Real Role Models?

I am going to divert for just a moment to something which has recently surfaced and has plagued my mind for a number of days. I have been talking about finding empowerment within yourself and with the help of God and those who surround you. I missed an important piece of becoming empowered, and that is through role models. Not those we know, but those we see, the books we read and the people we listen to and I realized that although some may be good, give us insight we may not have had before, however there is another element. The women who are constantly in the spotlight, the celebrities we look up to almost as Gods and whose individual voices have the capability to touch millions.

I don't want these celebrities to represent the true women of this world, the housewife, the bookkeeper, the nurse, the teacher.... I don't want one voice sending a message to a million, I want a million voices sending a message. A million ordinary women, women like me. I want their stories to be heard because it is reality and not a scripted piece of writing by God knows who. That is true empowerment, the ordinary finally being heard and not the millionaire reading a cue card or posing for some organization to show their concern. The same women who then leave these organizations and go back to their caviar and Rodeo drive shopping.

Yes there are some women who are now famous and rich that started out with nothing and have worked for all they have, found their power and created their lives, but those are not the women I want to look up to. I want to see the women who, although not millionaires or celebrities, have found their power, created their lives and live with the rest of us, giving without thanks or applause, but simply because of their need to give.

That is what this blog is about, those who are begining their journey, learning and searching inside themselves, looking to God and listening to stories of women who are in the same place. Finding empowerment in every day life, finding strength in their obstacles, falling and learning to get up. Yes, maybe one day, one woman may become famous or rich and that is wonderful, but even better is that she will have reached this through the loss of victimization, the begining of creation and an empowerment only she can find. I want you to forget those you look up to and begin to look up to yourself, leave behind the magazines and the talk shows and read yourself, watch your life, give yourself the gift of introspection, not false influence.

Everything you read here is from a woman, myself and soon others who are just like you. Afraid, sometimes lost, not always falling, sometimes pushed down and then kicked until the pain takes over and darkness becomes our fate. The point is no matter how long it takes we all must get up, find our power and move on. Start over, create again, and stop being a victim. No it is not easy, it never will be, but it is all we have to live. It is easy to survive, but don't fall into easy, fight as hard as you can, it is your life and it is worth everything in you to get it back. Reach out for a hand that loves and turn from one that hates, even if it is your own.

We are so often our own enemies, taught as women to be weak and passive. No more. We are the strongest creatures on this earth, we have overcome so much in history and without a great strength, how could we? We have initiated laws that gave us rights, we have changed this world, we fight for cancer and domestic violence and we take power from those who still push us backwards. If we can do this for other women, how can we not do it for ourselves?

The answer is, we can, we just must be as important to ourselves as we are to our causes.