My favorite part of going home for break is the conversations I inevitably have with my mom and grandmother about our current contemplations. My mom and I have deep conversations about our family dynamics, personal struggles, political concerns and career revelations as we drive to Costco or home from family visits. While visiting my grandparents, my grandmother and I ensure we find a moment when we are the only two in the kitchen to ponder the same things.
These two women, whose faces I see in my reflection more and more each day, know me almost as well as I know myself — at times, I think they know me even more than I do. As I grow older, not only does my physical appearance mirror theirs, but my inner landscape as well — we share experiences, gifts and aspirations.
In the same sense, we all have an affinity for cooking, knowing when to add more garlic or turn down the heat on the stove, we share an intuition about caring for others. In fact, this profoundly feminine intuition is supported by the structure of our brain. As is common for many women, we harbor an unignorable sense of empathy and a drive to understand those around us. We desire to care for people we don’t even know and the ability to understand how someone is feeling without them saying a word. In turn, people instinctively find us safe to confide in.
My mother and grandmother both wanted to use these aptitudes in their careers. Although they could not have the jobs they initially dreamed of, they found ways to use their sympathetic dispositions to guide them down other paths — including their indispensable role as fiercely dedicated mothers attuned to the needs of their children.
As each generation of girls starts out a little further from where their mother began, I hope to use these inherited strengths to achieve the dreams they were pressured to abandon. I often think of the quote at the end of the Barbie movie — “We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.” Although I don’t think mothers “stand still,” it holds true that daughters possess the opportunity to move towards the goals their mothers sacrificed, and it is those sacrifices that put daughters in a position to go further than those before them.
In the new year, I desire to use the influences of the women before me, our commonalities and all I can learn from them to guide me in understanding my virtues and aspirations. I will trust the intuition that generations of women have established within me.
We may all be a culmination of every woman we ever admired, but at the end of the day, it is our connection to ourselves that must guide us. This is especially challenging as our minds are clouded by others’ expectations of us and societal pressures to oppose stereotypes and fit the mold of a “successful woman.”
Our interests and hobbies are trivialized and mocked for being “basic” or “typical” not only by men but by other women. Our goals are seen as too ambitious and always up for discussion, frequently by the last people we would ever ask for advice. Daughters don’t have to ask for the world’s opinions about their choices because they are given as if they were begged to be heard. So, if those around us question everything we want, why wouldn’t we do the same?
This is why in addition to listening to the voices of the women who paved the way for me, I will listen to the girl I was before I decided everyone else’s opinions mattered more than my own. What did I want before I was socialized to act and think a certain way, and who was I before people told me who they thought I was?
Who were you before the world told you who you should be? What brought you joy before your interests were made fun of or dismissed? Who did you see yourself becoming? This question can span from what you saw yourself wearing and what color your hair would be to what career you wanted and how you would carry yourself.
All of this contemplation has led me to believe it is not necessarily a bad thing to carry the past into the new year. There is so much to be learned. We can relearn how to live, not to please others or fit their expectations of us, but to make decisions that fulfill and excite us.
So this year, I am reflecting on all of the women who already exist within me — my grandmother, my mother and the little girl who once saw the world as her personal playground.
Julianna is obsessed with the women in her life. Feel free to email her at [email protected] if you are too.
