Cultivating

feminism

The Journey - 2024

This is an open journal about my journey exploring feminism.

1.19.24 - So today is the birthday of one of my college friends. Happy Birthday, Jess! Her and I are cut from the same cloth. Maybe our souls journeyed together in the past? Either way, we don’t talk often, but there is such a love and understanding that we just know and can support each other. I really think I could ask her to help me with a cover-up or burn a bridge or something like that, and she’d say, “We ride at dawn! You bring the beer,” or something. But this type of friendship is what the life is about. It is about deeply connecting with souls. It’s about knowing who has your back, who you would call in the darkest time. I always wanted to write a novel about us as two of the main characters. Maybe because we have always both struggled to be the heroine in our own lives. But damn, we are funny and worth a good storyline! Someday, Jess, we will be the center of a universe I make up.

It might’ve also taken us both until almost 46 to realize our worth. But we are both on a journey of fully embracing our time left! We will be the funniest, healthiest, most emotionally intelligent Golden Girls ever! We will travel the world, go on adventures, let our husbands spoil us, or watch and shake their heads from afar. We will heal others, heal ourselves, and let our lights shine!

The essence of feminism is those connections among and between women. It is the tightly woven net that keeps the world secure and whole. A type of love that has deep roots that intertwine. The kind of support system that doesn’t look intimidating surface-level, but the depth makes it impossible to shake. Love and kindness are the center of feminism! It is cheering for other women to embrace their joy, journey, and beauty. It is realizing that a world where we all shine, where books are written about all of us, is the most beautiful world!

I love you, Jess; thanks for always believing in me! Happy Birthday!

1.17.24 — We are seventeen days into the new year - into 2024. I am not quite settled in my seat for this journey. But I realize I have been silent on this for a while. That doesn’t mean I’ve been living a life of leisure. I have been living a life of balance or lack of balance. I have been trying to start new things, take better care of myself and those around me, work, sleep, drink water, take vitamins, and focus on meaningful things, and I am exhausted! Did I mention I also started another blog on the other business/movement I am building?

I want to do ALL the things, be ALL the things, and succeed at ALL the things. And there are days when I feel like I am juggling knives on fire, and there are days I feel like I am not enough. But I still want ALL of it. But I am humbling, accepting I am still just a mere human, and I may not be able to do it all right now.

I am going to shift this project into a bit more relaxed. I will try briefly to jot down my feminist thoughts of the day, and then I’ll move on to my next project. I may not get as in-depth as I want, but I still very much think of everything through the lens of feminism.

So, I started with something that circled back into view over the weekend. The movie, “Barbie.” Honestly, when I first heard about the film, I didn’t want to see it. I thought, what could I possibly want to see that for? Like I was above it. Like, I had risen above Barbie and the whole perfectionist ideal. I saw it and, as you can imagine, I loved it. I loved it because it gave me a glimpse at the world I have been chasing with my feminist ideals. A world where even weird Barbie is embraced and valued (not at the beginning).

And I am not surprised that some people don’t see value in it. Some see it as a desperate, sad narrative we women have to keep telling ourselves so that we might feel bitter and sad enough to be grateful they let us out of the house to see the light of day. If we didn’t “keep complaining and bringing up equity,” we’d be content to stay where we’ve been placed.

But as long as jokes will be made to minimize the stories of women and eyes rolled at another “angry woman” making billions, the story of the essence of what Barbie has to say will remain relevant. It is only when ALL girls, women, and fems of all ages, backgrounds, races, religions, and ethnicities watch the movie and do not hear or see their own stories, struggle, hopes, or dreams -- that no one in the world can identify with any of the underlying messages can we say “Barbie is just a movie about a doll with plastic boobies.”