05/16/2019
Who’s on your Poster
I haven't announced this on social media yet, but I am going to Rachel Hollis’ Rise Conference in Minnesota next month (June 2019). I bought a ticket last November, even though I had a lot of other things going on in my life. I wanted to mark this year of turning 30 with something big. I wanted something that would continue my journey of not being stagnant in life but one with continued growth.
As much as I am looking forward to the conference, meeting new people and going to another city. I have been looking forward to finding out the theme of the after party. As soon as I read the announcement my heart sank, the theme was Shero and was not going to be an easy one. I immediately thought of my paper I had in 5th grade for black history month. Being back in the 90’s computers did not have all the information you wanted at your fingertips so I picked a known singer. I could find nothing in the history books on her so I ended having to switch to Harriet Tubman.
Thoughts ran around in my head, who was my Shero. When it comes to making costumes I have a competitive streak. Dressing as Rachel Hollis might be a little over the top, and I wish I could choose Oprah but being very pale I could not do her justice.
So, I began thinking of the women that I liked through history. I thought of Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn. These quintessential style queens, but I wanted someone known for more than there clothes or beautiful face. I thought of Mother Teresa for the fact that she gave all of herself to help her fellow man. I however know in myself that I will never be a Mother Teresa and want someone to aspire to. I thought of Jane Austen her books being some of my top favorites. But I will not be packing a corset in my suitcase. Can you even carry on a corset?
Then I thought of just being me. I want to be a hero for myself, and future men and women. I knew that with this theme I had already given myself the challenge to find the woman that I could look up to. I wanted to find the woman that could be on my vision board. The woman that you would have had a poster of as a child. The girl that picked herself from the boot straps and made history.
Google pulled up a list of amazing heroic women. In researching them, it made me to think of women and our role in history and general knowledge of history. Unless it was in my history book from school a movie or documentary has been made about the person I probably don’t know about them. Our roles as women have fared in history from little more than bargaining pieces, to entrepreneur, business woman, and doctors. We are usually given the job of raising the next generation. A few of us have of done that and more, or decided not to have kids and have the career of their dreams.
History has been changed by two types of women. Think I can’t do it? Watch me work twice as hard and prove you wrong type of women. Being the quiet, loving women that just like George Bailey in it’s a Wonderful life, we don’t realize fully all they did until gone. We don’t usually have posters of the women that change the world quitely just the ones who do it in an ambitious way.
These women, I think, are part of the bigger meaning in this party theme pick. You probably won’t know who I am in my costume and I won’t know you. I hope to come out of the dance party with a bunch of names of woman I need to read about. Another part you can take with the meaning of the theme is, “A dead thing can go with the stream, A living thing can go against it. I had the pleasure of seeing Abby Wombat a few weeks ago and was struck on how many young soccer girls were there. How even in this day and age it is hard for these girls to find other women fighting to be given the recognition they rightly deserve. We need to turn against the tide and go the other way. It won’t be easy and it won’t come without hardships. However my real hope is that my future children don’t have as such a hard time finding there shero. Instead it’s one of YOU!
Photo Credit Julia Kinnunen
With a couple of my favorite Shero
