It’s International Women’s Day and I’m a woman so I guess it’s a day for me. But to be honest I don’t even know what’s being celebrated or how or what it #EachForEqual even means!
I am surrounded by amazing examples of the strongest women on Earth. Cancer survivors, super moms, entrepreneurs achieving great success and athletes pushing limits. I know women who have served in the military and others who fought battles within their own homes. Mothers and daughters, sisters and aunts, friends and colleagues who demonstrate resilience on a daily basis. So, why do we need one day to remind the world we’re here?
Apparently we need a day, complete with hashtags and Google banners, because the world forgets who we are. The world forgets that women have given birth to generations of politicians and authors and scientists and entertainers. The world forgets that women are at the very core of families and homes and communities. Women are what keep this world from imploding.
I’m not a man-hater: I have several wonderful males in my life and I’m grateful for every one of them. The fact I even had to add that statement is the problem: we can support women without hating men. It’s not either or, all or nothing. Women are necessary to the continued existence of the human race: why is this so difficult to understand?
I noticed on Spotify today that there’s a Women’s History Month category when you search genres. (Don’t even get me started on the “survivors of rape and domestic abuse” playlist I found.) I noticed the posts flying around Instagram and was tagged in a few Tweets, but it all screams to me that we still have such a long way to go. We can vote and drive, but not everywhere on Earth. I can wear whatever I want when I go for a run yet some girls aren’t allowed to run, let alone in shorts and a tank top. We can choose to go to work or stay home, but not in every country. I can choose to have children or not have children, yet many are denied the freedom to choose for themselves right here at home.
I feel the weight of womanhood everyday because it’s everywhere I look. It’s on every magazine cover at the checkout. It’s in every commercial on tv. It’s in every history book and song on the radio. I’m 41 years old and I’m still learning how to navigate the white waters ahead of me.
I’m not hopeless or bitter, (yet), but how the hell are we going to make progress when “the greatest nation on Earth” is so blatant in its fear of females it can’t even bring itself to nominate a women for president? “The future is female” they say, and that’s why we get one day a year: oh, and this year it’s only 23 hours long.
Mindset Events 