An audacious woman is passionate, inspired, excited and motivated. She looks in the mirror and sees beauty. She has cast off negative media images and societal expectations and embraced her full potential. She knows that being successful, rich, famous, or skinny isn’t what gives life meaning. It is when she is laughing or loving or living her dreams, that life is filled with joy.
An audacious woman is any woman who wakes up one day and realizes that life, love and happiness are not defined by her size, her age, or even outside of herself. She has learned that being audacious is a state of mind.
Some of the words used to describe an audacious woman are bold, bodacious, fearless, daring, amazing, awesome, brave, dauntless, smart, attractive, sexy. But sometimes we forget, we lose ourselves. Why?
The media has convinced us that we are old, that we have outlived our usefulness, that we are not enough. The media has convinced us that the only way to be of value is to buy what they are selling, and they are selling a lot. It is no longer enough to be married, raise children or be employed; rather, women are required to remain desirable, marriageable and employable.
This means women are constantly working to maintain a youthful appearance, raise families and succeed at their jobs, while continually questioning their purpose in life and if they really matter. After years of being bombarded with stereotypes, they have lost their true selves.
The consequence? Women are unhappy; they self-medicate; they overeat; they overspend; they are stressed; they suffer from depression; they feel lost. Life wears them down and they become more and more disconnected from their Spirit. According to society, “women of a certain age”, are fat, old, sexless, useless, unattractive, fill in the blank.
Really?
In Mauritania, men find fat women desirable; before they are married young women are force-fed a diet of up to 16,000 calories a day to make them eligible for marriage, in Mauritania, fat is considered beautiful.
Okay, putting aside, the force-fed part, maybe we just live in the wrong country. Maybe our assumptions are just wrong.
In Greek, Native American, Japanese, Korean, Indian and African societies, mature women are seen as a vital resource, full of wisdom. We all have things we accept without question, assumptions that make up our world view. We all have old scripts- old ideas, limiting beliefs, expectations, assumptions, fears, and blind spots. We must recognize, challenge, and revise these ideas associated with life and change because these beliefs give us mistaken messages.
We are audacious and we should live our lives accordingly.