Tash Reddy Tash Reddy
Opinion - Tell me something about yourself! That must be the hardest question for any woman to answer.
Often, the promptest response is: I am a mother, a wife or is that politically and socially correct?
Maybe it’s wife first and then mother followed by daughter, sister, aunt, friend, daughter-in-law (usually the hardest to be) and then a host of other titles, while trying to figure out what other role we could have possibly left out because as women we are conditioned to believe that is all that matters.
Then the obvious next question follows: “Tell us about you. Who are you outside of all that?”
Our response is, at first, confused: “But I just told you,” followed by a mind wandering silence.
Who am I? As women we seem to have forgotten as we lose ourselves in the various roles we play and the social expectations which come with it, thinking that nothing else about you matters, but it does.
We are so much more than all of it but we give so much of ourselves to those roles, it strips us of our true identity.
Tell a woman she is beautiful and I guarantee the response will not be thank you but a nervous: “No, you are crazy!” We lost our true sense and colour.
At a recent event, a phenomenal motivational speaker asked all the women in the room to close their eyes and picture themselves as young girls before life happened to them.
What were their dreams, their aspirations, their passions, their desires, their goals?
Did they still exist?
Almost every woman in that room was in tears because the pretty girl on the canvass with bright beautiful colours became a woman with broken canvasses.
Along the way, life happened and choices happened and monumental pain came with it.
We conformed to be what society, our family, our husbands, our children, our inner and outer circles expected us to be or we would be the ultimate fail as women.
First, we have to deal with the pressures of being the perfect wife.
The pressure is monumental.
The rotis must be perfectly round, the home must be in perfect order, our behaviour always in line and appropriate for any and all things.
Then we have the pressures of being the perfect mothers.
A child who is not in line is always the mother’s fault and if you are unable to have children, the punishment never ends.
You are immediately the ultimate fail.
Then we have the superficial.
We have to be a certain colour and weight, dress a certain way or we are clumsy and undesirable even for our husbands, who also expect us to be desirable only for them.
Then there are the multitude of women who suffer vile abuse from in-laws and their husbands because of the constant interference from people, who think they have the right to dictate the rules of marriage and how wives should be kept in tow by their husbands, and the husbands who constantly need their egos and manliness fed to preserve their pride.
In a tragedy the man is the strong one and the woman is allowed to be weak but it comes with a deadline.
Regardless of who a woman loses - her husband, child or loved one, she is allowed to break down but then told to get over it and be the strong one again.
They are told how to grieve, when to grieve and for how long. In triumphs they are told to stand back and not hog the limelight.
The saddest of it all is when often we as women, who fully understand the confines and chains that bind us, then find every reason to criticise each other.
We look for the first thing we can find to bring another woman down and label her as the ultimate fail. We start to gossip and ridicule and judge them because they don’t fit into our mould for a woman.
Then there are the stigmas attached to anything and everything, which leads to the emancipation of a woman.
A strong woman, a professional woman, a woman who can stand up and say “I am” is then loose, disrespectful, not submissive, selfish, immoral the list goes on.
You believe all of this is archaic jargon but my experience with hundreds of women daily proves it is more prevalent than we realise.
We have become broken, sad, rejected fragments, who are colourless in a world so filled with colour. So many women so trapped in fear, abusive marriages, helpless situations, false ideologies, misconceptions, domination and criticism.
So many are afraid to step out and make their voices and presence known in business or other endeavours.
So many are afraid of showing their true inner self - their colourful canvas and so they allow for it to be broken some more.
And yet we are that same society who say women and all they are must be celebrated. We even set a day aside for it.
What they don’t say is it is conditional and only if she follows the invisible but very audible rules.
Well now it’s time to break those chains.
As a woman, you are strength in more ways than one.
You are a multi-tasker. You are power in its entirety. You are love.
You are genius.
You are beautiful. You give life and bring forth life.
You are possible for anything impossible. You are the ultimate.
So, let’s forget about how we need to keep up with the supposed requirements for model material, lose our fear of being the ultimate fail in any role we have and rather focus on the fact that you are you and you are most important.
Be that first rate version of yourself.
Find your beautiful canvass and repair it. Make your own mark.
Be who you were created to be and shine in all of it because a woman in all her essence is a gift to the world.
You choose life!
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