I met her when I was attending my children’s school concert 3 years ago. Like me, she is an ethnic Indian. But our children are in different grades and now that my older two are  in high school, I hardly get a chance to go to the primary school.

I was doing my cross country training early one morning when our paths crossed. If I could use one word to describe her, it would be “distraught”.

So I asked her ” Are you alright?”

I have been living without any sort of family support most of my life and I know more than anyone, how it feels to live away from home. And I assumed she is upset because someone, perhaps her parents/siblings is sick back in her home country and she can’t afford to go back home. I also go for walks when I don’t want my children to see me cry. So I thought, if I could offer any comfort, then so be it.

But it wasn’t so.

She is a teacher. But all her life, she wanted to be a nurse and finally she decided to study nursing and got the admission. But her husband won’t support her. He is adamant that he married a teacher and that is what she is going to be, At the moment, Qld Health is sacking nurses and there is an over supply of nurses, he is using that as the excuse and won’t give her any money to buy her text books etc. So she works as a relief teacher for two days and study the 5 days each week. But now that it is school holidays, she is lost, the reason she is distraught. Before, she was home when her kids had school holidays and now her husband has decreed that she can’t leave her 14 year old and 12 year old alone at home while she is at the Uni. Missing 2 weeks of classes isn’t easy and she was thinking of quitting. ( Her husband won’t let her send her children to other people’s home nor would give her money to pay for a child minder)

Years ago, a classmate of mine once said, she will never forget how her parents fought when her mother got admission to do DM in Cardiology and her father didn’t. Her father refused to let her mother do the DM ( if she did, then she would be more qualified than her husband)

They say behind every successful man, there is a woman, What about behind every successful woman?

Behind every successful woman you see, there are so many who never get there..