To The Goddess Unchained.
[bctt tweet="'When you're a powerful woman, you are a goddess unchained. And everyone will have something to say.' @katiehorwitch" via="no"]Dear beautiful woman,Hi. It's me. We haven't met, but I feel like I know you. Scratch that - I know that I know you. And I don't mean that in a pushy, I've-been-there-before-so-now-I-know-you-and-also-everything way. I mean that in the way that we all come from the same source, the same sisterhood, the same #rigged system that's made us believe false truths throughout the ages that nothing we do will ever be enough.I know you are struggling right now. With what, I'm not sure. Maybe it's the job? The relationship status? The family or kids or lack thereof of both? As someone once said, "Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about."But what I do know is this: your struggle is inflammed by the perceived expectations of the world around you.~To be kind, to be humble, to be gracious - to be boistrous, but not too much. To be soft, to be resilient, to be a leader, but not too much. To be heard, but not absorbed; to be wild, but at the same time tamed. This is the dichotomy of being a woman. Just a woman.And to be a powerful woman - oh jeez! That is a task of itself, a dance more precise and more stress-sweat inducing than walking through eggshells. One misstep and the craaaaaaaaack of everything delicate below you rings loud in your ear. You must be bold. You must be brave. You must be a mind-reader and truth-teller but always know when and where your place is to say such things.Success, you must learn, is relative. And success, you must say, is nothing but smoke and mirrors. But success, you must learn, is both the pinnacle of acceptance and the beginnings of lifelong critique. You are not kind enough, or humble enough, or gracious enough - or you're boistrous, but way too much. No softness, too much resilience, too wild, too heard.
Because when you're a powerful woman, you are a goddess unchained.And everyone will have something to say.
I believe in you, lady. I believe in your grandness and your solitude, your quietness and your noise. I believe in the way you walk through the world, step by forceful step; the way you trip sometimes but always keep going. There are pebbles lodged in the soles of your shoes and dirt encrusted on the laces, relics from the places you've been and the things you have seen. Resist the urge to scrape them off. They belong there, they complete you - shoes were not meant to stay crisp and clean, in my opinion.You have the answers you're looking for, deep down. Whether they've made their way to the surface yet, TBD. You're not supposed to wake up one day and know. But anyone who says they do or assumes the opposite is a liar.Surprise, surprise: the hallmark of being a true adult is knowing that you will never know.~And so you, goddess unchained, you are grappling with the knowing and the not knowing and to that I say you're doing it right. The world wants you to believe it expects you to know but all that is is a desperate plea to fill in the blanks. Blanks that are not yours to fill, blank spaces that aren't meant to be filled in the first place.But the last thing I want you to do, sweet friend, is get defensive and stew. How Dare They! How Dare This! The world is not conniving against you, the world just does not know. The world is a child, curious and stubborn. It's wary of change. It wants to see what sticks. It wants to know what can be cuddled, and how hard, without being smothered. It wants to know what can be crushed, and how hard, without being broken. You don't have to be the parent or sitter - but rather, the other curious child on the playground who is building sandcastles in the sand instead of eating it.
Nothing you do will ever be enough?Everything you do is already enough, by the very nature that you're doing it.
The world is reactive, so you must be proactive.The world takes cues, so you must make your own. I don't want you to look down at the quicksand and say, How Dare They!What I do want you to do is stand in the middle of the storm and exclaim with pride, How Dare I!
Never miss a post. Ever. Sign up + join the WANT movement: