Many times in the past when my friends and other people that I’m closely affiliated with come to me for advice and I give it to them, I was left feeling hollow. True, there's a sense of satisfaction but then I’d ask myself how worthy I was, and what exactly I’d experienced in life that made me any good to advise anyone.
Thoughts like that haunted me for a while but eventually, I schooled myself from that thought process after realizing that as long as I’m a living, breathing and loving being, as far as each day passes with all the experiences they bring, whether from me or others, it’s a time to learn, unlearn and relearn. And if I’m able to do that, why not share it with people I care about? It was a refreshing experience coming to that realization and I stopped feeling that sense of imposter syndrome.
I was pleased when I came across this particular theme and I knew I just had to share what I know. While it’s not a wealth of experience, it’s a brief pointer to all the lessons I’ve learnt from when I was a little girl to when I was a teenager and now.
The first thing I would say to young women today is to Assert themselves without bowing to undue pressure. This cuts across so many borders but I’ll say this. I don’t know where it went wrong in the world today. Or maybe it had always been wrong and I’m only realizing. But all over the world today, women are made to believe that they have to be a certain way to be qualified as women. A lot of women try to rise above that stereotype placed on them by the society, but the truth is, a lot of times in our attempt to avoid it, we end up falling deeper.
All over social media today and even in this part of the world, you’d hear things like “Why would you, as a woman, do this?” “Why would you laugh this way as a lady?” “why would you look like this and not like that?” It’s a long list of "necessary" dos and don’ts. While I laugh most of them off as I don’t see why I would tailor my whole life to fit one person’s myopic perspective, I've come to realize that not many women feel the same. And out of the feeling that they’re abnormal or lacking in some sense, they do things that they end up regretting or worse.
A few months back, a friend of a friend kicked the bucket after an unsuccessful surgery trying to increase her backside. According to the story, she’d been pressured constantly by her partner who expressed his dissatisfaction with her body. She’d refused to do it out of fear but when he finally threatened to leave her if she didn’t do something about it, she had to secretly have the surgery done in a shady facility and that’s how she lost her life.
I felt pained listening to the story and since I don’t want to say just how I feel about the guy that made her do that, I’ll say that I know that this is something a lot of women go through. Feeling like they’re not enough. And sadly, you don’t even need a particular person to mount that pressure on you. The society, social media, movies and the likes have created this perspective of how women should be and when you look at yourself and seem to falling short of that narrative, you impulsively decide on an unfavorable way to go.
Mind you, I have nothing against people who do any type of bodily surgery. I believe that whatever would make you feel more comfortable in your skin as a person is welcome. Many of us have something we have physically that we wish we didn’t or vice versa but I only hope that if we were to do it, we'd do it because it would make us feel happier as a person, more confident and comfortable. And not because individual or societal pressure had a part to play. I’d tell young ladies to learn to be assertive. Learn how to say no to whatever you’re not comfortable with. Learn not to lose sight of your worth or who you are because you want someone to feel better.
I could go on and on about what advice I’d give to young women but I’ll say one last one which, when I think of it, is more or less the principal thing. Love yourself. I can’t emphasize this enough because I feel that the root cause of many of the things we as women come to regret later, the mistakes we made previously, is because we didn’t love ourselves enough to see ourselves as enough. It’s because in a way, and at that moment, we didn’t view ourselves as worthy enough to take a stand against unfavourable things within and around us.
I’d say to value your judgements and see what you say about yourself as the only say that matters. Whatever names you’re called by people and whatever judgements are passed on you by others would only be you when you consciously or unconsciously accept them. As the Bible says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,” we, as women should have it in our consciousness that we are and could be everything we want and more only when we believe and accept it to be who we are.
That's it, my two cents. And I don't feel hollow about it either.
Jhymi🖤
Thumbnail image is mine.
