It’s weird.
Until the past year or so I think I’ve had a bit of a raging inner mysoginist. Of course this was not on purpose, this was not something I was even aware of and most certainly not proud of! For pete’s sake, I was a mom of 2 girls, I work surrounded by women, I was raised by a strong woman!! Nonetheless, I remember distinctly, one beautiful summer trail run, running along listening to Elle Luna on a podcast talking about her realization of this in her and literally stopping dead in my tracks and going, a ha! That’s it! That is precisely my problem! I held the women in my life to such high, unattainable standards that when they fell short, or fell what I perceived to be short, I held subconscious disdain for them. Or, even worse, I avoided being influenced by women full stop. On reflection, I only listened to podcasts run by males, most of the music I listened to was male singers, I felt more comfortable around male peers … what the holiest of fucks?!! I remember coming home, like I routinely do to my poor husband, and spewing all these intra-run epiphany’s forth and he went “well, ya, you totally do.” Well shit. How profoundly disappointing.
I don’t remember setting forward from that moment determined to change. I didn’t and don’t fully understand how that came to be a part of me in the first place. Was it “societal” influence? Was it my response to past experiences? Was it my response to misplaced judgements of myself? Who the fuck knows. Many people will say you can’t do well for others until you truly understand who you are yourself. Maybe this is what happened here. I had a flash of understanding and that is all it took to change.
Anyway, time passed, life flowed on, and I started this blog. I started writing about finding yourself, about doing so so you can serve others, about the dance of good and other in us, about not apologizing. Then someone wrote a terrible article about women in our local paper and I penned a response.
The response to what I wrote was immediate, passionate, and far reaching. I had hundreds of women thanking me. Middle aged women said they read my words and wept. Mothers thanked me on behalf of their daughters. I was told by a stunning 19 year old that I had executed the perfect “clap back”. After googling what that meant, hahaha, I was beyond humbled and taken aback. I felt such strength. From them. Somehow, a few short months after realizing I was the ultimate jerk in some ways, without conscious effort, I had come full circle. Life is a beautiful little beast sometimes.
So here I sit, at a desk surrounded by Tove Lo, Lana Del Ray, Lorde, Gioconda Belli, Julie Piatt, Angela Liddon, Danielle Laporte, my girls and so on. And here I continue to write, mostly with a similar fierce tribe in mind. I thank you ladies for walking with me through this little evolutionary blip, I know you’ve got my back, and can say with pride now that I’ve got yours too. So let’s charge on.