World Pulse

If I still had you, beautiful Mamita, I would tell you everyday how happy I am to be a woman. You are my grandmother but that means you are twice my mamita. You taught me that the blessing of being a woman comes from the gift of unlimited love inside the feminine heart.

If I still had you, gorgeous, I would make you proud by showing you how I stayed away from drugs and alcohol. You taught me that the best happiness is a real one, the happiness you only feel when you are free from synthetic pleasure.

If I still had you, sweetheart, I would teach you how to get onto the Internet and meet this wonderful community of women around the world. I would ask you to teach them how to work silently, strongly, and firmly.

I would ask you to transmit to them what you have transmitted to me: the meaning of happiness that lies hidden in our feminine intelligence.

I would introduce my comrades to you so they could grasp a little of your embracing love and sense of humor. I hope that they, like you, become strong pillars of their homes, and spiritual guides of their communities.

Mamita, I want to tell them how you never cheated, and yet always were the winner; how you were above gossip and childish bullying.

I would ask you to pass on your wisdom so that we remember that women around the world will not be taken seriously if we don’t stand up for ourselves. We must join together to shout our needs to our governments and to the world the way you taught me: peacefully and proudly.

I would beg you to become our leader, the one who helps us eat from one plate so that we won’t ever fight with each other; the one who reminds us that the task of living with integrity is not easy, but it is worth the struggle.

This is the big secret, sisters of the world: We cannot ask any man to give us a place in the world, because it is already ours. It is up to us to claim our place.

The 21st century is not for timid women. Without the help of your instinct, dear comrades, as well as your spiritual confidence, and your integrity, the world cannot see your light.

Mamita, I would ask you to please remind us all how to be not only self confident, but spiritually self confident, as when you said that the only way to carry on in the hard tasks of being a woman is trusting your gut and praying to God.

My Dearest Mamita, thank you for being there for me and leaving your signature on my life. Will I be able to pass it on to my daughter? Please help me to do this. When I was a child in your loving arms, I would ask you before leaving for school, ‘And your blessing, Mamita?’

When I see my child every morning as she goes to school she doesn’t ask for my blessing, but I don’t give up. I shout from wherever I may be: “God bless you dear!” in the hope that someday, somehow, she will understand how great it is to have your mom’s blessing every day.

Dear sisters, let Andreina, my mamita, send you her blessing from heaven, so that each one of you will become the light that she has sparked within me and, I hope, within all of you.

About Jacqueline Patiño

Jacqueline Patiño is a World Pulse Voices of Our Future Correspondent from Bolivia. This editorial originally appeared on PulseWire as part of a writing assignment for Voices of Our Future, a World Pulse training program providing rigorous web 2.0 and new media training to 31 emerging women leaders. Edits have been made to the original text for clarity.

Connect with Jacqueline Patiño on PulseWire.