So I just found out that March is Women’s History Month. (Really? How do I get to be almost 40 and not realize such things?)
Also, I was just informed that March 8 is International Women’s Day. Huh.
I’m pretty sure I never paid attention to such occasions because in my mind, every day is International Women’s Day. Or at least, it probably should be. This attitude stems from the fact that I’ve been surrounded by strong women my entire life.
When I was growing up, my family consisted of two men and four very strong, very independent women. When I went off to college, I joined the track and cross country teams and was pretty much always surrounded by anywhere from 30 to 60 very strong (like, literally weight-lifting strong) women, led by an amazing female coach. My first real job was on a copy desk where women outnumbered the men 2:1, the publisher was a woman, and my boss who hired me was a woman.
The first time I lived in a non-female dominated environment was when I got married (to a man) and moved into the house he shared with his son. But in the years to come, my husband and I had two daughters. Now that my stepson has moved out and a female college student has temporarily moved in, our household ratio of women to men is 4:1. Just how I like it.
“You can tell who the strong women are ~ they’re the ones building each other up instead of tearing each other down.”
I had lunch today with a dear friend who’s been in my life for almost 10 years. We always talk about our daughters and the challenges of freelance writing. But today we also talked about writing books. About our book ideas. About the writing process. I told her that she inspired me. She told me that I inspire her.
It occurred to me, on my drive home from lunch, that writers are an interesting bunch. OK yes, we are interesting for a lot of artistic reasons. But even though I consider myself a highly competitive person, my connection with other writers is completely and oddly non-competitive. I have nothing but love and support for the other writers and journalists in my life. And as I repeatedly thanked my friend for taking the time to meet with and enlighten me today, she assured me that the writing community is, as a rule, pretty supportive of its members. We are not actors in a cut-throat battle for the same role. We are not salespeople looking to maximize earnings. We writers are very much like members of the same team looking to work together and build off one another so that each person reaches her highest potential.
That’s not only a wonderful mantra for Women’s History Month, folks. That’s setting up a successful model for life…
LB