I spent the first 36 years of my life in a culture that regarded females as belonging to someone else from cradle to grave.

From the time a girl was born, she belonged to her father. He decided what she wore, how she behaved, and who she spent time with. He dictated her goals, responsibilities, and dreams. Everything she was and did was a reflection on him. She either honoured him or shamed him. There was no middle ground.

She was her father’s servant, housekeeper, nanny for the other siblings, cook, hostess, the works. She was Wife Part Two minus the sex. If she was lucky. If she was unlucky, she was also raped, molested, or sexualised in some perverse way.

If she had brothers, they were also given authority over her as second fathers, keeping watch when the father wasn’t there, and reporting back to the father on any infractions so she could be disciplined and retrained. This authority and control over a girl or woman were also extended to other males including, but not limited to, grandfathers, pastors, and church leaders.

This didn’t change until the father found the right man to transfer ownership of his daughter to. Then she was given to a husband and the rituals continued. She belonged to him.

At no time, in that world, does a girl or woman belong to herself. Not her mind, not her body, not her heart, not her vagina or her uterus. None of her. She is placed on a pedestal, a lump of clay to be moulded according to the wishes of whoever happens to own her at the time. Her value rests in her submission and obedience and intact hymen until she is handed over to the one man who is allowed to break that hymen and take ownership of her.

She must provide willing sex on demand.

She must get pregnant and give birth regardless of whether that has a detrimental effect on her health and wellbeing. If she loses her life in the process, so be it.

She must obey.

And through it all she must smile and convey joy, for to do anything less is to dishonour her father, her husband, her God. In that culture, there is nothing worse than shaming a male.

Even in this abusive culture, there were decent men who tried to value, respect, and love their daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers within those hellish parameters. Although I honour their efforts and am grateful for the light they shone in my darkness, this does not make the culture OK.

It is evil. Inhuman. Abusive, horrific, and utterly deplorable.

Girls belong to themselves. No one else.
Women belong to themselves. No one else.
I belong to myself. No one else. My body, my mind, my vagina, my uterus, my choices, my beliefs, they are all mine, and mine alone.

I remember the day I learned that I belong to me. My therapist and I had been talking when all of a sudden I said, “Do you mean I belong to me? My mind belongs to me? My body belongs to ME???” She stared at me in shock, trying to grasp that this was new information to me.

But it was. Mind-blowing, gut-wrenching, life-giving truth. I was 38 years old.

I returned to our farm in a daze. I sat in Bear’s big, green armchair for the next three days, basking in the utter wonder of belonging to myself. I felt safe and secure for the first time in my life, and that is when true healing began.

I will never return to the lies of my past. Never.

My body is mine. My mind is mine. My heart is mine.

Never again will someone decide for me what to think, believe, or be. Not a deity, not a church, not a government, not a father, husband, brother, or friend.

I belong to me, forever and always. And I trust me implicitly.