I wrote this piece a year ago late into the night. This piece is a celebration of all women the very traditional ones and the not-so-traditional ones. It’s permission to be whoever you want to be and I just want to make sure you know that this isn’t a piece to bring down women who fit into the mold of who society tells us to be but rather a reminder that if you don’t meet those qualifications you are just as worthy as celebration and love too.
I’ve thought a lot about where I come from over the last year more than just the town I come from or the state I come from or my experiences that shaped me. I’ve been thinking about the lineage of people I come from and how those people and those generations how they impact who I am today. Today is International Women’s Day and if I were the perfect woman I would have written a post well in advance and it wouldn’t be posted a year late but I am not a perfect woman nor do I desire to be.
I’ve thought a lot about culture over the last year. I think you hear about culture a lot but you never really experience the vastness of how culture shaped you until you move to somewhere with a completely different culture. That’s what Boston was for me. It was a culture shift and it showed me the parts of myself that I hid because they weren’t accepted in the culture I was born into. There are pieces of me that I felt like I couldn’t be proud of because culture made me feel like they didn’t align with who a woman should be. Boston shifted my entire perspective on life and it allowed me to grow into someone confident in who I am. It taught me to love myself fiercely and when I came back I was brave enough to carry those pieces of myself confidently. When I started being brave enough to share those pieces in a culture that doesn’t always celebrate them, I found that there are really great people here that celebrate them too.
Growing up culture told me that a woman is supposed to dainty and lady-like and quiet and pretty and she has a perfect home and she cooks and she cleans and she’s a wife and she’s a mother and if she works it’s not supposed to be that important to her because good moms and good wives care about their family and not their career. She’s not supposed to be difficult, she’s not supposed to speak up, she’s supposed to be compliant and she’s supposed to always smile and she’s supposed to be grateful for what she’s been given regardless of what she deserves.
I think a lot about what culture tells me about being a 35-year-old unmarried woman. I think about the fears it tries to bestow upon me and how my value is tied to my youth and that wrinkles are bad. It’s hard to not hear it. Culture is LOUD. The lies I’ve been told my whole life about being a woman, they are also loud. I’m a lot of things but none of them fall under what society tells us a woman should be.
There are times I really wished I could be and desired to be what culture told me a good woman looks like. It would have really been easier that way.
There are times I’ve tried to make myself small when I was meant to take up space. There are times I’ve lied about the grade I’ve made on a test because no one likes a smart girl. There are times I’ve cried because I’ll just never be the girl who’s really good at artsy crafts. There are times I’ve wished that I cooked home-cooked meals every night like a good woman would. There are times I’ve wished I was short and petite instead of tall with broad shoulders. There are times I wished I cared about yoga and knitting more than I cared about my job. There are times where I wish my life purpose felt like being a mom or a wife but it isn’t. There are times I wished I cared a lot less about things and felt a lot less strongly so I didn’t speak up. There are times I really wished I could be and desired to be what culture told me a good woman looks like. It would have really been easier that way.
I started thinking about why I’m not dainty and into cooking and cleaning and caring about fashion and having kids and getting married and all the things like other people and then I realized because my lineage doesn’t contain women like that. My lineage contains women who overcame a lot. It starts with women who grew up in a really poor household, on a farm, with a lot of mouths to feed, it starts with a brother whose plane went down on his way back from war that’s never been found, it starts with their mother dying young, it starts with being made fun of because you grew up on a farm and were poor, it contains a lot of really hard things but it ends well. My lineage starts with divorce in an era in which being a single mother was frowned upon, it starts with being an immigrant, it starts with hardship, it starts with surviving. My lineage starts with working as a nanny and immigrating to a new country with the family you nanny for, it starts with a sibling’s death at the hands of a regime, it starts with never returning to your homeland, it starts with language barriers, it starts with a lot of things and none of the things are easy but it ends with choosing to stay, it ends with selflessness, it ends with love, it ends with a story of a family not by blood but by choice. It ends with happiness. You see, I come from a fierce line of women. They weren’t dainty. They were courageous. They were brave. They endured a lot. They didn’t have it easy. I come from a hardy line of women. I come from women who are strong.
That lineage of women continues. My mother is smart. My mom taught Calculus….I’ve taken that class 3 times and I still don’t get it. My mom is hardworking. She raised 4 kids. My friends used to say my parents breed excellence….my parents didn’t breed excellence they shaped it…they worked really hard and they sacrificed a lot…it was not by accident. My mother worked and she raised 4 kids and she helped shuffle us to a million sports practices and she taught Sunday School and she always showed up to my school plays and she took care of aging parents and she did it all. Did we have homecooked dinners much…nope…but we ate dinner together every night, all six of us. My mom instilled good morals and she and my dad never took the lazy way out. My mom is not going to have the perfectly wrapped gift that looks like it came out of a catalog at your baby shower but she will be the person who is cleaning up spit up and washing your clothes and cleaning your house when you have a baby. My mom will be the person spending the night to get up with the baby when your husband is out of town and she will be the person who insists on babysitting because she knows you and your husband both need a break.
