Girl power

Girl power.
It's International Women's Day so it seems kinda wrong to say 'girl' power. Sometimes I use girl as a term of endearment, and if I look at my woman-hood across the years I realize that some of my best self is reflected in who I was as a girl.
Seven year old me was all about dreams. What I'd be when I grew up, where I'd go, what I'd do. My dreams had no limits. They were big, and that was fine by me.
Seven year old me loved to run, ride (my bike and my horse), mix it up with the boys, challenge them to races and arm wrestling. I'm pretty sure I held the arm wrestling title in 2nd grade.
Seven year old me said what I thought and asked for what I wanted. My mom's classic line to me was "I think we've had enough fun for the day."
Seven year old me drew pictures of horses when the nuns weren’t looking and dreamed of the day when I could spend all my time either reading or riding.

Do you ever think about seven year old you? How is she?

There's a lot to be said for girl power.
Not all of us had lovely or loving childhoods.
Some of us have spent great chunks of our growing up working that out.
My dad died just shy of two years later and his loss impacted my childhood greatly. Lots of it left that day I came home to see unfamiliar cars parked around our house.

I often look back on that little girl and think man, there's a reason we don't sit kids down and tell them "Look, this is going to be a LOT harder than you could ever imagine, this life thing. You're going to be disappointed, you'll for sure get scuffed up some, you'll love so much your heart may break, and you may end up getting busted in two one way or the other, but you've got this."

My female friends have circled the wagon more than once, held out hands and hearts when there were no words, stood in the gap for each other when the abyss seemed too deep, and laughed so hard tears came pouring out of all our eyes over nothing and everything.
God knew what He was doing when He created woman. No wonder she was last. It took a while to assemble all those ingredients.
Tough and flexible
Gentle and relentless
Fierce and tender
Expansive
Expressive
Eloquent
Raw
Resilient
Real
Full of wonder
Full of thoughts and thoughtful
Loyal and exacting
Enduring and exhilarating
And here we are today. Fill in the blanks for who you are, who you have become.
Me? A grown-a$$ woman, mother, wife, animal crazy, survivor, warrior, friend. Notice that none of that has to do with what I do. How about you? Do you define yourself as what you do or who you are? I'm betting it's the latter.
As I look across my life I sometimes revisit that spunky seven year old me and I can see what she didn't know was to come - eyes and a heart that have seen wonder and loss, joy and brokenness, success and failure. And lived to tell the tale. Scuffed up but all-in on this thing called life.

I wish we could all get together and have cake (or kale), pop a cork or whatever you like, laugh, smile at each other and make a pact that the next time someone says 'That took some (testes)!' we will all laugh and say "That took some serious ovaries!"
Celebrate yourself today. You freakin' deserve it. Whatcha up to? xoxo