Women: Separate But Together

Let me start today's blog out with some background that might illustrate my message for you in a simple way.
When I was 14 and oozing wisdom, I had many female friendships.
We would talk about boys and hate other girls together.

They would tell me my hair was prettier straight and let me know who I should and shouldn't talk to in the cafeteria.
We all had that era in life of trying to be totally cool but in reality we were really monsters.
We got our heart broken by true love and lost best friends to 8th grade scandals.

Life hasn't changed much in the cafeteria of women.
We still hate certain women and have teams not every woman is welcome to join.

Instead of telling a girl how she should wear her hair (well, this probably still happens), we tell her how to raise her children or how to play her role as a wife.

We judge her if she puts her kids in daycare and works all day and we judge her if she stays at home until her children are of age.

We live in a Pinterest world where you should be always dressed your best, attending every kids sport game with "Billy's Mom" plastered on our shirts, baking desserts in our crafty houses that nobody should have time to bake, all the while aiming for those 6-pack abs jenny pinned last week.

Our social media feeds are filled with women who can pull a three course meal out of their perky, toned butts and still have time to be the number one mom.

Can I be real here?

Last week I barely had time to wash my hair one time, only read with my six year old once after night classes and the thought of making some crafty decorative wreath to hang on my door is nice...but who the hell has time to do all of that?

I do in fact throw chicken nuggets and fries in the oven at least once a week and sometimes I burn tomato soup while trying to watch something my boys want to show me or while typing up a paper.

I am all woman and all truth.

I can't even pretend to not be a mess because I don't even have time or energy to do that successfully.

The point here is that we are all women, doing life separately but together.

The homeschooling mother is just as real as the career woman working and attending her evening classes.

Each woman is trying to find her way in life and motherhood just as much as the next.

You might think your friend should be feeding her children more organic food and doing more yoga.
Well honey, she might think you should go out and "work" more.

The truth? You both need to embrace one another as individual women by empowering each other not degrading and dismantling.

Surround yourself with women who don't expect you to be a walking Pinterest board or those that disregard other women for their own pursuits.

How boring would life be if women all pursued the same dreams?

We are beautiful as a whole because we are beautiful on our own.

I don't know what you desire, but I want to surround myself with women who see me in my sweats and curly mess, my busyness, my crazy dreams and say "Go for it!"

I want to be engulfed in the encouragement of strong women and to be that strong woman myself.

I want to cheer on my friends who are raising babies at home and my friends who are traveling the world.

Neither is lesser in significance than the other.

We are all changing the world in our own wonderful way.

We can all be on the same team.

We can all sit at the same lunch table in this cafeteria.

Let us embrace our differences and celebrate them.

For you moms who can walk in heels and make crafts (make crafts? Do crafts? I don't know y'all) out of wood chips, I salute you.
You freaking go.

I'll balance the world out by living in converses and burning my soup and writing your stories.