Sheets of all colors, bright foam and more than one option of pens is just a small part of what can be found in Maxi's stationery. Behind the hands that arrange the products on the shelves and bind the workbooks of elementary school children, there is a story of strength and emancipation.

Maxi's stationery is located on a busy street in Tonalá, Jalisco, where the passing of cars and trucks raise the fine dust that enters as an uncomfortable visitor to the place where Maximina González works daily.

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Maximina, better known as “Maxi”, acquired her stationery thanks to a transfer. Four years ago she started her own business with just a few types of notebooks, basic stationery, a piece of furniture and a copier.

“They transferred me a totally dead stationery, dead in the sense that nothing else was in existence: three ruled notebooks, three grid notebooks and so on. It was a stationery store with the most basic," said Maxi in an interview for La Cadera de Eva.

“The person who transferred it to me gave me the opportunity to pay in installments. With a little storage box that I had, although it wasn't much, I began to take risks and stock more stationery”, says the owner of the business. "I started with a small piece of furniture, with a showcase that was passed to me and a very old copier that made blurred copies," she added.

Maxi confesses that one of the first days she noticed that the children of the neighborhood asked her for merchandise that she still did not have in her stationery, a situation that caused her fear and the desire to close her business. However, that also motivated her to continue supplying what was necessary for her stationery and thus be able to provide the service to her clients.

Escape from violence being your own boss

For Maxi, the stationery is a first step to achieve one of her dreams in her life: to buy her own house. She is part of the 59% of women who are employed in the informal sector in Latin America and the Caribbean, but she is outside the 35.3% of women who have their own home in Mexico.

Behind the desire for a house is also the will and pride of being an independent woman who escaped from an environment of violence. For Maxi, being her own boss and starting her own business allowed her to discover her power, her strength, and get out of the violence.

"I realized that I can do my things alone, without being with a person who is guiding me and I realized the ability I can have to get ahead," says Maxi about her experience as an entrepreneurial woman.

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Throughout her life, Maximina had many jobs and occupations, she worked in companies, in flea markets and even started a cereal factory. She later became a homeopath, a job she does alongside managing her stationery. She did everything to cover the costs of studies and maintenance of her three children, who are now adults.

None of the jobs has been easy, because she had to break with patterns of emotional violence that she carried since childhood.

Maxi at her stationery.

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The violence perpetrated mainly by family members, such as her parents and her brothers, marked Maxi's life from a very young age. For her, physical violence is what has marked her life story the most. She sadly remembers how the cables of the recorders with which they hit her, which caused damage to her skin, a skin where there are now scars.

Like Maxi, in the world 1 out of 3 women has suffered physical or sexual violence throughout her life and at least 6 out of 10 Mexican women have faced an incident of violence at some time in her life, according to data of UN Women.

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Fighting the word “failure”

“Failure, failure, failure” is the word Maxi still struggles with today. She assures that her vision of her own house, which serves as a meeting point for her children, is stronger than the fear of failure.

At 51 years old, Maxi assures that her stationery allowed her to face violence and feel successful from her independence as a woman, but she is aware that many women go through the same problems of violence that she faced. Maxi recommends that women become aware of the situations of violence they experience in order to break with the fear of not being able to move forward. "The worst enemy of ourselves is fear, when we begin to take small steps without fear, great things are achieved," says Maxi.

Today, Maxi gets up every day from 8 to 9 in the morning to exercise and start her working day at the stationery store, supported by her partner and her employees. She affirms that her commitment and discipline have led her to make her business what it is today.

"Because when our head and our heart don't have a connection, it means that something isn't working," she concluded.