How I Embrace Womanhood/What it means to be a woman.
Today Woman are expected to have everything and be everything to everyone all of the time.
I know that as a woman we can multitask, but these expectations that society places on us are huge.
How we identify ourselves changes with time, with knowledge, it changes with our emotions.
Be it partners, friends, mothers, lovers, workers, home maker's, chefs, adviser’s, traveller the list goes on.
I can be all of the above in one day, in other days only one.
The fact is I am a woman and I live my life how I chose, not how society chooses.
How I embrace My Womanhood
Being A Mother
I am the mother of 3 beautiful girls and I want them to grow into confident and independent women. I want them to honour and respect their bodies and minds. I want them to realize that they have an inner power within them that is natural and magical at the same time. The only way that will happen is if they see me doing the same thing. If I live by example, then they will see this as the only way to live. They will grow and embrace their womanhood.
Becoming a Doula
Besides being passion about being a mother, I am very passionate about Birth. About woman having the freedom to choose where they wish to birth and how they wish to birth. I am very passion about helping woman rediscover that their bodies hold an ancient wisdom and instinctively know how to birth. This is something that is being taken from women as more and more accept, that they need to go into hospital to birth their babies. Pregnancy and birth are not a sickness, an illness. It is one of the most natural things in the world, that for millennia was done without any interventions. Because of this I followed my calling to become a Doula.
Reclaiming My Body
In order for women to feel empowered in birth they really need to get to know their bodies, to explore and honour their bodies. This ideally would start at an early age. Young girls need to be educated about their bodies about their menstrual/ moon cycle. So many woman hold a lot of shame around their cycle, shame that has been put on them by society, seeing it as something inconvenient and to be kept secret.This negative attitude towards menstruation and birth are part of the chains that the patriarchal hold on women. To me being a woman is finding ways to break those chains. I feel very strongly that my girls and myself will not be held by those chains and I am hopeful that many more women will not be too.
Creating Woman Circles
To me being a woman is about bringing other women together. So that women see each other not as competition, not a body or a mind to compare ourselves with, but as sisters. We are meant to be lifting one another up, no matter where we come from or what we look like. I create women circles, to provide a safe space where women can come together and talk and be creative. , helping me and them embrace our womanhood.
Cunt Craft
Two years ago I got involved in an amazing healing and creative project called Cunt Craft that was the idea of my very dear Friend Colette, this is something that has brought many women together in Ireland and England and then here in Spain. It really works at bringing down the negative connotations attached to that female body part, to really focus on the beauty of it. I have held two of these gatherings and I plan to hold more. They really helped me and others to embrace our bodies and the power we hold within them, whilst at the same time bringing forth much needed healing.
Celebrating the Men in my life
To me, being a woman also means celebrating and acknowledging the men that are in my life. To my male friends who have encouraged me and supported me at times in my life when I have hit rock bottom. It is something I would never have expected growing up, as I never had a positive male role model back then. If not for those friends, I would have assumed that all men were aggressive, but instead I have been inspired and moved by many of them and they have made me a better person for it.
Thank you @beanz for creating this great contest.
Please check it out here https://steemit.com/feminism/@beanz/celebrate-international-womens-day-with-a-40-steem-giveaway
http://happylovinglife.com/power-of-women/
https://shop.kmberggren.com
http://birthingwithem.com/
http://www.findawomenscircle.com/
http://jam1son.blogspot.com.es
I am part of the ecotrain, if you wish to read great content and be inspired please check it out. It is one train that is full of very diverse and creative passengers.
Love your illustrations. Glad to see you use the O.E. word cunt normally. I embrace your definition of womanhood, which, alas, is not often enough appreciated in our bitchy rat-race world. Also delighted to see you include men. I still have no positive role models in my life (at 49) but I remain optimistic and know there are genuinely human men out there (not cave dwellers).
thank you @sukhasanasister, women should be able to call their yoni's, cunt's, whatever they want. yes there are some awesome men out there are.
your 3 girls are so lucky to have such an amazing mum! its crazy how much brainwashing goes on from an early age. I remember that i loved to play with trains, i had to wear boys underpants because i found girls ones very uncomfortable, i preferred tracksuits to dresses but somewhere down the line i felt the pressure to be a so called 'normal girl!' i also despised periods because they were so painful and no one told me what to do about them, my mum was useless with that, i think she was actually angry an me for starting it! im lucky to have met some amazing women and men in my life that have helped me along my path to self empowerment.
thanks @celestialcow, yeah that all sounds quiet familiar to me, it's amazing how much we were being turned against ourselves at such an early age, having to fit in and conform. Yes to strong women and men in our lives.
Truly lovely post <3 It's amazing to be able to see your daughters grow into strong women, but society puts a lot on us so it's not the easiest trajectory. Glad to read you have amazing men in your life too!
thank you @soyrosa, society has never been in our favour, but times are changing and we are becoming more empowered, seeing that so much on steemit too, it's great.
It truly is great. As long as we keep supporting one another... <3