I used to hate going to pick up my sisters from their school. If I didn’t love them so much, I’d have left them there or made them find their own way way home. You see, when you walk into that all girls’ school, they all look your way and god forbid they start to giggle. You can feel them measuring you, judging you, ripping your look to shreds. Nothing is as cruel as children.

But they don’t know better. They learnt this cruel practice from somewhere…the adult females around them. I lived with a 17-year-old girl whose mom would ridicule her incessantly. She couldn’t do anything right. Her mom would go as far as to call her own daughter a prostitute but the Shona version which sounds much worse. The girl started to get insecure and wanted to dress like Instagram models to feel prettier, which made the insults being hurled at her even worse.

https://twitter.com/delafro_/status/1123233901051371522

In all my years of hiking and that’s about 21 good years, I have never been given a lift by woman. Not a single time. In the neighbourhood I grew up in, twas women I even knew. Neighbours in fact but not once did they stop to offer me a lift. But do you know who did? Their husbands, sons, uncles, boyfriends, anything of the male species. Even if the garden boys had cars, they would have picked me up for sure.

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Do you know what a risk that is?

I know married women are now worried about their husbands being taken but what about me being taken. I was once given a lift by some guy from the neighbourhood. He knew where I lived and his kids would carpool with the kids from next door. I trusted him. Never once thought anything would happen to me. I got into his car and he drove. He just drove. Never stopped. Went past my house. Speed increased and, in that moment, I knew I was in trouble. Yeah sure, I knew him he could be punished after but I’d never be the same. Car’s moving, do I jump out? Just after my neighbourhood there’s land. Just land. He got there and parked. The rest of the story is unnecessary and I’m okay but some girls aren’t as lucky.

If you don’t pick up that young girl on the road, your predatory male counterparts will. Women are the enablers of these psychopaths. You give them both opportunity and motive. Alone in that car, he gets to have his 20 second elevator pitch and the young girl gets taken by him and literally takes him from you.

Older women in the workplace are equally insufferable. Instead of mentoring and guiding these young girls, you’re having tea and spilling tea about their dressing and their make-up. Never anything to build them up and guide them. Just tearing them down for their youth. Yeah that’s it, that’s all of it, your bone with them is that your time has passed and you miss it.

https://twitter.com/KaylaDeneen/status/1131915149177217025

When young girls are hurting, their first point of contact should be the older women in their lives and unfortunately these mothers, aunts and other authority figures are not there for us the way that they should be. Most women are navigating through life with the Mother Wound because mom wasn’t there when you needed her the most. I’m sorry and I hope you find healing.