10 Lessons for Women by Women: The meaning of hope

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”
  ~ Anne Lamott

Hope is something that I think women know a lot about.  I know of women who have held on by a thread of pure hope when they were in an abusive relationship and were brave enough to make a change; women who are single moms and give their children hope every day in spite of the fact that they don’t know where the next meal may be coming from; women who continue to hold on to their dreams when the people around them do everything possible to convince them that they are unworthy and will never succeed.  And it is these women who prove that it is worth having hope in the most difficult circumstances – that the courage to hope and take action based on possibility is something real and can be life-changing.

Hope isn’t the silver lining of a cloud.  It is something you dare to do in spite of adversity and obstacles.  It doesn’t mean success; it means possibility or chance.  But it opens the door to something more and gives you a reason to keep on keeping on. 

10 Lessons for Women by Women: How to sail your ship

“I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.”  ~ Louisa May Alcott

Always know there is value in the storms that occur in your life.  Once you recognize this, you can truly make the most of every opportunity – opportunities often come disguised as extreme adversity.  And the way you allow the adversity to shape you determines whether you have gained something from it.  Often heartaches are our greatest teachers if we allow them this place in our lives. 

As a girl or woman, you may have experienced injustice because of your gender; you may have had opportunities taken away from you and perhaps you have had people around you who tried to destroy your self-esteem.  The real question is:  what has this taught you?  Has it taught you to work even harder for what you want or to hold onto your dreams no matter what?  Or do you just feel oppressed by what happened to you?  The events that you’ve experienced cannot change, but you can re-examine them and choose to learn something empowering from these events.  You can choose to become a stronger and more capable person because of these lessons.  It’s not about the storms – eventually it’s all about how you choose to sail your ship!     

10 Lessons for Women by Women: The longings of your heart

“Our deepest wishes are whispers of our authentic selves. We must learn to respect them. We must learn to listen.”  ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach.

What are the “deepest wishes” of your heart?  Have you forgotten these?  Think back to when you were a twelve year old girl and the world was filled with possibility and you were filled with the energy of your own potential.  Think about the girl you were and the hope that filled you no matter what life threw at you.  There is only one difference now:  you are a woman and you are even more powerful than you were as a young girl.  Recognize that power within you and every once in a while, stop your busy routine and cut through the white noise.  Then breathe and listen.  You will be brought back to the person you really are.  Connect with her again and feel her pulsing energy.  She deserves your respect and she deserves your attention.



10 Lessons for Women by Women: The risk of safety

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  ~ Anais Nin

As girls and women, many of us have chosen to remain in our comfort zones.  Through the ages, the words “safety” and “security” have always been used by the majority of people to describe what they thought we needed (and when I say people, I’m not talking exclusively about men – even our mothers have used these words!).  It’s often not that we have been deprived of opportunities, but that we weren’t encouraged to step out of our comfort zones and do something.  The risk of stepping out conflicted sharply with the images of safety and security.  Even today, there are girls on the brink of adulthood deciding what career to enter into, and as I listen to them describing what they want to study and what work they want to do, I hear them say:  “It’s a good profession for a woman.”  Truthfully, that statement makes my skin crawl.  I want to shake them and say:  “What about your dream?  What is your passion?  Pursue that!!”  The definition of woman should not be “one who is limited by her anatomy”!

But my purpose here is not to berate society for their treatment of girls and women.  I said that many of us have chosen to remain in our comfort zones.  We are not victims – we are responsible for our lives and the choice is ours.  From a woman who believes in the power of being a woman, I hope that it does indeed become more painful for you to risk remaining “tight in the bud”.  Then you will choose to risk stepping out.  And because of this choice, you will blossom.  This is my prayer for every girl and woman worldwide.     

10 Lessons for Women by Women: A Woman's Choice

Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.  ~Andrea Dworkin

The first thing I thought of when I read this quote is a story I remember hearing some years ago.  I don’t know how true it is, but apparently if you put a bunch of crickets in a jar and put the lid on, at first they keep jumping as high as they can in an attempt to escape.  After a while, they find that escape isn’t possible and there is pain involved in hitting their heads on the lid each time they jump.  So they learn to jump a little lower in order to avoid this pain.  Soon, they are so well trained regarding what is possible and what isn’t, that you can take the lid off the jar and it makes no difference.  They won’t jump out because they don’t believe it’s possible.

It is true that women have been put down and taught that being a woman means that there are few possibilities.  But it isn’t what society teaches you that matters – it is what you give society permission to teach you; whether you accept the teachings as true.  You can, like the crickets, accept the fact that possibility is limited – you can use history and the experience of many others to justify the fact that your opportunities are limited.  Or you can use history to teach you what to do differently.  You can prove society wrong.  It’s all about what YOU believe to be true and what you’re willing to do about the status quo.  You can blaze a trail for all women – whether they decide to walk that path is their decision, but the trail will be there.