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| My great grandmother, her granddaughter and a beloved friend. |
Here's my confession: Man, it's hard to be a woman.
Really, those TED talks I listened to yesterday, two of them were a call to women to stand up and be strong leaders, executives, and scientists. Be AMAZING! Be everything. You can do it!
Only, even listening to those talks, I feel so tired. It's so hard to do everything. When I try, I mostly do a really crappy job at everything.
I remember so clearly my senior year having our two MALE teachers giving all these lectures to us women trying to empower us (bless their hearts) about how we can be anything we want and how we need to be more and better and BE SOMETHING! You can be doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, and scientists!
A girl next to me muttered, Ug, I hate science. Why is it always science?
That got me thinking . . .
I, of course, had to share my thoughts so I raised my hand and said, Excuse me . . .
They stopped and said, Yes, Mary?
Um, don't you think it's ironic that you men are standing up there lecturing us on what we should be and do . . . don't you think it would be better if you actually asked us what we want . . . and helped us get there? I mean, it't not helping. I for one am feeling like I'm a failure if I don't become something great . . .
As you can imagine, that did not go over well (I'm sure they were thinking, Of course it's the HOMESCHOOLER girl interrupting . . . she has NO idea--and they may have been right). They were angry at me and told me I was just acting out of fear etcetera etcetera . . . I actually didn't really understand what they were getting at, but I did understand that instead of being encouraged to speak up and tell them more about how I was feeling, I was shut down because it didn't follow their path of reasoning and wasn't along THEIR lines. This, I have seen has been a pattern throughout my life. Just happened a month or so ago with my husband and broth in law. They were literally yelling about how unfair it was to be a woman today and how wrong everything is with the system and when I said, Well, it's because we have babies. They went ballistic.
That's when I said, Ok, you all need to SHUT UP because you are thinking you know what it's like to be a woman. To have to make a LOT of hard decisions when you decide to create life. You don't. Not a bit. So . . . yay you defend women. Yay you hire them whenever you can. But mostly, just listen to them . . . really, and support the crap out of them. DO NOT ASSUME you know what they are thinking.
Men. Shesh. Don't they get it? Rule number one: Listen to women. Ask them questions and wait for a response . . . and LISTEN to it.
May never happen.
Because lets be honest, we are women and we can speak thoughts . . . that might change in ten minutes. And that needs to be ok too!
So I guess what I'm saying is, whatever you choose to do . . . be an executive, be a doctor, a teacher, a waitress, a firewoman, a newpaper person (do those still exist), a writer, an artist, a mama, a gardener, a thinker, a student . . . whatever it is, I believe in you. I got your back and I'm here to listen to you and support you. Because not one of those jobs is easy. And when you decide to have a baby, your life is changed more than your husband/partners and that's a fact. It won't stay that way forever, but it does stay that way for a minute.
In my perfect world, I'd create jobs where you can be both easily and well. In Europe they are totally way more family friendly. Parents can do job sharing and work from home. I know that we are trying that here. One of my friend job shares teaching high school. And please, working from home . . . if you're a busy mama like me, you'd get literally twice the work done as your coworkers would. I kick butt during the day.
Here's to hoping our daughters get more options and that they get a say . . . and they are heard. Because when we put our minds to it, I'm telling you, woman change history. Every single time. Lets make a better world for our babies.
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