Isabel Allende tells tales of passion | Video on TED.com

Post mid night ponderings. I have been listening to Isabel Allende on TED.com. You can find it here.  She is a very powerful and inspiring speaker. Listening to her makes you want to do something for all those women who are deprived and vulnerable. For someone like me who is already doing that work, it just makes me want to double my effort and not to give up, ever.

But while listening to her, what I was thinking is that do women like me, the educated and not in any kind of great risk, can we actually understand what our deprived sisters want? Can we really know what is it that makes a woman accept domestic violence? I may try through my experience and grooming to understand her problems, to rationalise, to find solutions or just to listen, but can I really really understand? Maybe you would argue that I do not need to understand her problems exactly, afterall in develoment we always talk about keeping the distance with our clients. I know all that, but tonight somehow this idea that I may not understand what goes on in the emotional and thinking process of the women we are trying to help, bothers me greatly.