With all of the different movements going on: Natural or Curly Hair, Breast feeding or Bottle feeding, makeup or no makeup....I feel like sometimes the essence of it can get lost in the messaging. The essence of a woman being able to decide what works best for her and feeling completely supported and okay with that decision, without any backlash or judgement from fellow women who've decided to do something different for them.
I don't believe that either of these messages were intended to put women against each other and create "clubs" or "teams" that exclude other women or make women feel shame about the choices they make in their lives. And of course we'll always be attracted to women who we relate to, which is great. But it's unfortunate that sometimes the very things that were created to unite women in being their amazing selves, filter or no filter, are used to push women who don't meet a certain criteria out.
The fact is, we're all here trying to figure what makes us feel joy, self-love, and self-acceptance as we age, become mothers (or decide not to become mothers), change careers, grow, and experience life. It's amazing when a woman feels her sexiest without makeup. And it's also amazing when a woman feels like a Queen with eyebrows done, contour, and her favorite lipstick.
Instead of focusing on the things that make us different, which I feel tends to make us do the opposite of uniting, we should focus on supporting women in whatever positive things that help us feel amazing. If you bottle feed, that's amazing. If you breastfeed, also amazing. If you are happiest not having kids, I think that's just as beautiful as the woman who has decided to have 6 kids.
And we can all celebrate, as individuals, by sharing what we want that empowers us - and ultimately it empowers all women as a whole. We don't have to feel less than the woman who is celebrating her win, because she is struggling with something too - we all are. When we focus more on her celebration, we're able to bask in that and it washes over us as well. #shewinswewin
I'm in a course right now, and we're learning about invalidation and how it plays out in our lives. We all participate in this, and I'm no expert in how not to do this -- it's apart of our human nature to sometimes participate in invalidating others and we're also sometimes on the other end of being invalidated. Not dealing with shame can cause us to do and say a lot of things out of anger that we feel in ourselves due to not feeling validated in our own lives. But if we're able to be who we are, individually and as women as a whole, there's room for the things we love and there is also room for the things we don't. There isn't any perfection, we're just all here doing the best we can.
We have the glorious power of choice that allows each of us to decide for ourselves what works and what doesn't. With that in mind, we're all making decisions based on what we feel is best and we shouldn't pin each other against each other by doing anything other than supporting a woman's choice to decide what's right for her without judgment.
I don't believe you have to stand for everything, sometimes we will disagree. But I also think there is something amazing in being able to honor a woman who has made a positive choice for herself that allows her to feel amazing, supported, beautiful, and free. xx