A playing card was placed into my hand. Three of Spades.
My instructions were to go and find my match in the room; someone else holding the exact same card as me.
It was an icebreaker at an event I was invited to speak at last week. Within the first minute or so I found my match; a beautiful woman with a smile that reached her eyes. We introduced ourselves and told each other why we had come to the event. I explained that I was giving a talk and also holding a poetry workshop to celebrate and empower women and girls. She said she was having a mother and daughter day with her eldest, although she was wringing her hands nervously as she said it. Her daughter was having difficulties at school due to cyber bullying so she wanted to take her on a fun day out and surround her with women and girls that give out positive energy.
I spotted her daughter and called her over. She was incredibly shy but had a smile that matched her mother’s and I immediately felt her warmth. We chatted about school and what year 8 is like these days, and then I was called up to speak.
I chose to share my experience growing up around women, my experience of becoming a woman and asked those there to take some time to just reflect on what it is to BE a woman. Not what society says, not what the media portrays, not what is expected of us, but what it means to US who are living, being women right now.
I got some wonderful thoughts fed back from the audience, words such as strength, determination, nurturing, love, survivor, were amongst those shared and yet this is what happens when you google the definition of a woman:
noun: woman; plural noun: women
"a jury of seven women and five men"
synonyms: lady, girl, member of the fair/gentle sex, female;
a female person associated with a particular place, activity, or occupation.
"one of his sophisticated London women"
a peremptory form of address to a woman.
a female worker or employee.
a female who is paid to clean someone's house and carry out other domestic duties.
synonyms: cleaning woman, cleaner, domestic help, domestic, maid
a man's wife, girlfriend, or lover.
"he wondered whether Billy had his woman with him"
synonyms: girlfriend, girl, sweetheart, partner, significant other, inamorata, fiancée
Ok so I’m not asking google to do the exact same thing that I asked those at the event to do, but look at the way Woman is defined and the examples that are given! When you google ‘Man’ it’s nowhere near rooted in the sexist stereotypes to the level that Woman is and men are not once referred to as a woman’s possession, in the same way that women are literally listed here as being ‘a man’s wife, girlfriend or lover’ (vom).
To add to this BS, if we look outwardly at societal pressures, women are constantly pitted against each other in competition, whether it’s for jobs, men or looks. This makes me so sad, as when we work together we are a FORCE.
Since the beginning of time women have come together to raise families, villages, to be the backbones of communities, to provide a tight knit support to nurturing, loving and caring for each other. This is where we come from. My own upbringing wasn’t too dissimilar to this; being 1 of 8 granddaughters and my mum 1 of 4 sisters, I was surrounded by loving and positive female role models.
It’s not the norm to simply honour the fact that every human on the planet has been brought here by a woman, but it is the norm to slut shame –what is this? And why do we just allow it to carry on? Yes birth happens every second of the day, but why does that mean it’s less amazing? In my mind, the frequency of these miracles that women drop daily, is even MORE of a reason to honour them.
I asked for every woman in the room to let this be a reminder to show more love to each other, that we create life therefore we are magic, to remember that to be separate or in competition with each other goes against what is within us. We are here to build each other up and become better together; real Queens straighten each other’s’ crowns.
I finished my talk and headed over to where I had a poetry station set up with my fellow Queen Inka, where we were going to be stationed for the next few hours.
The young girl that I mentioned earlier came over to create a poem. Her mom mouthed at me “She really wants to do it!” and gave two thumbs up, so we set about to write something together.
I asked her to pick 5 words from an array of words that we had prepared for the day. She took her time and carefully picked out the ones that resonated with her most. Her choices were ‘strength’, ‘courage’, ‘beauty’, ‘resilience’ and ‘queen’. For a 12 year old it felt pretty deep, so we set about using those words to create something that reflected what it was for her to be a girl. This is what we came up with:
We shared the biggest hug when we finished, her mum beamed over at us and thanked me for spending extra time with her. I remember seeing them both leave together arm in arm and I prayed that she would kept those words in view somewhere as a reminder of her power.
The rest of the day consisted of creating pieces with all types of people; women coming to write poems about themselves, men writing poems about honouring women, a female couple who wrote a poem together on what it was like to be in love with a woman, all kinds of magic was being created. Whilst this was going on, two 11 year old girls (still in primary school) sat down together. We were so busy running between different people to help them create their pieces that we didn’t spot these two young queens straight away. They didn’t ask for our assistance, they just quietly worked together on one piece, taking it in turns to write in different coloured felt tip pens in their neatest swirly handwriting. What they wrote blew us away:
They had no help from either of us – other than a selection of words prepped as inspiration – but they then did all of the work to turn the words into poems. I was so taken aback that tears spilled down my cheeks (you know those overflowing Alice in Wonderland tears) and they looked up at me smiling modestly.
We talked about their poems with them and told them how wonderful it was to see them create such incredible pieces of work. I found one of their moms and brought her over to see what her daughter and niece had written. She said something that made me swell up inside. “Girls I am SO proud of you for writing this! Not only have you created something but you’ve shared it, it’s so important that you share, as it gives the opportunity for what you’ve created to inspire and touch others.” With that, the young Queens came up to ask us whether they could share their poem in front of everyone at the event. My heart soared in admiration for these two live-wires, so quietly powerful. They went straight up to the centre and shared with everybody what they had written.
It came with lessons for us all. I saw women’s faces in the audience melt, I saw the men in the audience stand up straighter and nod their heads to the words of these mini Goddesses and I felt my own intuition swirl around inside me to remind me that this is also something I am super passionate about – working with children and young people, to empower and inspire, using words, something I am equally as passionate about.
There is so much that we can do in our own little ways, and to see the youth of today so actively engaged, and hungry for more, reminds me that we can’t let them down. They are the future but we are the present, and right now the present is seriously in need of more role models, more encouragers and more enthusiasts than ever before.
Thanks to All Girls Rock for creating this space, and if there is anyone reading this that works in schools or projects with young people and would like to have a similar workshop held, then please do get in touch at [email protected]. There will be lots more where this came from, so watch this space!
