In Good Company

I usually write a poem dedicated to women each year during woman's day (you can view the poems here, here, here , here, here and here). The inspiration is usually our annual women's conference. The words usually come to me as I sit and listen to the various speakers throughout the conference. This year there was no conference so there was no poem. But that's not the only reason there was no poem.

This women's month has been a difficult one for me to celebrate, not only because I live in a country where being a woman is literally being an endangered specie, but because almost everything I thought I had managed as a woman just seemed to unravel over these past few months. I came face-to-face with my many short-comings in this time spent under lockdown. 

I have a fear of being criticised which makes me easily hurt and unecessarily defensive so you can imagine how this complicates my relationships. I realized how far this weakness was ruining things when I had a breakdown with my academic supervisor. A great part of her job is to scrutinize and critically analyse my work so that I submit work of unquestionable quality. Did your sister not have a meltdown because her every sentence was being put under the microscope? It also didn't help that my supervisor didn't mince her words.

I felt like I was being attacked every time we had a meeting and my confidence took such a knock that I wouldn't be able to even explain my work (which I knew quite well) because I had so much self-doubt. At some point, I started avoiding her calls because they always ended in tears for me. Needless to say, that deteriorated our relationship further. I just wanted to quit and walk away - my former go-to strategy for difficult situations. The confident, smart, driven woman I thought I was, was slowly fading away.

Then there were thoughts and feelings sparked by silly events, like the time I happened across the social media profile of my two-day-primary-school boyfriend. My sisters got such a good laugh as I retold how my two-day 'veldskool' relationship with my three-year crush ended because he had to ask his best-friend's girlfriend to be his girlfriend in order to test her loyalty for his best-friend *rolls eyes* (at least that's the explanation I got after inquiring why I was dropped like a hot potato). It's something so dumb and that  happened so many moons ago, but it made me think how that, and other events, somehow shaped how I saw myself in terms of being 'good enough' for certain people and certain positions. After all these years, I'm a woman who still struggles with self-doubt and comparison.

So it was difficult to celebrate, because I still have so much healing to do, healing from wounds I'm still struggling to acknowledge. I still have so many insecurities to sort through, so much self-doubt to overcome. I still have to improve on being fearlessly honest about what I think and feel. I still have to learn to unapologetically confront people when they've hurt me. I still have to break free from my unhealthy need for validation which makes me incapable of taking criticism and obsessed with pleasing others. I still have to learn to be okay with not getting things right, to be okay with asking for help. I still have to manage my finances better and be more financially independent...

I still have such a long way to go I get tired just thinking about it. But I find comfort in the women in the Bible who also had issues to fix. I find solace in how Sarah had to deal with the self-doubt at the root of her disbelief, in how Leah had to overcome her insecurites which had her trying to win a man's love. Then there's Rahab with her dishonesty, Naomi with her bitter pain, the woman at the well with her long list of failed relationships, Rachel with her jealousy, Miriam with her gossiping, Tamar with her disgrace, the widow at Zarephath with her hopelessness...I'm not alone. I'm in good company, the company of women who had a long way to go before becoming what God said they were.

What I'm learning is that I need not stop working on my short-comings, no matter how many times they pop-up. Yes, I will tire and not want to do anything about it at times, but I must not give up on the woman God says I am, the woman I really am. I must keep straining myself towards becoming her, no matter how long it takes me.

"I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press n to posses that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me." Philippians 3:12