Empowerment

It used to be that the comparisons we made were limited to the people who lived nearby or those whom we saw daily. Today, comparison has become constant background noise and a full-blown obsession for many. It’s woven into social media, television, conversations, family gatherings, and even what we tell ourselves…

Women are judged long before we ever understand what judgment is. Our bodies are evaluated, ranked, compared, whispered about, laughed at, or picked apart – often by the very people who claim to love us. And then, as if by some cruel joke, after decades of scrutiny and self-surveillance, we are suddenly told we’re invisible…

Every decision is the difference between death or life. So choose wisely. When you hear others talk about life and death, life is usually first and then death. I chose to turn it around. Because death seems to be the choice of the masses. Why? Because death doesn’t require a challenge. Life requires a challenge. This article will focus on decision making that influences our choices that result in death or life.

Self-confidence is all about believing in yourself and your abilities. It is a type of useful knowledge about yourself, usually based on experience. Self-confidence is that general positive feeling about yourself that can involve several components…

We often say that women should support one another. We celebrate the idea that every woman has the right to live life on her own terms. Marriage or not. Children or not. Career or not. City or country. Gray hair or hair dye. Hormone replacement therapy or not. It sounds wonderful. The reality, however, is often quite different…

I heard a simple line in a movie the other night: “What doesn’t bend, breaks.” It wasn’t meant to be profound. It was just a passing remark before the story moved on. But it stayed with me. As I was getting ready for bed that night, another image appeared in my mind. I could see an entire riverbank covered with smooth river rocks…

I grew up being told not to judge. Maybe you did too. In my house it came with a Bible verse attached – the way we heard it, judge not, lest ye be judged – and somewhere along the way I turned that into a simple instruction: the judging itself was the sin. A good person doesn’t size people up. A good person gives everyone the benefit of the doubt…

Somewhere around my late 50s, I noticed a pattern in nearly every woman I knew, including myself: we were remarkably good at giving other people permission to live boldly, and remarkably bad at extending that same permission to ourselves. We’d tell our friends, “Go ahead and take that trip, you’ve earned it.” We’d tell our daughters…

If you have reached the stage of life where the world expects you to settle into a predictable routine, fade into the background, and stop making waves, may I introduce you to a small, unbothered chaos agent? This creature is currently maintaining two incompatible lifestyles, refusing to be pigeonholed by age, expectations, or geography…

Have you ever met women whose scowls look so malevolent that rottweilers suddenly remember they had somewhere else to be? Even a rattlesnake would say, “Nope, not today,” and quietly slither away. What about that confident woman…