I live in a house of men. Well, one man and two small boys to be precise.
It hasn't always been that way. In fact in my childhood it was the opposite, i was a girl surrounded by women. I grew up the eldest of 3 sisters, living with our mum, a female 3-legged cat, and several rabbits the pet shop assured us were all female (although one of them must have actually been male for them to reproduce in the numbers they did). Oh, and there was also my ever-patient Dad.
On top of that I spent my teenage years at an all-girls high school, and over time the women in our family outlived the men, as uncles, grandads, godfathers and my beloved Dad passed away, leaving behind a matriarchy. My sisters both had children before me, blessing our family with 4 more girls. To be honest when I gave birth to our first baby I was in shock, not only from the 36-hour labour, cocktail of drugs and caesarean section, but that we had produced a boy- such a rarity in our family.
During a workshop I was co-facilitating last week we ran an exercise that involved thinking about and listing the most significant people who had touched our lives, how they had shaped our experiences, and the emotions we felt when we thought about them. I joined the participants in making my own list, and a few things struck me as a reviewed it: 1) It was a fairly short list, 2) The most significant events seemed to take place during my 20’s and 3) It was almost completely made up of men. Reflecting further on that period of my life, I recalled a conversation with my sister around that time. I seemed to be eternally single, and was moaning about not being able get a date. She pointed out that perhaps I wasn't that approachable, that I appeared to be “one of the boys”. For a good number of years during my 20’s I loved the fun and easy going nature of socialising predominantly with male friends, despite working for L’Oréal in a heavily female dominated environment.
Fast forward to today, and I have spent the best part of a year with my immediate family of males. It has been my relationships with women though that have really strengthened during this period. Maybe during troubling times, solidarity with other women has felt most important, reassuring and uplifting. Perhaps as Caitlin Moran points out in her book “More Than A Woman” it is also the time of my life when, in my early 40’s, the support and understanding of other women has become paramount. The incredible women in my life are solidly there for me and for each other through parents becoming ill and passing away, raising children, through divorces, miscarriages, early menopause and all manner of traumatic and more trivial life events, including what to watch next on Netflix. Or could it be that I have become more comfortable with the fact that I am no longer a girl, or "one of the boys", I am indeed, a woman.
The pandemic brought on a mental breakdown for my Mum which meant she lived with us for several months, and whilst that tested our mother-daughter relationship almost to its limits, it also brought us closer together in some ways, and reinforced the irreplaceable bond I share with my 2 sisters as we rallied to hold things together.
The lockdown has also kindled or rekindled relationships with women from every part of my life, some living oceans away from me, others just across the street. The forced virtual world or necessity to stay local has provided us with the opportunity to connect more frequently and more deeply than we ever would have done usually. The anniversary of the first lockdown also marks one year of me joining a fledgling local women’s circle where our ambition is to create a safe space for young women where they can find allies and a place to truly belong. For now we are building the trust and depth amongst ourselves as women, and the space, comfort and refreshingly honest conversations they have provided in the last 12 months could not have come at a more needed time.
My career has taken some twists in the last few years, and I find myself today running my own business as well as being proud to be an Associate Coach with three different organisations all led by visionary, inspirational women.
So as international Women's Day draws to a close, I celebrate both my place in the world as a woman, and all the incredible women I am proud and honoured to call my friends, colleagues, sisters. You know who you are.
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