Dear Diary,
Lately, I have been chatting with a number of my girlfriends in their 40s and 50s. These are all women of different races, nationalities and cultural backgrounds. What do we have in common? Let’s say we all allowing fear, guilt, self-sacrifice and some regrets to hold us back. Many of us are overcoming grief due to the loss of love ones and we are staring the reality of aging dead in the face. (I must say though many of us are aging gracefully are killing it, as we are aging in reverse. Nevertheless, most of us are now feeling an urgent desire to “love up” ourselves and to live our best lives. When we were in our 20s and 30s we felt like we had time to be alive, however, fast forward to age 50 and we suddenly realized that we don’t just want to be alive, we want to live.
For those women born during and after the 60s, 70s, you grew up in a world that was more liberating for women. Higher Education was a huge priority. Many of us felt we could become anything we wanted and then we joined corporations and hit the glass ceiling. Many of us discovered that not only were there glass ceilings in these organizations, but there were glass boxes too. To date, women still continue to face barriers in society. It became obvious to many women that society was set up for men to rule and for women to assist, serve and give birth.
The burdens we carried as women and the barriers we encountered along the way, distracted us from truly loving ourselves. For many of us, we had no choice but to put ourselves last. The mental and physical health of our family was placed primarily on our backs. Along the way we got lost in their world and relied on them to assure us that we were doing a great job. After all, we were taught that this was our most important job. In the process of doing this job our sacrifices were overlooked and our dreams were buried. We are trained to be the caregivers for everyone else for life and in the process we forget to take care of ourselves.
Today , I decided to right a love letter to myself as an attempt to heal and end the cycle of neglecting myself. This may sound strange, but I encourage you to do the same because it is very healing and therapeutic. What I discovered from talking to the women I spoke to is we all had similar experiences, disappointments, joys and fears. Take a look at me reading “A love letter to myself” in the video below:
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