For far too long, we’ve been conditioned to believe that our deepest instincts to have a partner, create a nest, nurture our own children and bring beauty into simple, daily life at home are old-fashioned and best belong to a bygone era.
We’ve probably heard it all before:
Leave the home. Go to school. Chase your dreams. Realize your true potential. Have a career. Start earning (or better yet, make money). Shatter glass ceilings. Smash the patriarchy. Be strong. Be independent. Pay your own bills. And whatever you do, don’t rely completely on a man because you can do everything they can (probably even better).
And oh, don’t forget to run and rule the world while you’re at it.
Then live your best life, ladies.
Sounds empowering until we find ourselves alone at home after yet another exhausting day, wondering if we’re really winning or just surviving.
We rarely talk about the burnout of trying to do everything in a single lifetime or the unspoken loneliness when there’s no one to come home to, unless we’re counting pets as emotional support (because trust me, my cats were practically my therapists post-divorce #beentheredonethat).
We weren’t warned that ‘having it all’ often means doing it all...alone.
And it’s practically taboo to admit that breaking free from the supposed limitations of traditional gender roles isn’t everything it was made out to be and makes us very unhappy!
After decades of this carefully packaged social programming-slash-engineering (sold to us as the fight for women’s lib and the female future), the cracks are starting to show:
💊😞 Many women are getting lonelier and more medicated than ever, trapped in the cycle of overworking and burned out from prioritizing soul-crushing jobs and careers.
👨👩👧👦❌ Families are nearing extinction as divorce rates soar, birth rates drop, autism is on the rise and many women delay or reject marriage— only to later grieve what they’ve lost.
🏡💻 The home is no longer a sanctuary since it has been reduced to a place to sleep and doomscroll between work outside, a backdrop for content creation or an office for business.
And now, with economic upheaval, unfinished student loan debts, AI-triggered layoffs and unstable job markets worldwide, more women are waking up to the reality that the whole ‘career-first’ narrative was never the security blanket or the delicious freedom it claimed to be.
I know firsthand what it’s like to build a life on modern ideals only to realize they’ve stripped womanhood of its depth, beauty and divine purpose.
Looking back, I’d probably have ordered a trophy for myself if there was one that read “World’s Most Ambitious and Workaholic Wife” by outearning my husband and becoming a breadwinner.
Starting a family wasn’t high on my list of priorities. I delayed pregnancy well into my 30s because I couldn’t fathom how a child would fit into my busy life.
Work came first. Always.
Not surprisingly, I was what you’d call a feminist academic. I published research on horror cinema to challenge traditional Asian femininity and critique patriarchal socio-religious systems, which is honestly just as cliché as you’d expect from someone who specializes in film and gender. I was convinced that the home was more of a prison than paradise for women (thanks, critical feminist theory!).
Yet, rather ironically, I also resented every minute of ‘playing’ the provider’s role.
With that mindset, staying married wasn’t an option, especially considering my history as a millennial child of divorced boomer parents. My marriage ended just 12 days before welcoming our first and only child.
Technically, single motherhood would’ve been the turning point where I assessed my life choices and prioritized what truly mattered, like bonding with my newborn, right?
Wrong.
I’d already set myself on a one-income financial path, which made it harder to do just that.
So instead of slowing down to course-correct, I doubled down. I left my PhD program as well as my lecturing and freelance writing career behind to dive headfirst into running an online business in the New Age as if it was a rebound relationship.
Determined to be a one-woman powerhouse, I set out to be the ultimate boss babe by making money and succeeding as a single mom. Just like all those six-figure success stories of entrepreneur mommies who seem to balance work, motherhood and flawless hair effortlessly, with the goal of retiring their husband to boot (if they’re not divorced already).
Because, hey, a girl can dream of her ambitions. Career. Money goals. Maybe a little social media fame for recognition and validation. More choices to make. All of it equals agency, empowerment and the validation that we’re doing things right.
Isn’t that the modern femme fairy tale?
But truthfully, despite the girlboss goals, I was actually directionless. Exhausted. Confused. Lonely. Bitter. And definitely angry.
I floundered with my business while single-handedly raising my son who was diagnosed with autism without much childcare help—which, let’s not forget, came with my choice of having sole custody— all while secretly drowning in the grief of a divorce that wrecked me. I regretted initiating it but I couldn’t even admit that to myself.
I didn’t realize it then but what I needed wasn’t another career milestone or a fatter bank account.
I needed real faith instead of another dose of “believe in yourself” fluff straight out of self-help.
But it wasn’t until my soul-searching journey led me to explore monotheistic spiritual traditions that I eventually picked up the Quran again to read it.
It was in this ancient scripture that I finally found the sacred, unshakable truths about the mystery of the feminine, what it means to be a woman as Divinely designed and the importance of strong family values while living in a world bent on tearing them apart.
So I shut down my online business, left the New Age path, wiped the agnosticism out of me and found something I’d never truly known before:
Stillness. Peace. God.
It was in the stillness that I stopped striving and began questioning everything I once believed about empowerment, independence and the roles of women.
For the very first time, I allowed myself to wonder:
What if the very things the modern world taught me to downplay— marriage, motherhood, family and home—were actually the sources of purpose and meaning I had been seeking all along?
Because here’s what I learned on this messy, humbling journey:
🏠💔 The real loss after divorce isn’t the financial hit but the child(ren)’s broken sense of home and the absence of a partner to ride the highs and lows with.
👩👧👦😞 Children thrive best with the love and support of both parents—not with one grieving, exhausted mom desperately trying to play hero.
👦👨👦 Boys, especially, need a strong sense of masculinity to grow into men and having a steady father figure around makes all the difference.
