This fearsome feeling is especially different from stealing a tootsie roll from the corner store or being caught sneaking out of your house as a teenager. This particular fear isn’t a fight or flight feeling, it is a gut turning, insomnia, anxiety that replayed in my head continuously for months. It's a fear is life-altering, not only for myself, but for two adults, two families, and a child. It is the contemplation that divorce is the only solution for two individuals, who have grown to become two different people. A realization that a Hmong female divorcee will be shunned by the community and her very own family. Divorcees are seen as insults to the Hmong culture. Epically, if a woman initiates the divorce. I feared the idea of not being able to see my cousins because of a new title I would hold in this small society. Elders, who were strangers to me, said that I would entice my cousins to follow my footsteps because I wouldn’t have any bounds to a household name. My cousins would see my freedom, and not see me as a fine woman. And Hmong people would ban …show more content…
You spend two days with the bride and groom. Giving them advice on how to have a successful marriage, and to multiply like rabbits. But if I was to become a divorcee I wouldn’t get a simple phone call, to send my younger sisters off to their new husbands’ home. Just the thought of me being at a wedding could lure them from a good marriage. A divorcee can cause too much ruckus at a wedding. The gossiping of a divorcee is everyone’s favorite topic in Hmong society. Women and men would ask each other how could I show up to such a joyful event. I would know because I grew up listening to them talk about an older cousin who refuses to marry. A divorcee can steal the spotlight of the bride and groom and seduce men to take her on as a second wife. A wedding shouldn’t make a guest feel ashamed of a life decision. Mostly because I did help raise my little