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We recently celebrated International Women’s Day 2021. At Sanctum Medical we are so incredibly grateful to be supported and educated by one of the most inspiring and influential women in our industry, our Founder and Creative Director Dr Asha Ram. To celebrate IWD she has shared her beautiful story and some important words with us.
It is almost exactly 12 months since the COVID-19 global pandemic was formally announced and the very core of how we each live, work, love and dream was turned on its head.
I am shocked at how easily we as individuals and collectively as a nation have accepted the new restrictions and limitations to our freedoms and way of life. Our compliance is at once both reassuring for health and safety imperatives and yet disturbing as we try a find a new interpretation of freedoms in our democracy.
This years IWD theme is #choosetochallenge
Our personal life experiences strongly colour the lens we use to focus on the challenges of our time. The pace of women seeking their voice today in Australia is deafening. These moments demand the deepest reflection of every woman. I am a woman of colour born on an idyllic Pacific tropical island in a complex society concealing deep racial and economic tensions. I was the third daughter born to Indian parents deeply longing for a son.
My childhood was culturally rich and textured with experiences that fed my curiosity and fierce sense of enquiry. My father recognised my need for physical and ideological independence and firmly guided me to pursue academic excellence. I was made aware that through education I may be able to achieve the freedoms I would need to live my life of enquiry. I remain deeply grateful for my now deceased father’s profound insight into and direction of those pivotal teenage years.
I left my homeland at 17, having been offered a scholarship to study medicine from the UK, Indian and Australian governments. Complex reasoning led me to being advised to accept the Australian scholarship and at the tender age of 17 I left my cocooned relaxed island home to live and study on a cold, isolated and near monocultural island in the late 1970’s.
I realise I have had to challenge paradigms from the womb; racial, gender, cultural and societal.
There have been several key sliding door moments in my life that have lead me to the place I stand today.
Indelibly imprinted is a conversation my high school biology teacher had with me as she handed me an award for being the top academic student for the year but also needed to give me a detention notice for being disruptive in class trying to help other students having finished my work early.
As I defended my actions she laughed and rolled her eyes and confided that I had been both her most challenging and her most rewarding student to date.
I had stretched her teaching and mentoring skills to the max and as she released me into life after school she said,
“Asha. You are a rare girl. You have such broad abilities coupled with insatiable curiosity and drive. You thrive on challenge and hard work and have no fear of glass ceilings.
You do not fit any moulds. You are fierce bold and brave. You clearly will not walk the easy path in life. I notice in your determination to be your own person you also feel compelled to help others achieve and be their best.
The challenge for you now is to either use your unique combination of intellect and spirit for great good, or to succumb to societal expectations of you as an Indian woman coming of age and be lost to a scripted and restrictive life. “
I was struck by her insight, the care and time she had taken to try to figure me out and the gentle gift she gave me of empowered choice.
I didn’t have the rhetoric to respond to her then, but I do now.
“Thank you Mrs Mishra, for seeing me so clearly before I could begin to see myself.
I have revisited your belief in me repeatedly and it has grounded much of my decision making as I continue to brave my path.”
My hope is that men and women move as one as we implement change for gender equality so that all young girls can be seen in their own blinding light and that they may have access to a path that is truely their own without fear and restraint.
Bold brave and fierce optimism but nothing short of this will do at this time.
My mantra for this IWD.
‘I am grateful.
I am proud, bold and brave.
My heart is open.
I speak soft strong words.
My arms are ready and strong to support and lift the girls and women around me.
I work towards and keep hope for change and growth around all the work that remains to be done to bring equality for girls and women.’
Dr Asha Ram
IWD
8.03.21
#choosetochallenge #iwd #internationalwomensday #mystory #womenempoweringwomen