NO MORE POWER WOMEN PLEASE!

I recently saw a wonderful sharing from the German Comedian Carolin Kebekus, which spoke to my heart and soul in many ways (video link in the comments).

Often we hear people describing some of us who are visibly successful in a way that fits into the society, “this is a real power woman!”

It is meant to be admiring. If someone says that about us, we might even be proud.

Carolin however shared about the impossibility and pitfalls of being framed as a power woman. On the one hand the expectations being connected to that, but also the separation it creates. If some of us are power women, what is with the rest, the "standard women"? Are they not powerful after all?

Similar to strength, the word power as in power women is misleading as a false virtue. Being powerful more often than not comes simply from the need to survive, sometimes even from Trauma. It is not a choice, it is a necessity, masked as a virtue, which on the other hand creates the need for safe places to allow ourselves to be weak, to allow ourselves to lean on someone, simply because no one can be strong all the time.

We go hiding in order to cry, curl underneath the blanket, because we can’t face the world with out "Shop Window Self" (credit to Jamie Catto for this term) as a power woman.

But the world doesn’t need more power women. The world needs more urgently women who are authentic in every aspect of their being.

I want to live in a world, where we can cry in public without being framed as hysteric or too emotional, where we can use mistakes as a matter of learning, without. Being scared, hat we will be judged as inadequate or not enough, a world where we can lean on someone’s shoulder not as a mean to regain strength to be able to face the world with a mask of strength, but because this is who we are as human beings.

Let's drop the notion of power women, and instead lets start to be human.

(photo credit Hakim Oki)