Hello beautiful soul
We have never been this version of "woman" before, so is it any wonder that some parts of it feel hard...?
I want you to sit with that for a moment before we go anywhere else.
Never. This version. Before. Ever.
To illustrate that a little, let me take you back.
Before the structures that we now call "normal" were built, before the systems and the hierarchies and the rules about who gets to lead and who gets to speak and whose wisdom counts — there were women who were oracles. Women who were revered for their connection to the cycles of the earth, to the rhythms of the body, to the kind of knowing that does not come from a spreadsheet or a boardroom or a five year plan.
Women who were trusted with the deep and powerful things.
And then something shifted. Gradually, and then all at once, that power that we wield became threatening. And what gets threatened gets controlled. And so the squishing began. Slowly, systematically, across centuries and cultures and continents.
In a world where men find new things to fight about with each other every single day, somehow — on a global scale — they have all managed to agree on the oppression of women.
To varying degrees. But oppression nonetheless.
Let that land. They will fight wars over borders of land, and the "wrongs" that they feel the other countries create, but somehow those foes are all in alignment that women should be subservient.
And before anyone thinks this is ancient history — look around. Right now, in Afghanistan, women cannot leave their homes without a male guardian. Cannot work. Cannot be educated past a certain age. Cannot exist in public life at all.
I pray for freedom and safety for all my sisters around the world every single day.
And before you think that couldn't happen where you are, here in America, reproductive rights have been stripped back in ways that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. There are voices — growing, organised voices — suggesting that women relinquish their political power to the men in their households.
I do not say this to frighten you, I say it because I think it is important that we see it clearly. In the 1970's the women of Afganistan had a lot more freedom than they do today.
But I also think — and I believe this with everything I have — that what we are witnessing is not a resurgence. It is a last gasp. The dying grip of a structure that can feel the ground shifting beneath it.
Because here is what is also true.
We did the stay at home thing. We were called out of the home and into the workforce and we did that thing too — brilliantly, at cost, often while still doing the home thing simultaneously because nobody actually replaced us there. We tried to do all of it and found it, predictably, absolutely exhausting.
And now we find ourselves standing at the bottom of a mountain.
And the mountain is called freedom. The mountain is called actual sovereignty. The mountain is called the chance to be part of co-creating a system that actually works — not just for women, but for everyone. For children. For the futures we are all going to have to live inside.
People are starting to talk more and more about the matriarchal — and I want to be clear about what I mean by that because it is not what the threatened voices say it is. It does not mean for women instead of men. It means centring care. Centring future generations. Centring the kind of wisdom that has always known how to tend to what matters.
That is not radical. That is ancient. We just forgot it and got confused for a while.
I was thinking about all of this recently when I was supporting my friend and client Mandy Nyarko — a formidable CEO — with a leadership offsite for her whole company. Not an all-women room. A whole company room. People at every level, every background, coming together to think about how they lead.
And I kept thinking — this is what it looks like.
THIS is the thing. Not leadership development just for the people at the top. Not a program just for women. But the understanding that when all of us learn to lead ourselves — to stand with straight spines, to know our own values, to move through the world with some sovereignty — everything changes. The whole system starts to shift from the inside.
Motherhood was not my path in this life. And most days I have made my peace with that, though sometimes that soft sadness comes (IYKYK on that one ❤️). So I think a lot about what it means to stay in my big sister/aunt energy. To keep holding out a hand. To keep showing up in rooms — all kinds of rooms — and saying this is possible. You can lead from here. You can be this version of yourself and it is enough and it is more than enough and it is actually what we need.
Because we have never been this version of woman before.
Not the stay at home version. Not the lean in version. Not the have it all version that broke so many of us in the trying.
This version. The one standing at the bottom of the mountain. The one who has done enough dissolving to know what she is made of. The one who is done waiting for permission and ready to start co-creating.
That is you. That is who is reading this right now.
And I do not think it is an accident that you are here.
Women Who Lead exists for this moment. For the woman who can feel something shifting — in herself and in the world — and wants to be part of what comes next. Not just surviving it. Shaping it.
The September group is ALREADY forming and I haven't even officially launched it yet. If something in this landed for you set up a call with me here. Let's talk about what your next chapter looks like and what it might mean for the world you are helping to build. Just hit reply and we will arrange time to talk.
You were never the problem, but baby, you are part of the solution.
Rooting for you always
Ruth x
Responses