The picture I used for this story is a poster that hung in my office for decades. I admired it with pride. I wanted to be that woman. Back then I was young and I wasn’t quite sure what attracted me to it. It was said to be a masterpiece in advertising, an unnamed woman is used as ‘Saving humanity from conformity’. When I looked at it each morning, it defined the substance of what womanhood meant to me, but somehow, something I lacked. It portrayed a woman that runs from the norm to break down barriers, she possessed both a strength and weakness about her.
Recently, I was speaking to a friend about life. In a short while we have become good friends. Our stories are different, our cultures are unalike, our upbringing is also mismatched. We live at opposite ends of the world yet unlike me she is the epitome of intellect, yet some aspects of our life as a woman remain identical. The journey of womanhood is a manuscript directed by the entire human race no matter where we reside. Some of us walk in line with what is expected from us and others choose to wander. We each have walked both these paths.
I am the eldest of us and she admires me. What is it she sees in me that is so empowering? She tells me I am strong. With age comes wisdom but also with age comes experiences, loss, harsh lessons and some form of regret. Standing your ground for something you believe is empowering but I never thought of myself as strong, much rather the opposite. The dictionary defines the word ‘strong’ as being able to withstand great force or pressure, to be able to endure and be resilient. I suppose I have been resilient in my life. I became tough, when I had no choice. My confidence and independence did in fact emerge from this strength. I walked a lonely path and loneliness makes you tough. Strong is an intense word and strength is something we all possess. At times it emerges when we are at our weakest point and other times one loses the will to even try to find it.
Eventually, I chose myself over everything. I left behind things I know that many women wouldn’t leave. I had to withstand the war and tolerate an unpleasant outcome. A life that was not serving me, I let it all go. At the time, I didn’t feel strong, I felt like the weakest person on earth, a person that was not made for this battle, no one taught me to fight, no one could save me either. I had to learn how to be a warrior on my own. Strong means to face your demons, whether they are living in your head or in human form. It means to break the mold of silence, suppression and depressive thoughts. Strong means to take another step even when you don’t have anything left inside of you to fight. I battled many ailments this way. I found the will to keep going.
I tell girls I mentor that no one is born this way, life makes you resilient. I wasn’t made for this but life didn’t give me a choice. It’s not the strength that scares the race, it’s the confidence that materializes from that durability. Not needing another person to fulfill your existence or to fight your battle for you, does require a form of strength. Unfortunately it is also a trait that hurts egos. I want to tell girls out there to embrace their womanhood, to consider it a privilege to be born as a woman. Only a woman can give birth to her own strengths. To use your feminine strength to become a warrior. Make your mark and breakdown the stigma. Change happens when you decide to walk off the beaten path. There will always be a disagreeable force that will pull you down. You have to learn to rise above that and conquer your dream. I have been heard by the young and learned from them and I have been loved by the old and respected them. Every soul taught me something.
I too admire my friend, for all the ways she is so different from me, in all the ways she has also broken the mold and walked her own journey. She has fixed her own crown and continued walking with her head held high and for that I commend her. I realized my friend wasn’t judging me for the decisions I made. She was admiring the form in which I maneuvered through my life. Endurance and determination have been the center traits of my survival. I didn’t make mistakes in my life, I accepted them as lessons and more importantly I have no regrets. My advice or life experiences aren’t meant for critiquing nor am I here to preach. I am a woman who believes that we can all learn from each other and be role models. Life also taught me it’s not rivalry that wins but empathy.
This same poster now hangs in my son’s office. I felt a sense of acknowledgement and pride that he too, embraced something I left behind. And if he hung it because it reminded him of his mother then it too must remind him of the woman his mother has become and I was that positive example of strength for him too.