Empowered

This week’s Writer’s Island prompt is “empowered.”  Here is my contribution…

I’ve been through an awful lot and a lot of it could have been avoided if I had not been raised with certain traditional and cultural values.  Don’t get me wrong.  Values are wonderful but only if mixed with common sense and reason.

With my daughters, I try to tell them that they should not ever be totally, one hundred percent.  I’ve told them they should always have enough money put away for, at least, a plane ticket home. 

I give this advice to other women, too.  Once I had a housekeeper whose husband was not always considerate of the family’s needs or of his wife’s.  She would sometimes come to me crying with stories of how he beat her or stayed out drinking and spent all the money they needed for family expenses.  I told her one day that she should try to put a little money away, just in case.  After that, she would have me keep ten dollars from each time she went to work for me.  It wasn’t a lot but in a few months time, she indeed had a little put away, just in case. 

I am not one to assume that things will go wrong, but I would like to think that people would have had a bit of forethought before something happens.  I think it also allows the person to form the idea that not everything will always go perfectly.  Sometimes, things happen and sometimes horrible life-altering things happen.  It’s best to have a plan and a bit to fall back on.  I’d rather know that someone’s emergency plan had empowered them in a time of crisis.