ABOUT
While our paths are varied, our experiences, and especially how we feel about them, then, and now, are more similar than not. Stories by women who lived through the same last fifty years as you, have the power to connect. To our inner self and to each other. This connection is healing and loving, nurturing and empowering.
Stories bring us together. They make us more resilient.
We are a sisterhood with so many stories and so much experience. We have lived and learned. Our stories matter. At StorySistas the voices of women after 50 are gifts that are heard and celebrated.
I became aware of the story I told myself years after 50, and it was not pretty. I go back and see the inciting event with everything I know today—all the things that life has put into me—and tell that story—with compassion and love, especially for me. It’s like putting down a load.
When you go back to a memory, and see it with today’s insight, your telling of that memory can instruct and construct you. You choose in your telling who you were, who you are, and who you want to become. It’s like a secret super power. You can lift off a load. Remove a dark heavy cloak and see light. Quiet down voices in your head so YOUR voice comes through.
Today I appreciate community more than ever. Especially women after 50. There is an understanding and empathy which feels like home. We can sense each other’s journeys. When we share our stories, it is joyful and exciting. Even the sad stories, they are triumphant, for we have overcome. And we continue to grow. Our time is priceless, we make choices, do the things that enrich our lives. Develop connections, now.
It is my hope that the stories here connect with you. Wherever you are. And that you will share your voice, your story.
love,
mahani
My father, Omar Zubedy, 1956
Meet my father. He was a teenager
He was married to my mother for 48 years, half of that time he had another woman. He was also the goalkeeper of the state soccer team. When friends and relatives needed work he would help them through his connections.
He himself did not take advantage of friends in high places. He was offered a gas station and good jobs, but no, none of that grownup stuff for him. He was a star on a Vespa.
Meet my mother. There is something childlike and vulnerable about her that men, women, and children, want to care and protect her. That’s how compelling she is, still is, and I am blessed to have her in my life.
She was 19 when she left her home, her friends, and family in Indonesia, crossed the Straits of Malacca to Malaysia, to marry my father. Nine months later I was born.
When I was almost 3 and she was pregnant with my sister, my mother found out about the other woman. She said to me: “I am not well, you are a big girl, you are a good girl, you take care of me.”
My mother, Zahra Zubedy, 1956
The Chinese character for filial piety
This is the Chinese character for filial piety, the virtue of respect for your elders. It depicts a child carrying an elder with long hair.
An early version
This is an early version of the character and how I must have felt when I accepted my mother’s offer. I was fifty something when I realized the load was not for me to carry, and put it down.
Penang Soccer Team circa 1950
The team with the first Chief Minister of Malaya, my father is in the center wearing a sweater.
My mother when she turned 82. I love her with all my heart.
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