Adopted Dreams!

 It has always been screwed in our heads that the greatest way a woman can show love to a man is sacrifice ; females will go above and beyond sacrificing their education, their families, their dreams and lastly, their identity. They do it all in the name of love, never asking or expecting the same sacrifice that they give to their partners.Try to recall how she beams whenever she hears the old adage 'behind every successful man is a strong woman' and she knows she is the woman they are speaking of.

Women are constantly coming up with reasons why they cannot go out and get a job or, leave an abusive relationship and most of these excuses make sense but today l would like to tell you that they are invalid to the extent of their invalidity.It is because of how we are raised as children.When a girl is young, she is taught that the only significant or the most signifficant event that she has to look forward to is marriage, this will explain partly why women will sacrifice so much for the sake of their marriage.Many of us have heard stories of mothers that found out their husbands or boyfriends were raping their children but turned a deaf ear and some forced their children into silence because all they want is to save the greatest institution that they have been taught all their lives to respect.

From childhood, females are taught the art of self denial, they are taught to always put other people before them, the hierachy being males first, then other people and finally themselves.At funerals, when food is being served, it is always the hands of the males whose hands are washed first, they are given food first then finally the women and children if there are any will eat.The siting arrangements of traditional funerals are that men will sit on chairs, or couches then the women always sit on the floor, it doesn't even matter if these women are the bereaved or how old they are, the most important is that they sit on the uncomfortbale floors which might be dirty or have ants and the men like kings seat majestically on chairs.The idea here is to subconciously teach you a fact almost every person in society will directly remind you of, a woman's place is always underneath the men, the floor and men are superior, they sit at the head, the chairs.

By the time they meet men that are potential husbands, they have been taught the art of self denial, to put the needs of their men first before anything else and this is why they end up adopting their dreams.Most of us have heard of the story of a young lady with a bight future ahead of her falls in love with a young men with potential.They get married and the young lady persuades her husband to put into reality his dreams of starting a business, and after much persuasion he agrees.Together they put effort into building their business, the young lady will take money from her salary to help keep the business afloat. On weekends she will do the books or put in work to help out with their business and after work she will go home to cook for her husband as they cannot afford to hire help.Later on when their business grows she will quit her job to focus full time on the business and will shoulder the majority of raising up their kids.lt finally pays off from selling goods out of the back of their car the now have a chain of grocery shops and when she is about to let out a well deserved sigh of relief another challenge comes, her husband starts cheating on her! Before she knows it, everyone in town knows of his philandering.

He tells her plainly that she can go on and leave him but that she will leave with nothing,that cannot be right? Wrong, she does not have a single share or ownership of their business, the house which they partnered in building is actually owned by him, so are the cars and every other asset she thought belonged to them. She just never saw the necessity of making sure her name was also in the property documents. Sadly, he forgot, as many of them do and now she is too heartbroken to even fight him and get what she rightfully desrves.She trusts that a higher power will come down punish him for what he has done.With her had bowed down goes back home and lives in disgrace and isolation for the rest of her life. There are more painful versions to this story and there are also lesser ones but the basis is, a woman will break her back in order to make her husbands dream come true and when it finally does she is kicked out and has to watch someone else enjoy the fruits of her labor.

I am not against you and your partner working to build your Empire together but more often than not as women we do this at the expense of our dreams, or ourselves. We adopt the dreams of our boyfriends and husbands and we work like slaves and donkeys to make them a reality, we know these women, they are our mothers, our aunties and if we are not careful, we will become them in the not so distant future.Sadly, or not so much it is after a woman is thrown out of her home indirectly or directly that she realizes the need to have an identity outside the Mrs. and for the first time in years she starts working on herself and it is as if she learns how to dream again! 

lf your dreams align then let them but whilst following your heart remember that we live in a world where people are governed by laws.Remember to get those shares remember that before you met John you were Samantha, Samantha who had her own dreams and ambitions as well.His dreams are not more important than yours and the way to show them love is definitely not forgetting your own dreams aoesnt guarantee future happiness in fact it gurantees the exact opposite.If you are already in this situation, it is not too late to remember yourself, to remember your dreams, they matter too, they are valid. Enough with ADOPTED DREAMS!