👧👨 Girls need their dads to understand what respect and protection look like when they come from a good man who genuinely cares.
🧘♀️❌ When navel-gazing, hyper-individualistic ‘follow your bliss’ pursuits get prioritized above our Creator and the needs of others, soulless emptiness is guaranteed.
👶📉 If more women forsake the home and choose their ‘life’s work’ over their wombs as their highest calling, just don’t be surprised when civilization caves in on itself.
These were all basic common sense for generations before us.
But since we’ve collectively been fed with cultural lies that teach women to prioritize careers, money, autonomy and personal desires above all else, it takes a cautionary tale like mine (and probably many others on Tik Tok confessionals) to reach such a simple conclusion!
And, ironically, it took a divorce for me to finally see the sacredness of marriage without the fantasy. But not without honest accountability to see my part in the mess that led to our separation. I didn’t need to keep wearing the pants in the relationship to chase after external success or to prove my worth by being a one-woman show.
True feminine strength, I realized, lies in surrendering to Divine Order and embracing what’s embedded in my DNA to fulfill the role I was designed for as a woman, wife and mother.
What I needed all along was, dare I say, a husband to lead, provide and protect me, to collaborate and cooperate with, and for me to support and be intimately connected to in the way only a woman can when she's safe enough to rest. I longed for a slower and simpler shared life where I can be at peace just staying home to take care of my son’s special needs without thinking I was ‘wasting my potential’ or ‘setting feminism back 50 years.’
And most importantly, my son needed a present father to show him what it truly means to be a man as he grows up.
I only came to this realization when I stopped acting like the center of the universe and started leaning on and putting my trust in the One who actually created it.
Soon enough, in a plot twist nobody saw coming, my ex-husband and I found our way back to each other after many years apart.
What seemed like a lost cause—our partnership, our family, our trust—was given a sequel but only through humility, forgiveness and love that’s secretly been there all along.
Together, we pieced back what was broken, reconciled our differences and renewed our commitment through remarriage while our son got a front-row seat to witness something rare in this world:
Two people who had messed up choosing to try again.
Miraculously and maybe even mercifully , our roles and responsibilities were reversed into something more timeless too.
Turns out, closing down my online business without a backup plan (but backed with a whole lot of prayers!) was a blessing in disguise.
Because that set the stage for my husband to step into the role of provider while I stayed home with our son and Charlie, the cat we adopted just before our first marriage 13 years ago.
For the first time, the kitchen feels like my domain. I cook more meals than I ever thought I would for my little family.
I fold laundry, wash dishes and tidy up every day without staging a protest or writing a 100,000-word dissertation on why it’s “gendered burden of unpaid labor.” Strangely, I’ve found peace in the repetition just so that I can have a well-kept home and peaceful family life these days (though maybe hitting 40s has something to do with that).
We live on a lot less these days but we’re wealthier in contentment than ever before. And to me, that feels like a far better deal.
Homemaking and my family come first but whenever there’s a quiet moment, I write, teach and mentor for Homeward to Womanhood Philosophy School as a way to share what I’ve learned and unlearned from this journey so far.
Perhaps you’ve found a bit of your own story in mine or maybe you’re just here to learn from my mistakes.
I drank the Kool-Aid of progressiveness, lost everything I thought I wanted and finally saw what I truly needed: faith, family and the humility to fully embrace my roles again as a wife and mother at home.
And nope, it hasn’t been easy. Shedding the old programming, making peace with dependence and finding dignity in domestic life took more soul-wrestling than any career ever did.
But trying to return to that in a culture that rewards female self-sufficiency and emasculates men is no straight path. Not when the world, its systems, modern ideologies and our own fears have rewired us to survive out of the chronic need to be everything and need no one.
That’s why I founded this philosophy school for women like you who’ve done everything “right” by modern standards and still feel something’s gone deeply wrong. We need a countercultural space where we can reclaim the sacred nature of womanhood, return to our ‘default’ settings, so to speak, and re-learn to love the home as a place where we rightfully and naturally belong.
Homeward to Womanhood Philosophy School is where we’re allowed to deconstruct the lies we’ve been told about modern womanhood, work, marriage, motherhood and the home so we can choose, instead, to align with a truth that has never changed since the dawn of time.
The philosophy and practice of Timeless Womanhood that we advocate centers on restoring women’s sacred roles to their rightful place as the foundation of our divine purpose and the root system of future generations. This is our opportunity to reclaim what was lost, grieve what was never taught and carry forward what still deserves to live.
We’re also here to find the sweet spot between traditional templates and living in 2025 so we can honor our timeless design, roles and responsibilities while adapting to modern realities. And just so you know, this takes more than #tradwife roleplaying on social media as reactionary to feminist messaging.
We’ve long been programmed to live outside of our nature, and now, even when we try to return to it, we glitch. Making peace with our natural design in a world that actively resists is a real challenge on its own. Many women attempting to unlearn modern ideals end up trapped between two extremes: the exhausting self-sufficiency of empowerment culture and the ‘picture-perfect’ reenacted traditionalism that somewhat ignores reality.
So if you’re somewhere in the messy middle, between who you thought you had to become and who you were actually created to be, you’re not alone.
Perhaps, deep down, you sense there’s more to womanhood than what the world has led you to believe. Maybe you don’t have all the answers yet but you’re willing to listen.
Either way, I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for here.
Or at least find the courage to question what you’ve been taught to want and name the damage done to our homes, marriages, families and sense of self.
So if you’re tired of modern narratives that promise freedom but serve up depression on your plate instead, stick around.
And if you’re ready to question the feminist playbook, challenge the modern ideologies that no longer serve you and prioritize a family-friendly life and the kind of femininity that’s designed by something greater than yourself…
