#teachbyexample

A few years ago, my high school friend Heather forwarded me a video she thought I’d like. Every so often I come across it and I’m as struck and moved by it in the moment as I was the very first time I watched it.

It so perfectly encapsulates the subtle—and not so subtle—messages we not only learn from the women in our lives, but from the men as well.

Messages about what it means to be a woman, a wife, a mother, a female walking through this world.

Messages about what it means to consciously and subconsciously take a back seat to the men in your life.

Messages that tell you that you are somehow less important, less of a priority, less worthy, and have a lesser viewpoint than the men.

Here are a few pearls that particularly struck home with me:

“She shrinks the space around her.”

“She wanes while my father waxes.”

“I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking, making space for the entrance of men into their lives, not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave.”

“I have been taught accommodation.”

“You [her brother] have been taught to grow out…I have been taught to grow in.”

“I learned to absorb.”

“Picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped.”

“How much space she deserves to occupy.”

“I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word ‘Sorry.'”

“Inheritance is accidental.”

I’ve spent way too much of my life taking a back seat, while never really realizing until now that I gladly sat there in an effort to be included. I’ve spent much too long accepting coming last while everyone around me comes first, and that I only deserves last or even second best.

I do not—and I’ll be damned if I allow Kennedy to ever feel that way.

I’ll be damned if I allow Kennedy to think she has to apologize before speaking her truth, her opinion, her thoughts, her feelings. I don’t ever want her to think she doesn’t deserve the space she occupies.

I don’t want her to think she has to shrink so someone else can grow.

I don’t want her to wane so someone else can wax.

I want to change the course, the dialogue that I’ve allowed to be so ingrained in me. I want her be strong and confident, while also being loving and compassionate.

And, as the poetry slam shows us, I will teach her more through example than words.

If I tell her that she is worthy, but act in an unworthy or undeserving way myself, which message do you think she’ll actually pick up?

If I tell her that girls, that women, have every right to do, say, be…but don’t do, say, or be myself, which message will actually sink in?