There are days when sessions with my patients seem to revolve around the same theme. One of those days was about the stories of women — not just historical figures, but our own stories and the stories of women who surround us.
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How many girls and women do you hear say that their role models are other women? That they are inspired by women who didn’t achieve professional success as defined by the capitalist system?
I’ve heard many women say, “Oh, but I don’t have anything to say about myself; I’ve just been a mom all my life” or “I don’t do much; I only take care of children.”
“I was just a mom.”
“JUST-A-MOM.”
As if that were easy. As if it weren’t the sine-qua-non condition for the labour market and the system to continue existing.
My heart skips a beat every time I hear women say such things, whether they are from the previous generation or the current one. We need to address the invalidation of such an important role as being a mom, and how we feel our lives and stories are uninteresting because we haven’t produced tangible wealth.
It’s a bizarre contradiction for a society that is based on compulsory motherhood — the one that says and asserts that women are only complete if they are mothers (and one child is often considered too few!) — to make mothers believe that they haven’t created anything important in their lives if they haven’t produced economically, thereby denying them a place in history.
We don’t know the stories of the women in our families. We don’t value the stories of the women around us unless they hold prestigious positions or are making six figures.
Is it important to know the stories of CEOs and other women in leadership positions? Absolutely. It’s important to inspire girls and women. It’s important to have role models to look up to and aspire to occupy such spaces for building a more equal society.
And it’s also crucial to understand that a woman’s place isn’t necessarily where she wants to be, simply because there are many obstacles for women to occupy that place, especially when considering class and race. There is a game to be played. Understanding the patriarchal narrative and what we can do to subvert it is important.
In a world created by men and for men, many women have to shape their behaviours to typical masculine socialization patterns to survive. This often leads to mental health issues. It affects men as well, but here, I want to focus on the stories of women.
Who hasn’t heard that it’s difficult to work with women? When women display typically masculine behaviours, they are seen as difficult, whereas no one says this about men. Women are expected to be endlessly understanding, caring, and open.
If we want to move beyond invisibility, we need to start by making the women around us visible. This doesn’t mean sanctifying them or naturalizing the violence many of them perpetuate towards other women. It means recognizing that they are reproducing structural violence, patriarchal violence, and the oppressions to which they have been subjected. It’s not about forgiveness, but about visibility, about telling their stories.
We need to develop empathy because we have all been socialized to compete with other women, to speak ill of them, to cast them out. This has a social function and limits many possibilities for us.
What do/did the women around us want? What do/did they desire? What was/is allowed for them?
What is your story? If your life were a book, would you be the main character? Is this story truly yours?
Writing and living your own story doesn’t dishonour the stories of other women; it honours your own life and can, at some level, even liberate them. If it doesn’t liberate them, it will liberate YOU.
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and let these questions resonate without clinging to anything:
What story about myself do I want to tell?
What story would I like to be told about me for future generations?
What are you doing today that brings you closer to the story you want to tell?
Now open your eyes, write it down, and return to these answers every time you find yourself lost in a story that isn’t your own.
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