You Are Not The Woman That I Am - Inspiration Thursday

OUR LIFE JOURNEYS ARE DIFFERENT, WE WILL NOT ALL WALK THE SAME PATH

For the most part of my teenage and early twenties, I was a very conservative Christian, who was made to believe in the ideal life a woman must live, and if a woman’s life does not follow that pattern it means ‘her own has finished!’

Women who didn’t get married ‘on time’, women who got pregnant before marriage,  women who left their husbands, women who are outspoken and dared to challenge the norms,  women who married but have no children  etc – were looked at like they have defects.

By the time I reached my late twenties, life had happened to me – I watched the ‘ideal’ life I had planned, prayed for and worked hard to achieve since I was a teenager pass me by.

Here  I am on another path that I never even knew existed!

I experienced it firsthand that, life will not always follow the same path for every woman, and I learned to appreciate my life’s journey and to respect other women for theirs’.

Life happens for us in different ways and at different times, and sometimes, it has absolutely nothing to do with how smart or good we are.

Also, because someone’s life has not followed a particular course or your own course does not mean the person is a failure, what if that is actually their own right path to success?

My truth is, there is no ideal woman, and no, I don’t believe the Proverbs 31 woman is the standard of success every woman must attain to, but that is an article for another day.

ALL WOMEN DON’T WANT THE SAME THINGS AND THAT IS PERFECTLY OKAY

All women don’t want the same things, shouldn’t want the same things and won’t have the same things.

That is why I don’t like the question “What do women want?”  – We don’t all want the same things!

I have five sisters, and as similar as our childhood experiences were, we all wanted different things in life, because we are six different individuals with different personalities and dreams.

I can tell you what Shola wants, but what I want is not and does not have to be the same as what the woman sitting next to me wants.

Some women want to get married; some women want to be single. Some women want children, some women don’t want children. Some women want to marry men that will be their boss; some women want to marry men that will be an equal. Some women want 50 friends, some women want 5 friends.

Some women want to build empires; some women just want to support someone who wants to build an empire. Some women want to cook every single meal; some women want to hire someone to do them. Some women want sex once a month, some women want sex every day. You get it? You really should!

Our lives  as women can never be a one size fits all.

Someone once tried to make me feel inadequate because I said I don’t like cooking. I know how to cook, but I cook as a matter of survival not because I enjoy it.

Apparently this means I am not a complete woman, because she believes a complete woman must enjoy and love cooking! But because one woman enjoys it doesn’t mean every other woman must – we are different.

By whose standard do we measure if a woman is complete or not? What on earth does that even mean?

I am daily learning to respect other women’s choices and not use my own choices and preferences to judge them. I don’t expect others to do things because it is the ‘womanly‘ thing to do. I respect them for doing what they believe is right for them as an individual.

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My name is Shola Okubote, I am the Publisher/Editor of Woman.ng.