How can you go from surviving to thriving?
Hint-You already deserve it and have the power to do it!
Welcome to the It Takes a Woman Empowerment Blog. My mission is to continue the interactive conversation that I began in my book, It Takes a Woman to Empower Women. You will discover how to begin your journey from surviving to thriving. We will explore specific ideas about empowerment including:
Your core beliefs.
What truly matters to you.
Your negative patterns of behavior and how to change them.
How to change negative self-talk.
How to set healthy boundaries
How to add meaningful, beneficial self-care to your daily life.
How to create scripts, easy ways to respond to every situation.
How to define your dreams to create a roadmap for success.
How to create long term goals.
How to define simple, easy, short term, actionable steps.
How to celebrate milestones and accomplishments.
How to use journaling to enhance insight, resilience, and intuition.
We as women live in a subtle but overwhelmingly systemic patriarchy. Like systemic racism, we don't even recognize it. We have been told that ‘boys will be boys ‘, but where is the “girls will be girls” attitude? If we “misbehave” we're called emotional or “bitch”. Glennon Doyle, in her wonderful book Untamed says that we are all “tamed” very early to be who society tells us to be.
Who among us has not suffered some form of abuse: verbal abuse, psychological abuse (affecting our minds), emotional abuse (affecting our hearts and souls), legal abuse (affecting our choices over our own bodies), financial abuse including lower wages and even being forced to give money to others, and physical abuse, even murder?
Most abuse starts in small ways that we hardly notice. In the beginning our first reaction is that we must be doing something wrong, so we try harder. We give up who we are, so we don’t ruin a relationship. We fall in love with partners we think are wonderful, and they are wonderful to start. Gaslighting reinforces our belief that it's our fault. Abusers are experts at lying and causing chaos. The abuse increases in insidious ways until we get to the point where we are shocked to find ourselves in such an awful situation. And, of course, we blame ourselves.
My book defines different types of systemic abuse: patriarchy, racism, sexism, agism, LGBTQ abuse, and religious bigotry among others. Systemic, societal abuse as well as intimate terrorism, the constant threat of abuse by those closest to us, can come from anyone's partner, parents, bosses, friends, siblings, and religious leaders. Abuse can be against women or men, perpetrated by women or men, across all socioeconomic levels.
My mother was abused by her mother, and my father was abused by his father. Therein lies that intergenerational horror of abuse. One reviewer called my book feminist, and I have to say “thank you”. She downgraded her review because I did not speak more about men being abused. That is not my expertise or my mission. I know that men are abused, and those are also horrible situations. Other experts need to speak about that.
Abuse does not care about your sexual orientation or socioeconomic situation. It is everywhere, in small micro-aggressions or in physical, emotional, and psychological abuse.
We've come a long way since I was growing up in the 1950’s but, progress has been way too slow, and now we seem to be going backwards with our rights over our bodies being taken away. As of 2020, according to www.statista.com, we were 50.4% of the population. So why do we act like a minority? I believe it's because we don't believe we deserve any better. We have been trained to do more for others and to be less of who we really are to fit in.
My wish is that this blog might help make empowerment contagious. Let's become the women that we deserve to be!
Call to Action
Practice being who you really are. The world will not end.
Hint- Expect pushback. People expect you to behave!
Thank you for modeling what is possible. Thank you for this empowering blog, book and site. Thank you for being who you are in the world and your willingness to shine your light!