My mom’s best friend, my “aunt” and godmother, wasn’t dainty either but she was one of my favorite people in the world. She made me feel the most special. She bought me a Waterford crystal bowl when my sister got married because she knew my sister wouldn’t like it and she knew I liked nice things. I think she really bought it for me like you buy a little kid a present when it’s not their birthday (it still makes me smile especially now that she’s gone). My earliest memories of her are taking me to muck the stalls of her horses while my mom was in labor at the hospital and she told me I had to stand outside because I was too little and the horses would stomp me. She had the loudest best laugh and she rarely wore makeup. She lost her husband suddenly and much too early and then she ran an entire plant. None of who she was…was traditional…if anything it was rebellious and I loved her for it. Those pieces of her…they brushed off on me.
I think through the next generation and none of us…none of us women are anything like the women you’re told you’re supposed to be. I come from a long line of women who are a force to be reckoned with. I come from a long line of women that are strong. I come from a long line of women who are hardworking. I come from a long line of women that can be opinionated. I come from a long line of women that raised really great families but their houses never looked like a catalog and their lives probably look like chaos to many but they were and are really good women who dye their hair crazy colors and some have tattoos and some kept their maiden names and many had kids far past 35.
May we love women for who they are and not for who we think they should be. <3
I think about my female friends and my female coworkers and my female founders and the women I look up to and none of them….not one single one of them…is the type of person I was told a woman should be. I don’t think I ever really was proud of being a woman until I worked at a women’s college. I don’t think I ever realized that culture is a liar and there are many different versions of what being a great woman looks like until I went to Boston. I don’t think I ever really became truly proud to be a woman until I learned to love myself and my version of what a good woman is.
Women can be smart. Women can love their careers. Women can have PhDs. Women can take up space. Women can be good leaders. Women can speak truth. Women can wear 4 inch heels all the time. Women can have the best clothes. Women can raise children. Women can choose to never wear makeup. Women can be fierce. Women can be confident. Women are far more than how they look. Women can overcome. Women can persevere. Women can be resilient. Women can be anything they want to be and some of the most beautiful women I know….they don’t fit in a cookie cutter mold set out for them. They are brave. They are bold. They are survivors. There is nothing more beautiful than watching a woman rise from the ashes of the circumstances that tried to defeat her.
I am loud when I get excited. I am strong when I need to be. I am resilient unlike anyone else I know. I will always speak truth loud to my founders, to my friends and to those who are doubting themselves. I care about impact. I either don’t really care or I have a strong opinion. I believe people call that passion. I am unrelenting when I put my mind to something. I believe excellence is the standard. I refuse to put my name next to anything not done the right way. I love the people I love really hard. I leave anything in my wake better than I found it. This year someone said to me, “ You’re really good at whatever you decide you want to be good at.” He was referring to me being an aunt.
Being an aunt makes me stop and pause and think about what I want to instill in my niece. She’s way too little to understand anything except that I buy her “grown up clothes” in teeny tiny kids sizes because I think there’s nothing cuter than a tiny human wearing cool sneakers and jeans. I put way too much thought into the books I buy her. I think a lot about the words I say to her. I hope she’s a woman just like me and her mom. I hope she’s sassy. I hope she’s bold. I hope she keeps going to school until there are no more letters to add to her name just like her mom. I hope she’s feisty and fierce but most importantly I hope she feels the freedom to be exactly who she wants to be and I hope she loves herself for it.
I hope those things for you too. I hope if you want to stay at home and raise children that you get the opportunity to do that and I hope if you’re crafty and artsy that’ll you’ll share your great talents with the world. I hope if you’re a pilates queen and never miss a yoga class that you drag me to class with you. I hope if you’re a great interior designer and your house looks like a magazine that you’ll come help me decorate mine and refer a great cleaning lady to me. I hope if you’re a wonderful cook that you invite me over for dinner and you point me to the best meal prepper you know. But most of all I hope that if you fit into the perfect cookie cutter mold of what a perfect women should be that it’s because you truly desire those things and not because the world made you feel like you had to.
Happy International Women’s Day to all the women who inspire me to lean into who I was born to be! May we love women for who they are and not for who we think they should be. <3