Being somebody & being somebodies
Lately, there’s been a lot of conversations around me that have left me wondering ‘can women really have it all?’ Can we be 'somebody's' whilst being 'somebodies?'. Is it overly ambitious to aspire to want to be successful in our careers and ministry work, whilst being good partners, wives or great mums?. I’ve come across several people who believe that as a woman, you have to choose: you can either be a good partner or a successful career woman, but you can’t be both... The main argument for this is that being successful in your career takes hard work, time and effort. Ultimately giving you less time and energy to spend on other things such as your relationships and family.Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but i genuinely believe that women can have it all. I’m not naive in believing that it’s easy or straightforward, but I don’t think it’s impossible. I only have to look around me to find examples of women that prove my point, and even some celebrity couples show that you can be both, a partner, a wife, or mother and a successful woman in your own right.
The evolving woman
Thanks to the 21st century, relationships today are more focused on picking and choosing the attributes matter to us in a partner and suit our own lifestyle, as opposed to trying to meet certain criteria. ‘Wife material’ literally means something different to everybody and I guess that’s what our era is all about: choice. You can choose to be selfish and focus solely on yourself, you can choose to focus on building your career, whilst being a counterpart to someone else, you can choose to be single, you can choose to date,I mean the choice really and truly is yours.Not every woman is going to cook,clean, wash, scrub, give up their own career, raise children, laugh at their mans’ crap jokes, nod at endless stories about his evil boss….and not every man wants that. Unlike the generation of our mothers, grandmothers and the women before them, our generation of women doesn’t allow the world to put any limitations or labels on them. Take Oprah for example. In a Super Soul Sunday interview with Shonda Rhimes, Oprah explained why she never got married to her boyfriend of 30+ years, Stedman Graham. "What I realized is, I don’t want to be married ... because I could not have the life that I created for myself.” In a later interview with Vogue magazine, Oprah encourages women to "live life on their own terms".So what am i really trying to say? I’m saying if you're driven and dedicated enough as a woman, you can be whatever and whoever you want to be. I have a lot of admiration for women who are mothers, and can balance family and work and I do believe that it's possible to have it all; work, a career, kids. I know that it ultimately comes down to the sacrifice we are willing to make to make sure we find the balance.
