Coming Of Age

Independent women aren’t just honeys making money (throw your hands up at me!)—although that’s certainly part of it. Here, real Pinays give us the lowdown on the different ways they lead independent lives.

- Cheekie Albay

Destiny’s Child’s 2000 hit paints a picture of independent women as shoe-buying, rock rocking chicas who get by on hard work to earn their riches. But more than killing it in your career and raking in the bucks, independence is a heady cocktail that requires traits such as discipline, resourcefulness, focus, determination, courage, and the faith that things will work out coming together to pack a strong yet sweet punch. If you have all these ingredients inside you, then sit back and savor it, independent Pinay. You have arrived.

FLYING AWAY FROM THE NEST

 In Western countries, as soon as one graduates fro college and lands a job, moving out of the family home is pretty much the next step. In the Philippines however, children could live with their parents we into their 30s. That’s why it’s a totally independent move to leave the comforts of home at 21 years old, like Tin, a marketing manager, did. Now 27, Tin lives in her own condo and drives her own car. While she struggled with solo living at the start, Tin just sucked it up because, well, there was no one else to do the work for her other than herself. “Sometimes I wish I still had parents to support me,” Tin confess “But at the same time, I would never trade the freedom and the learnings. I’ve accumulated over the years I’ve lived alone. I know now that if you put me anywhere in the world I can survive.”

GROWING YOUR MONEY TREE

According to the gospel of Destiny’s Child, an independent woman buy her own diamonds and buys her own rings. This is certainly true of Kare 33, an entrepreneur who started her first business at the age of 22, and is no making bank.