Empowerment - What Does It Mean To You?

Even if there wasn’t a word for it, it’s something you should care about. Because it's all about you. Its something I am super passionate about, and I want to share that with you.

Let me share a little about me and I hope this will make sense to you why I care about empowerment. You see I've mostly always lived against the grain. I was a home educated child, and now home ed my children. So from very early on, I heard the beliefs of others of what was the ‘right’ thing to do. In their opinion.  Everyone has opinions and that is great, but it doesn’t mean they should all be the same. I took my GCSEs early, and my A-Levels because I was ready to.  (I love learning and I loved the A grades even more 😂)

I have got to give some of the credit to those folk who told my mother and my family that home ed was not the right choice because they made me even more determined to prove them wrong.

Then throughout my career, there have been people telling me what I can and cannot do. Because I was a woman. Because I was not white. Because I was short. Because my hair was a mess. Because I was tubby. Because I was pregnant. Then because I had children.

So many reasons OTHER people were telling me what I could not achieve. And so I stopped sharing my ideas. I was embarrassed about having a dream, about having a business. About being successful, because there would ALWAYS be someone telling me otherwise.  So I used to shut down. Keep everything to myself. Literally everything. All emotion, all hopes and dreams. Hiding behind an invisible wall.

The thing is though, all that schit chat had buried itself into my self-image. That core component that runs this human being. The programming had made the self-image believe a load of crap, about the world, about life, about ME. I believed it.

Your self-image is your core component my darling, and you have got check if it needs refurbishing.

Let me tell you for certain, I CAN do whatever the bloody hell I want to do. If I set my mind to it I can. I have a track record of that. Physical evidence that I can, so I need to be my own cheerleader. Not in an arrogant, “I’m the dogs boll@cks” kind of way, the world does not need any more of those folk.

But in a realistic way, that is satisfactory to me. In a way that allows me to grow that little bit stronger every day. Becoming more confident and capable, and being KIND. So kind that on those days when I can t be bothered, or it feels too hard, I can breathe and know I will come right back to it as soon as I possibly can.

THAT is what empowerment is to me.

I know I am not the only person who has been shelved or limited in a certain way. I’m probably one of the lucky ones. I know there are those of you out there who hear this from partners or family, and so-called friends as well. But I need you to know you do matter. You DO Matter. Your Ideas ARE valid.