The Second Half...

This summer I finished reading the book Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living.  While I certainly don't agree with all her doctrinal statements in the book, I found it to be an overall easy and encouraging read for the discerning woman.  

I have been very encouraged lately at the number of female authors I've observed who are owning their authenticity through transparency.  It's what I've always striven for, but to be honest, I felt I've been fighting the fight alone.  I recently posted the following meme to Facebook, and I find it to be incredibly true.  When you're open about your struggles, people are quick to label you: crazy, high maintenance, dramatic, needy, clingy, miserable, intense, psycho.  But when did being authentic, transparent, vulnerable, and honest become such a sin?  (Side note: I'd argue that it's not one and that the people who this really bothers aren't secure within themselves.  Only the bravest of us are secure enough to wear these struggles and feelings openly for all to see.)

Anyway, what I most enjoyed from this book were the little chapters that dealt with feminine beauty and the ideology of women.  I have long felt the societal pressures of becoming "the perfect woman."  It happens when you have a series of adverse childhood experiences that blossom into a toxic marriage that ended in betrayal.  Perfectionism is often sewn into the core of those women battling to overcome such experiences, and whether we put the pressures upon ourselves is really irrelevant.  Because the pressures are there.  They exist.  Period. 

I could easily be confusing and combining several texts I've read this summer with the following idea, but I find that one of the pressures of "womanhood" (especially if you're also a teacher) is the hustle.  The hallmark of a truly worthy woman is martyring herself on the altar of exhaustion.  Yet when we find the elusive rare female who doesn't sacrifice herself to a ridiculous and unhealthy standard, we grill her.  We hate her.  We want to destroy her.  But deep deep down... we just wish we could BE her.  We are actually  threatened by her seeming "ease."  If we're exhausted, then she needs to be too!  So we spend even more time attacking one another and competing with one another to see who can do the most, make the most, love the most, serve the most, and all the while we are losing ourselves in the process.  At some point we need to realize the benefit of self-care and not treat ourselves (or allow ourselves to be treated) in this way.  We have to take this power back because we're the only ones who can.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life this way.  I always want to be a servant and show my love to others, but I cannot do that remotely well if I'm always hurrying and scurrying to my own detriment.  I can't take care of others when I'm not caring for my own self.

Because this final quote is the one that really got me.  I think I've been living the entire (what is presumably) the first half of my life in the shadows of others' expectations.  I've tried to become what everyone else wanted me to be so I could be "a good girl", "a good Christian", "a good wife", "a good teacher", and so on.  All the while, I was losing myself piece by piece along the way.  

And it hasn't been until this awakening in my 30s that I see that I've become everyone else's version of Erika instead of my very own branded version of myself.  So maybe, just maybe, the first half of our lives are spent layering on others' expectations and dying on that altar of exhaustion.  

And maybe, just maybe, the next half can be about shedding those expectations and alternate personas - like an onion - until you peel away everything that isn't truly and authentically YOU.  And you keep peeling until you unearth the beautiful core of a woman that was always there, just waiting to be presented to the world.