously accept these terms in a negative way. Sometimes such descriptions may cause us to feel guilt or shame about our family structure. While some young women may be wise enough to understand, some may not. Even if one child develops insecurity or self-worth issues because of a label she had nothing to do with creating, we have a problem.

      “The last thing you want for a child, especially a woman child, is for her to begin life believing that she is broken or that she is a product of something that was broken, especially when the break happened well before her arrival.”

      Since we’re not using broken, I would argue to call these situations alternative homes. Nonetheless, many a woman has not had, does not have, and unfortunately will not have the opportunity to witness both of her parents in the home, laying the foundation for how she is to act and be treated. There are many reasons why this often doesn’t happen. It could be anything from death and divorce to a change of heart. In any event, the person who hurts most is the child. My heart goes out to each and every one of you.

      If no one else has yet, let me apologize on behalf of those responsible for you falling victim to this unfortunate circumstance. Furthermore, I’m here to tell you that while it is indeed unfortunate, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, there is light in the tunnel.

      1.Understand that it is not your fault. The same way having children doesn’t bring families

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