Lets Talk About : International Women's Day

Today is Thursday 8th March 2018. 

My longest Uni day of the week, with 4 hours of seminars and netball in the evening.
The day I'm going to go for a run.
The day before Friday, which is the day before the weekend.

Today is also International Women's Day.

And I love it.

Not because it's all about 'girl power'.
Not because it's a day to show the boys that we mean business in ALL aspects of our lives.
Not because we get to post motivational messages, and dedicate Instagram posts to the girls who we love and feel empowered by.
Not even because its a subtle middle finger to all those men who continue to squash and stamp on our hopes and dreams that we have just as much right to have.
No, I love it because of ALL those reasons.

I never used to give much thought to International Women's Day, I can't really remember it last year, and definitely didn't even know it existed when I was growing up. But something feels different this year, something makes me feel even more empowered and proud and supportive and loving and all the emotions that accumulate into how I feel to be a woman (and that feels weird to write because in my eyes, I'm not old enough to be called a woman, I still see them as people who are my mum's age, hahaha!) I think I feel this way because of how happy I am within myself, and that is purely down to the people I surround myself with.

Over the last year, I've begun to realise that it is exactly the women (and men) around me who have helped me become the person I am today. And as cringey and cliché as it sounds, if I didn't feel loved and supported by them, how on earth would I be able to love and support others? If my best friends and I didn't support each other and treat each other how we'd want to be treated, we would be living in a life of jealousy and comparison ... which gets us nowhere. Similarly, if my mother, grandmother, aunties, godmother or even great grandmother didn't believe in themselves to do what they wanted, with who they wanted and when they wanted, I would have nobody to look up to ... which would get me nowhere.
The quote 'kill them with kindness' resonates oh so heavily with me on days like today, because I truly believe that if you're a kind to everyone you meet, then you can't go far wrong.
Not giving women the same treatment as men is wrong, and sexist and discriminating, but also unkind, and unkind people are sad people, so somewhere along the line men must've been in a pretty low place to feel that they couldn't treat us women in the same way.  I'm not saying I condone sexist behaviour, or that we should 'feel sorry' for the men who continue to create patriarchal environments, but what I am saying is that by responding to their negativity in a more positive manner, and shining a spotlight on the beauty that is Girl Power, it shows the men who hate, and the men who think they're better than us that without each other we are nothing.
We treat each other how we want to be treated, and that is why days like International Women's Day lives on, because it is is exactly that ... it is our day to champion each other, to radiate positivity and everything wonderful about women.
We don't use the day to complain or compare, we use the day to celebrate all the shapes and sizes, all the colours and skin types and all the religions and beliefs.
We speak for the little girls who want to be footballers but are laughed at by the boys, we support the female bosses who have taken over from male leadership and are struggling with hierarchy, we campaign for the women on the other side of the world who are fighting for an education and finally we prove that if we can still be united as women amidst all the hate and discrimination, then the whole world should be united as people.
Happy International Women's Day, let's celebrate it EVERYDAY.
DCH
xxx