And I am a woman!
Strong, yet vulnerable. Quiet, yet outspoken. Organized, yet forgetful. Energetic, yet overworked. Brave and reserved. Adventurous and timid.
There are so many different adjectives that can be used to describe me. Often they depend on the day, the week, the weather, the position of the sun, and when I last ate! I’m complicated and somehow ridiculously simple. I’m intensely serious and insanely silly. I am not just one thing, I am many! And it is a beautiful thing! I love that people are compiled of so many amazing characteristics! It makes life interesting.
Unfortunately, women somehow get such a bad wrap for being all of these things and more. Like being assertive is a bad thing! Or speaking our minds makes us rude. We find it irksome when men go around us because they ignore our knowledge. Nothing riles us quicker than someone explaining things as though we are addle brained!
There was a time when I kept quiet. I let my thoughts and feelings be pushed to the back because I felt unworthy of having an opinion. I doubted my knowledge. I doubted my own mind. I doubted who I was and what I was worth. I let my inner voice almost disappear. I don’t want that for my girls.
I want my girls to walk through this life knowing their voices matter. I want my girls to share their knowledge. To express their feelings. To be in touch with who they are as people. I want my girls to stand up for what they believe. I want them to fight back when someone tries to back them against a wall. To be heard. To be seen.
If I leave anything behind when I leave this life, I want it to be strong, kind, brilliant, loving women who raise strong, kind, brilliant, loving women. I spent too much of my life afraid to be who I was created to be. If I can show the girls and young women around me to dispel that fear, to live the life they were fearfully and wonderfully made to live, I will live a life fulfilled.
Fearfully and wonderfully made