Self-sufficiency

I would like to help women achieve self-sufficiency.  I moved to Alameda with an education, a home and a future.  Almost immediately, I started meeting women and men who balked at me for choosing to enjoy myself in my home without a man.  Men traditionally provide women with homes in marriage.  I had proactively sold a property I had inherited in Los Angeles and used its proceeds to buy a home and establish myself in Alameda.  I hadn't waited on a man to marry me and give me this life.  This angered, confused and perplexed many people.  I also filled my home with art, books and music, which also goes against the grain.  Knowledge is power.  I learned through experience how black women aren't expected to be intellectual or educated.  Many black women I meet today barely finished high school, if even, and started families young.  Now that I am a black woman with a child, and without a man, it is often assumed that I, too, aren't as educated or savvy outside of a bedroom or a nursery.  I would like to change that.  I would like women to be financially independent and free, despite the absence or presence of male support.   I would like to keep enjoying the life I have without anyone assuming I am being deceptive or dishonest for being an educated woman of color with a home and a child and without a man doing anything for me.  I lead a magical life that many people haven't been able to stomach because women haven't been allowed to make choices and be free.