JAMAICA: What Gives Me Hope

Inspired by a new generation of women who are standing up for their rights, Jean Forbes shares what keeps her going.

We are sloughing our skin of meekness and subservience and saying enough!

what gives me hope?

What gives me hope is the number of women who are standing tall and demanding their right to be the best they can be, to utilize all of their God given talents.

What gives me hope is the number of women who are rejecting the ancient taboos that hold women hostage and cowering in terror.

My generation has realized that it is not only women who are held prisoner by societal attitudes the rules that dictate how each gender must behave, the rules that deem one sex greater than the other, have doomed both sexes to a lifetime of unhappiness. For, unhappy men—unable to live up to unrealistic macho standards—lose their humanity to alcohol and violence and doom women to a lifetime of cowering and fear.

What gives me hope is that today’s generation of women are coming out of the mind-numbing corners of illiteracy and poverty. We are sloughing our skin of meekness and subservience and saying enough!

No more will we cower in the anger and resentment that comes from accepting the bonds of societal norms.

No more will we stay in this box that forbids us from chasing our dreams and from loving ourselves so that we can love others. We will reach out for the happiness we deserve.

We are demanding fulfillment as part of our human rights, written or not. As women, we are demanding the right to pause from the daily grind, to sit and ponder the joyous mysteries of life.

And in this safe and peaceful place, we are allowing the butterfly of happiness to flutter and for a time, to rest peacefully on our shoulders.

In the tranquility of these moments, this new generation of women is freeing men from chasing the ancient symbols of maleness that harm us all. There is hope now that we can find happiness in humanity, and we can triumph in the joy and peace that partnership and equality bring.

As humans we are not yet where we need to be, but each sunrise and each incremental step forward brings my generation and me the warmth of hope and belief in what is possible.

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