I’ve written about coincidence(Well, I believe there is no such thing as coincidence) few posts ago, but it happened again.
I came across something wonderful today. I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this, and unfortunately I am not crafty enough to combine both stories and make it into a neat blog post. I could have written two separate posts, but they both came out pretty much at the same time, like a spark of lightening. So I will write about both in this post, separately.
1) In my last post, I wrote about Breathe Now, and how “It’s Okay” for women to want to have a break, ask for help, etc… and that would be our theme for the conference. This morning, I happened to go read Catherine(@Herbadmother)’s latest blog post. And she happened to link to her older post, titled, “I Am Mother, Hear Me Roar.” – which is a brilliant post, you should go read it now.
There I got to see amazing Tony Porter’s TED Talk titled, “A call to men.”
I loved the talk, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it until today. In the talk, Tony talks about how men are often pressured to be tough, strong, dominating…and how important it is for us to teach boys “Its Okay to not be dominating, It’s Okay to have feelings and emotions, it’s Okay to promote equality…”… Get it? The key words. The mantra was there…It was an “AHA!” moment for me.
I know men suffer from the different kind of pressures from women. Women are often pressured to be feminine, skinny, beautiful, and domestic etc, men are pressured to be strong, powerful and to make more money than women, etc.
Our entire society is based on the expectation from stereotypes.
When we watched the documentary MISSRepresentation at Blissdom, some of the feedbacks from the women were, even though the film was focused on girls and women and their images through media, as mothers of boys (including myself), how important it is for the parents, and the community, to teach boys real values. We are responsible of teaching them that girls are not objects, and they don’t need to look beautiful and skinny. And, we also need to teach boys themselves, that they are OK not to be tough and dominating. It’s OK for boys to cry. It’s OK for boys to be sensitive.
And we at Breathe Now are trying to send the message, like Tony, “It’s Okay to not to meet the expectations!” – it was an pretty awesome realization.
2) Second AHA moment came from Alison(@Nummiesbras)’s post about Blissdom Canada (This is a wonderful post too.) She writes about this one mom at her panel who said “I just write about my kids.” – I was in the room when this happened, and saw Alison, who was on the panel, quickly grab a microphone and said “You do not JUST write about kids.” I wanted to get up and clap. So when I read Catherine’s post and saw her touching the same subject there,(“Just a mom”), I knew it was a sign that I had to write about it too.
Women tend to devalue themselves. I have no idea why. Even I do it. “Oh, I just have a small business” “I’m just a blogger” “I’m just a mom”…
We are not “just” anything. You are not “just” a Stay-At-Home Mom. (Man, that’s a hard job. I can’t do it.)
Then I almost laughed out loud when I remembered the song I sang at Karaoke/Costume wrap up party was No Doubt’s “Just a Girl”. That song is my life’s theme song. How funny.
Let’s stop saying “Just”, Okay? We(well, I) need to learn to be proud of what we do!
Hi, My name is Yukari, and I am a business owner, a writer, a mom, and many more other things.
And you?
