Picasso and The Woman Who Left Him

After a lot of turkey, relaxation, Christmas shopping, and some much needed quality time with the family, I am back! Yesterday, I was reading a fascinating article in Vanity Fair about the third installment of a Picasso biography. I did not know much about Picasso's personal life, except that it was turbulent, passionate, and filled with many women. Picasso was a womanizer, a misogynist, and a man who traded in women like they were cars. He would spend about 7 years with them: controlling them; verbally abusing them; creating shells of the women they once were. Then, he would leave them for another woman, somebody younger and less inexperienced. He spent a lifetime destroying women. In fact, two of them committed suicide, and most of them died penniless. One of his last relationships was with the artist, Francoise Gilot. She was 21 years old, and at the time he was 62. They developed a deep love affair. She gave him 2 children, and they were together for almost 10 years. Only this time, she left HIM. She had enough of the incessant infidelities and his abuse. She was sick of being mistreated, and she walked away from the relationship. He was devastated. She had turned the tables on him. She proved to him she was powerful, and not just a puppet in his game of love. She was a strong, independent woman who chose not to be verbally abused and tormented by a man who thought could control any woman. Although she was in a relationship with a manipulative, controlling and enigmatic man, she was able to break away from his grasp. She chose her own happiness over staying in a bad relationship. She did not let him destroy her, and in the end she prevailed: she remarried a wonderful man and she continued to paint her art. Every woman should look up to her. She is a true woman's hero. She was the one woman in his life who took a stand. The lesson of her story is: if you let a man wear you away, then you will dissolve into dust; but if you stay strong and stand up for yourself, you will rise above everything.