Now That Hes Gone

“If you're not dependent on someone else,” Geraldine says, “you're less likely to worry. You're more in control of your life and your future. As for me, I'm always in control.” Throughout her married life, she clung to these ideas and though she was financially dependent for many years, she knew that when she had to, she could be independent again.
    Geraldine does not have a lot of money, but she does have a lot of strength and an independent will. Her mantra is, “You can always take care of yourself,” and she lives it.
“You do what you have to do.”
    Deborah, on the other hand, never took care of herself—until she was forced to. Married at a young age, Deborah quickly had two daughters and like a good, traditional woman, made her family the most important part of her life. Her husband was not particularly ambitious and he made barely enough for them to get by. Eventually, Deborah had to get a job with a municipal government to augment her husband's meager income. But her job was little more than a clerical position and paid less than a full-time wage. Though her husband didn't provide all that much, she was still dependent on him financially.
    Deborah's marriage wasn't much either. Her husband was chronically unhappy and criticized her for being plain and not particularly attractive. Deborah looked and felt depressed most of the time. After a dozen years or so, he finally left her, which was both good and bad. It was good to be done with an unhappy marriage, but it was bad because Deborah knew her husband could not be counted on to contribute to her and her daughters’ support. He rarely, if ever, kept up with his court-ordered payments.
    Like it or not, Deborah had to step up and become the primary breadwinner. She applied for, and got, a better-paying position with more responsibility in another municipal department. She worked hard, throwing herself into her new job and in time, slowly climbed her way up the ladder. The new job involved a lot of politics and maneuvering, which she hated. The work was more difficult than her former duties had been, but she had bills to pay and mouths to feed, so she did it. Her attitude was simple and practical: “You do what you have to do,” she often said.
    Today Deborah has a professional-level position with the county in which she lives. She's raised her daughters and sent them off to college. She hasn't remarried and doesn't plan to, now that she knows she doesn't need a man to take care of her. If she could do this, so can any woman. And that includes you.
Who Says It's a Man's World?
    The third story I want to share with you in this chapter is from my own life. My mother, now in her late 80s, was very much the traditional woman. She was a wife and mother. She didn't work outside the home. The messages she gave me were all the standard ones about how, sooner or later, I would need a man to take care of me.
    My father, on the other hand, gave me a completely different message. He said I could do whatever I wanted and if I needed to, could take care of myself. I took both those messages with me into adulthood, and with my father's encouragement, got my bachelor's degree in math—at the time, a “man's subject.” When I went looking for work in the corporate environment, even though it was the supposedly-liberated 1960s, I found the job market was still quite traditional. The jobs I sought were perceived to be men's jobs, and I couldn't get hired. So I went into teaching, traditionally a woman's profession.
    After I had been teaching about 10 years and my first marriage was ending, I realized that if I was going to support myself in the style to which I had become accustomed, I would need to make a lot more money. So I entered an MBA program and got my degree in 1980. Again, I sought work in a “man's profession,” financial services. But in the previous dozen years or so, the work world had changed a lot, and so had I. This time I was able to land a job with a big financial services firm, selling stocks and bonds to executives and business owners, most of whom were men. I got a lot of negative reactions, both from men I worked with and from those I called upon. I had a lot of difficulty being accepted, often for no reason other than that I wore skirts.
    Was I scared? You bet. Did I show it? Never.
    Was I confident? Not a bit. Did I act confident? Always.
    Remember playing “pretend” when you were a little girl? I used to love to play and I