I’ll never forget the first time I understood the contradiction. I stood still for a full minute. “You can do anything if you put your mind to it. But you can’t do that because you’re a girl.”
I burned with a cocktail of feelings that I have swallowed a million times since. Indignation, frustration, determination. My silence channelled untapped energy into my eyes. And my smile grew with the heat in my heart.
“I believe.”
A million and one times I have heard that phrase in my head.
But the direction has changed over time. As a young girl, I studied great women, revelling in their accomplishments. One day I would be like them. Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Jackie Cochran, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan, Ann Bancroft, Letitia Baldridge, Margaret Thatcher.
However, I was itching to stretch, to challenge–I challenged the “because you’re a girl” statements and accepted a military ROTC scholarship. It was the start of my age of growth and learning.
Nothing dramatic ever happened to me. In fact, the boys of the platoon loved me. I was their honorary “little sister.” I started to see that my power, my strength, my greatness emanated from poise, charm and femininity. When I tried to be a “boy,” I became easily frustrated, irritated and didn’t achieve. When I played on my terms as a woman, calm confidence, supportive, charming – I won every challenge, every time.
There are days I still struggle, but I enjoy the art of femininity. And I still believe. In the power of femininity. And me.
This blog chronicles the power of poise, elegance and charm and the truth about being great. The truth about being feminine. This blog chronicles the truth about being me.
