Are Your Taking Action?

Sent by Lauren Jane Heller    |    March 14, 2022

Last Tuesday was International Women’s Day. If you spend any time on the Internet, it would have been hard to miss. I saw lots of posts honouring the wonderful women in people’s lives as well as others that called for change.

A lot of it made me think about how much energy so many of us expend trying to squeeze ourselves — and others — into boxes that simply don’t fit; how much work goes into maintaining structures that simply don’t work for the majority of us. I also lingered on the thought that while writing and posting about inequity and the need for change is certainly useful, the real work is in taking action to make this change in our lives so we can then watch our acts of bravery grow and remake the world we live in.

One post I particularly love was written by my oldest and dearest friend, Caitlin Thompson. She gave me permission to publish it here. I hope it resonates as deeply for you as it did for me.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my gender. Today being International Women’s Day, I’ve been thinking even more about what it means to me to be a woman. It is an identity I have always worn like an old sweatshirt; comfy and soft, lived in. But the more I evolve and grow, the more I wonder if the tag is scratching at my neck a little. When I think about how the gender binary harms people, it feels like a box I'm not sure I want to check anymore.

As I parse all of this out in my mind I do so with such tender care because I have never felt particularly dysphoric in my body. I don’t mind this home that my being lives in. And yet it has fallen victim to the ways that every body like mine has been impacted by this backwards, patriarchal world. I try to practice body love but deep down the extra fat I carry bothers me. I am conditioned to want to look smaller, tighter, smoother. I remove my body hair because, why do I do that again? I am embarrassed by my rosacea and try to change it with this and that product and concealer. I am not dysphoric but I am ashamed in so many ways because of the gender I was assigned at birth.

And then I think about the mountains we are still climbing. We still have to fight for simple equalities like autonomy over our own bodies, equal pay, and even being believed when we say something happened to us. I think about toxic masculinity. I think about femininity and how it is only acceptable on certain bodies. And this thinking makes me want to reject all of it because there is a place for the masculine and feminine in all of us.

I want to live in a world where people aren’t controlled by capitalist structures that keep us in containers that are too small to allow us to blossom. I don’t want to have to choose to perform my gender in the uniform that has been decided upon by giant corporations and fast fashion. I want to feel safe and secure in the just being of me. I want to help build a future that breaks down the binary and builds something more fluid. Something free.

Today I don’t feel like celebrating, I feel like dismantling instead.

I hope that today and tomorrow and every day in the future, you’ll both think about dismantling the structures that don’t work and take action to do it. We create the world. The stories we choose to tell, to follow, to live are what make it what it is. Let’s choose wisely and with our eyes wide open.

Love, 

LJ

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