10/01/2020
Social media is resounding with presidential candidate Joe Biden’s statement to President Trump: “Will you shut up man?”
“Said every woman in America, ever” is what many of the feminist social media replies echo.
Can I get an amen?!
How many times have you wanted to say the same to someone who was encroaching on your time and space, interrupting, mansplaining, speaking violently to you, making fun of you, or being relentless in some unwelcome way? How many times have you smiled and politely turned away, or maybe laughed it off instead?
We see jokes about how women were to behave in the olden days (finishing schools in movies comes to mind) but the reality that *many* of us live is that there are certain roles and ways of being that we have been socialised to understand as the *right* way to be and behave as women... and that the world expects us to comport accordingly. If we don’t, we are doing it wrong. And there’s a whole lot of judgment there!
When we step outside of that, and it can create a lot of tension. Internal tension as we step outside the comfort zone of what we know to be “right”, and external tension as we interact with others in our “new” (or, perhaps more accurately, “true) way.
But, living within that comfort zone keeps us small.
In some ways it creates harm, since we learn that strongly standing up for ourselves and our needs may be wrong. Instead, we should do it with a smile and charm, or laugh it off. (Better than starting a conflict or hurting someone else’s feelings, my comfort zone says!)
And, in some ways our comfort zone keeps us safe, since we live without the tension of the dissonance.
But at what cost?
It keeps our voice silent.
It keeps us complicit in possible harm done to ourselves and others.
It keeps us colouring inside the lines that other people have drawn for us instead of creating our own bold, beautiful masterpieces.
Life is too short and you are too precious.
If you’re ready to start living outside the box of how you are “supposed” to be, DM me!