Woman's Work

This piece reflects on what Pablita once shared with me about the resistance and discouragement she faced as a painter. People would tell her she should be doing “women’s work” instead. When I was young, I did not fully understand the weight of those experiences and assumed they belonged to another time. As I have grown older, I have come to recognize these tensions more clearly and to better understand the two worlds, the two sets of expectations, and the layered realities of being a woman. While much has improved, those histories still echo in the present.