What is in a name?

I am part of a group of Entrepreneurs on Facebook and recently someone asked if it's ok to be referred to as a #GirlBoss and a bunch of women went into a tirade of how they felt about the term.

And then as usual I couldn't sit idle and not comment. It is hard being a mother of girls... with all the new feminism taking over. It's ok to be a feminist like this, doing feminism like this... and trying to navigate how to make sure they are being raised without social tendencies that lessened them for being a girl.

And then I realised, what is in a name? Do we need to hate on names like Girl Boss, Lady Boss, She-EO, and whatever plethora of female related power terms there might be out there. While I am sensitive to the argument that we currently need to demand equality but the truth is at what cost?

But then I really can't get behind that thought... why? What about these names bother us?

Truth is we suffer from an inherited narrative that came from some social situation that has skewed the way we see the world. And we may never want to be called girl by a male peer because who is he to declare us a word that is seen as someone younger that 18.We may never want anyone to point out that we are females while we are making a deal of some sort.

But the women who coined these terms did so for a bigger reason. #Girlboss was coined by Sophia Amoruso after having launched Nasty Gal clothing, it changing the course of her expected work life and then writing a book about her raise to fame. Her first book was named  #GirlBoss... and currently you can even see the show bases on her life on Netflix as well. But most people know she became an overnight sensation at such a young age, maybe even a transitional age where she was an adult but hadn't prepare to do all the adulting she needed to do.

But what if  #Girlboss was meant everything she needed to say to herself to feel empowered. May she woke up in the morning and looked herself in the mirror and said today I will rock being a Girl Boss. And now other women see it, and it inspires them to be more or do more. The word, the title, the name now is multifaceted. It also gives the person who associates with it another avenue, another push or tilt into a direction that they might have been to afraid to pursue if it wasn't for the display

If it does that for 1 single individual, is it not perfect than for them. Should we not be encouraging people to be their best version and if it does, we all are extremely happy for their new ambition. At the end of the day my odds in my household is that some of my girls will not be able to assoiciate with the term. But maybe 1 does an she uses it to inspire herself to go for more and she finds inspiration where others don't.

Where have you been?

I love writing and sharing... and then I stopped. I didn't stop because I stopped feeling the loved; so where did I go?

I think I got lost where many women/mother's disappear to. I found myself in the abyss of not sureness. That place where you aren't sure what you are doing is of any interest to people, that the mundane collects all the creativity you have and hoards it deep inside your brain but refuses to let it go for others to see it.

It doesn't look the same on many people... actually it is the fact that it looks so different on so many women, which is why I was compelled to write about it.

We women do so much, we don't know how we get stuck with all the tasks we take on but sharing becomes far down on the totem pole. We clean, and cook, pay the bills, watch the kids, do fertility treatments, we try and get a better job, we try and get a degree and much more. And all in the attempt to just keep afloat we stop communicating and sharing.

I am guilty of just doing a social media dump of what I have been doing, here it's all out there for you all to see. But I am not talking to my best friends, not laughing and sharing,  And clearly I am not writing down any of my experiences either. 

I arrived in California confident that I was happy and had great friendships back home. Truth is I do, and I can only say that because being lost in my mundane mental hoarding, my friends have patiently stayed on the sidelines, expecting very little from me while I tread water. But then I ended up in Toronto again in January to which I found something... I clearly was missing the interactions of real conversations. 

We go to work everyday, talk to our coworkers in superficial communication, we parent and have very simple conversations just to keep the day running on schedule, and so on. I am guilty of being at home working with my husband... we talk so much about simple things we don't get to share much as our feelings and thoughts as often as we can, also we know what each is doing on a daily basis there isn't much to learn from each other. 

I just thought I would share it's OK to hide in the mundane, it's OK to go and find yourself or at least set the list of what you want and being in your head. But as some point coming out for a breath of fresh air and communication is truly what is needed. 

And with that I plan to share, and welcome all the engaging conversations from this moment on.