I am a woman, I am…
Today, which is International Women’s Day, I came across this: https://youtu.be/6i0A2nkjI9g .
On the surface, it caught my attention as a great message to celebrate the strength and awesomeness of women. That’s what it is, and that’s a terrific message and one that I wholeheartedly support. So how did this few minutes of a positive message end with me in tears? It’s simply because as much as we need to loudly proclaim how strong and wonderful and capable women are – what happens when we aren’t??
A few years back there was a huge outcry about how society is raising boys to be men. Don’t tell little boys to “man up” or that “big boys don’t cry”. Instead, let them know that it’s okay and healthy to have, and express, the emotions that have always been associated with weakness and even – gasp – feminine traits. Emotions like fear, hurt, sadness, loneliness… emotions that make you feel far from the strong that society has told them have to be, always.
So I watched this video tonight and listened closely and heard a message that as a woman, I can celebrate that I am strong and fearless and courageous. An engineer, a scientist, a creator, a teacher, a race car driver… the list goes on and on. But where is the counter to this? Watching this, it smacks of a message that I am somehow wrong as a woman if I am NOT those things, even sometimes. If we need to show our sons that it is healthy and okay to reach out for a shoulder to cry on sometimes or a pair of arms to fall into when it all feels like to much to bear alone, where is that message for ourselves, as women? Have we swung so far out trying to project our equality and strength that we have created an arena that a woman now has to feel like she has to hide what could very well be seen as weakness if she says she isn’t strong, right now, at this moment? How is that woman supposed to feel about herself when she is being sold a message that she isn’t what she should be, as a woman? A message made for and made by, women.
I am a woman. I am strong and able and capable of anything I set my mind to. I am aware of my own power and embrace it.
I am a woman. I am at times not at all strong or capable or fearless. Sometimes I am needing and wanting of someone to be strong for me. Sometimes, someone else needs to be the rock. Sometimes I can’t be that for myself. There are times that I cry. Tears of fear or loneliness or just plain sad. There are times I don’t see my strength and I need someone to hold me and tell me it’ll all be okay.
As a woman, I am all this and more, and less.
I have the right to be not held to standards of what I should be by anyone, especially other women.
So simply, I’ll be a badass strong woman…or maybe not, today. Either way, I am a woman. I am whatever that means, to me.
whisky sweet 