A Wander That Broke the Old Story.

The other day I watched a Telugu movie, Girl Friend. A girl was trapped in a possessive relationship. She squeezed herself into someone else’s idea of love. Eventually, she broke out of it.
I didn’t want to write about the movie itself, but it stirred memories I’ve carried quietly for years.

It reminded me of a truth I observed growing up, a truth many women lived but rarely spoke.

We were raised on an illusion created by society that women are protected by the men in their lives.
Father, brother, husband, son.

Dependence was presented as safety.
Obedience was marketed as virtue.
Sacrifice was dressed up as love.

Girls were reminded over and over that they were looked after, that their lives were sustained by men, that they existed under someone’s shelter.

Many women believed it.
Not because they were weak, but because the message was whispered into every corner of their lives: movies, books, advice, expectations.

But the world I saw never matched that story.

It was always the women who held everything together.

I have seen women working in many ways throughout my life. They did whatever they could to support their homes.
And after that, still taking care of their families and extended families with a quiet reliability that no one acknowledged.

Men wandered into card games, addictions, distractions, escapes.
But it was women who held families upright, women who made sure life kept moving.

I saw widowed women raising entire families with strength and grace.
I saw widowed men collapse or remarry quickly because they couldn’t manage on their own.

Everywhere I looked, women were the protectors.
Women were the backbone.
Women were the ones who kept everything alive.

The deepest ache was not what men did.
It was watching women believe they were less, believe they needed permission to exist fully.

My own home taught me the truth. My father loved me, but he lived in a world that revolved around his own ways, his own interests, his own rhythm.
My mother was the strength that held us together.
She carried everyone through everything with a quiet, unwavering strength. Our home breathed because of her.

My entire life was proof of the opposite — that women do not need men for protection.

Even with all this awareness, some of those old messages found their way into me too. Especially in love. There were moments I made myself smaller without noticing.
But I learned to see it. And I learned to be myself without shrinking.

That recognition changed me.
It made me more aware of every quiet way society shapes women, even the strongest ones.

I write this to honor those women.
The women who carried families.
The women who carried communities.
The women who shaped my world.

To the next girl who watches a story like Girl Friend, I hope she knows this:

You are not the one being protected.
You are the one who protects.
You always have been.

PS: This is purely my personal reflection, a window into my life. It is not a statement about all women or all men, only about what I have seen and felt.