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One woman's victory

By: Chit Roces-Santos Philippine Daily Inquirer

Imelda Argel's book, "A Pebble that Floats," is the story of a woman's victory over her own gender's self-imposed limitations and a bold escape from her imprisonment in family and cultural traditions.

Through hits and misses, she manages to free herself from a loveless marriage, leaves her country of her birth, and finds her new place in the sun-and a lifetime partner, too-in Australia. Imelda is the pebble in the title that defies the down pull natural to a pebble's circumstances and floats to success, freedom and fulfillment.

It is not uncommon in our culture for even an intelligent, successful, and pedigreed woman to feel as lost as any young wife. After only eight years of marriage and despite all effort to save it, Imelda, by then mother to a son, realized that her marriage had come to its end.

As possibly divinely intended, out of an ill-fated union, a good son is born. Imelda's Enrico became for her the motivation to succeed.

Before leaving she had filed for state and Church annulment. While other problems, like her status and the stigma of a broken home, were solved by migration to Australia, other trials presented themselves. In 1988 most young Filipino women there were presumed mail-order brides. Imelda's 15 years of court experience, which might have spared her from the prejudice, made her, on the other hand, overqualified for any job.

Imelda made time to pursue her masters at the University of Sydney. Step by step she managed to knock down the barriers that stood in the way of a law practice. It is partly to her credit that Australia now recognizes a Philippine Regulatory Commission board certificate as an equivalent of an Australian degree.

Empowered by her proud lineage, her excellent education, and tenacity and resilience, along with the emotional support from family and her other professional friends, Imelda has indeed become an invaluable asset for both her country of birth and home country of choice.

Now 74, Imelda has been semiretired since 2012. She lives with her life partner, Manny, in a dream house they built together, a four-level with a panoramic view, in Collaroy, Sydney. She met Manny, an Australian divorcee with his own children, at a dancing school in 2009. They went very naturally from dancing partners to traveling partners to business partners to lifetime partners.

Marriage is nowhere in their plans, and if you ask her why not, she has a confident, liberated, lawyerly, Australian, and un-Theresian answer.