As International Women’s Day approaches I’m preparing for the mix of emotions that arises for me every year at this time. I oscillate between pride and fury, and all the feels in between. I sit in a place of deep gratitude for my femininity. I love and am proud of being a woman and feel the deepest sense of value in being connected to the uniqueness of that. I am inspired and indebted to the women that have gone before and excited and accountable to those that will stand on our shoulders in the future, my own daughter included.
So why does International Women’s Day irk me so much?
In general, I’m a person that doesn’t really get impacted by the bigger picture stuff, I am embarrassed in some ways to say that’s how I operate. It’s been a survival technique I’ve used since I was young – keep my head down, focus on what I can solve and do that well. Be kind, stay soft and say sorry often. I get too overwhelmed by the scale of the challenges in the world, so I focus on what I can manage, try to do that well and be honest when I can’t. This translates in everyday tactics like actively not watching the news, reading the paper, or getting involved heavily in politics.
I often opt out of events that ask me for my voice on bigger issues. I’m aware this might be a bit confusing considering my career and the business I lead. Ultimately I care about people, I value feelings and I want to give others the space, care and the chance of being the best version of themselves. I am fully engaged in intimate stories, but anything outside of that does not hugely activate me – or I choose not to let it. So, it feels a little out of alignment for me to be so evoked by International Women’s Day of all things. Something that on the surface, and in the vast opinion, is a GOOD thing.
I remember shortly after we launched Self Space being approached about attending a ‘Women In Business’ event to collect an award I’d won, and chucking the invite in the bin. I felt annoyed that I’d even been nominated. I initially brushed this off as a self effacing defense mechanism. I often protect myself against sitting in my own ‘success’ (whatever success actually means!). But later I felt annoyed that someone other than myself wanted to judge me or my work, and then award me something based on the fact that I was a ‘woman’ performing in business. To me, acknowledging the award carried the suggestion that it would somehow validate my success as a woman in business. What felt uncomfortable for me was that I hadn’t been asked what success felt like to me. Would I have won the award if it had been open to all and if I didn’t, would that make my success any less valid?
How do we even gauge success anyway?
There are so many commercial milestones and external bench marks which supposedly validate success, but to me that means little or nothing. I notice the same with many of my clients. What seems successful from the outside might feel nothing of the sort internally. We might be seeking validation from peers, parents, our bank balance or car and feel deeply misaligned with what success looks like compared to how it feels.
When I was a TV presenter, I worked in wildlife. People often told me how incredible my job was and congratulated me on my success, but I remember sitting on the beach in the Bahamas, while we were covering a dolphin rescue story (the stuff of dreams right?) and feeling both miserable and unsuccessful. I was unsuccessful in terms of my inner world, what had value to me. My purpose felt very far away. Today, success for me is a feeling, it’s the moments when my life feels aligned, where I live peacefully and congruently and feel authentic in what I do and say. It’s in the moments when my clients have small and big wins, the hand on mine on the bus when someone says thanks for listening, or being able to face difficult conversations with the people I love, and come out of them more grown.
For me, success is in the feeling of the people that walk away from Self Space, a bit lighter, a bit more seen and that’s a shared success and not just mine.
My International Women’s Day avoidance has grown over the years, and it seeps in in small ways. It’s not that I’m unmoved by all the incredible stories, or that my hands aren’t fully raised in triumph within the sisterhood. I believe that the sisterhood is beautiful and needed, and I’m normally a massive celebrant of the incredible people in my life. The thing is, I don’t have any desire to post online about the amazing women I’m surrounded by just because it’s ‘International Women’s Day’. I’d rather do it just because I feel it. Over the years I’ve refused International Women’s Day dinner invites titled ‘all the girls’ and shied away from commentary on the subject. I don’t fully trust myself to have a warm and expansive view on it and I don’t believe in the sentiment enough to celebrate it.
I feel quite weirdly ashamed as I share this conclusion. I am someone who does hold a feminist voice on so many things, but I find I have an aversion to it. Whilst also I guess, having some concern around what I’m missing here, and what within myself isn’t allowing me to be present and engaged for this significantly celebrated moment in the calendar.
I come back to the same place over and over again. It’s that I feel International Women’s Days are reductive, not expansive. It gives us one day to fully recognize 365 days a year of the grind, complexities and deep lack of equality that still exists that we are having to navigate. I’m not sure I’m prepared to shrink fit us women into a single day and be happy about that. I don’t want my daughter or nieces growing up thinking their worth is only significantly recognised on one day, or that it’s because they are women that we need to have this day.
I think if we had enough cultural oomph to understand, educate and champion our worth and value as HUMANS, EVERYDAY, in all our messy glory, I might prescribe a bit more to having a special day just for us women. Is there an International Men’s Day? I looked it up and the outcome was fussy, which suggests not, well not in the same way. Why is that then? Is International Women’s Day just another opportunity for us to be grateful for what we still have to fight for, or is it a recognition of that fight — and if so, why are we celebrating it? I can’t help but feel that markers like this keep us stuck and small, rather than contributing to our growth.
So instead of celebrating International Women’s Day, I made a list of things I do to celebrate being a woman more than once a year. And I encourage others to do the same
- Celebrating myself often and in small tangible ways – honoring where I’m at and my potential (e.g. going to yoga, doing some mediation, spending time with friends, taking myself on a solo coffee date)
- Support, champion and hold women in my life accountable and expect them to do the same
- Love more freely but not without cause
- Stay soft in the face of hardness
- Say sorry often
- Meet myself with compassion
- Meet my daughter and the girls in my life with truth, honesty and the shame shifting realities so they don’t feel alone in the wilderness
- Work hard on being the best I can, but not at the cost of proving myself, but because it feels good
- Working on myself
- Acknowledging outdated systemic norms and doing my best to change them
- Championing systemic norms that are supportive
- Never reducing myself to a statement which indicates ‘It’s because I am a women’ but lean in to the assimilation that it’s because ‘I am’
So please don’t invite me to accept an award as a Woman In Business, but if you want to recognise the incredible triumph of all the clients that cross our threshold, who will be the change we wish to see in the world, regardless of their sex, then I’d love that!