The women I am

Reba McEntire has a new album coming out called, “All the Women I am.” The second I heard this title I started thinking about all the women I am. Although we carry our natural-born temperament and personality traits with us our entire life- the people that come in and out of our life sand down our edges and help the molding process we call growth.

All the women I am?

I am my mother. Oh my word am I my mother. I talk like her. I walk like her. We have the same freckle pattern on our right arms. I have been told my whole life how much I remind people of her. “Mini-Kathleen”. There is no greater compliment. My mother is friendly, kind, and compassionate without being sickingly sweet and naïve to the world around her. She is smart and determined, but she is content and humble. She is a warrior when it comes to my sister and I. There is not one second of the day that I feel alone or un-protected. I have my mother. She is my biggest fan and it is because of her I am not afraid to chase my dreams. My mom loves Jesus. I love Jesus because I grew up watching Him transform my mother. If she was the only woman I mentioned in this list, she would more than enough. If I grow up to be half the woman she is I will have succeeded.

I am my sister. I adore her. It is quite obvious from the amount of blogging/talking/worrying I do about her that she is my baby. She isn’t a baby anymore. She is 23 and beautiful and a talented hair dresser and more sarcastic than I am, but every time I look at her I see the girl who almost bit her lip off she was so determined to beat me in tetherball. It is difficult to explain the correlation, but because of her I know I am capable of unconditional love. Of empathy. Of compassion. There isn’t another human being on this earth I love more than her, and when I get in one of my weird moods where I wonder if I will ever be able to get, and stay, married and have kids, or if I will end up alone because I love my dreams more than I will ever love a person, I think of her, and I know I will. She was my battle buddy in the war of growing up and I know, no matter how much I might think no one understands me, that girl does, and she loves me anyways.

I am Carolyn. Everyone should have a best friend that stands in front of them like a reflection in a mirror. I jokingly tell her all the time, “If I had a friend like you growing up I probably wouldn’t be half as screwed up as I am now.” But I am not kidding. She gets it. We grew up with the same insecurities, fears, and frustrations. When we are on our runs and we're talking about, well, everything, I know there is nothing I can say that she won’t understand. She tells me when I am being a complete idiot, but she stands beside me anyways.She has taught me to be me. That it's okay to wear jeans and tennis shoes and feel like a supermodel. I have been a hot mess since I came into that woman’s life and she has remained in my corner.

I am Shee. Shee sees the world differently. She sees art in everything. She is emotional and raw and okay with that. I start out writing a two sentence text and before I know it I have to write an email because the words come spilling out. She loves poetry, she loves photography, she loves art, she loves fashion, she loves make-up, and she loves hip-hop. She is me and I am her. She says what I am thinking before I do. Not because she read my mind or knows me well enough to know what I am going to say, but because she is thinking the same thing. It is crazy cosmic weird. She is everyone’s friend, but she stands alone. She is inspiration and I am reminded of my eighth grade self sitting on my bed writing poetry about who knows what in a brown journal with animals on the front my Grandfather got me from the zoo. The girl inside me that loves all the things Shee loves, and is honestly quite good at it, died in an eating disorder years ago, but she has been reincarnated in the past few months and Shee has been a large part of that. I would love to spend one day of life looking through her lens.

I am Merit Malloy. When I was in eighth grade my love affair with poetry began. My mother was given Merit Malloy’s poetry collection by a friend of hers when she was around the age I am now and she let me read it. Merritt and her husband took all the photos in her books and I was entranced. This woman that I never met wrote about things I didn’t understand but I just knew I wanted to. This woman was beautiful and mysterious and yet her whole life was poetically displayed in these books. She was a lady and I wanted to be that. I loved her for a different reason. Reading those books and realizing there were problems and issues and heartaches outside of junior high was a monumental moment for me. I realized my mom was actually a woman and not just a mom. Up until that point I thought my mom’s life was on temporary pause while I was at school or busy with my friends and that it reconvened when I was back; but after reading this poetry I realized she was a person. It occurred to me she must have cried when she got divorced, or fallen in love, or been insecure, or had her feelings hurt, or been betrayed, or any of the number of things women feel. That was a turning point for me. My mother has asked for those books back before, but I honestly can’t say I will ever give them back. They are my connection to her in a weird way and I have grown up experiencing a new level of understanding every time I turn those pages.

I am my grandmother. We do not speak anymore. We haven’t since my high school graduation day. I do not miss her, to be completely honest; but I know that’s the hurt talking. I am her because she loved my grandfather, and I adored that man.  I worry the way she does. Always have. We both worry about things that we have nothing do with. We worry for the sake of worrying. I love her, and I worry about her.

I am Ethlyn Gaylord. She is my Dad’s grandmother. She passed last year, and there is a void in me. I looked up to her, and I valued her (sometimes rather rude) opinion. She told it like it was, without hesitation, but being the passive person I can be I admired that so much about her. She built a fortune for herself through pure genius and hard work, and she did it in a time when women didn’t work at all, let alone own businesses. I would sit in her house for hours and listen to her reminisce until she fell asleep. She would tell me about dates she went on to speakeasies during prohibition, her first car, her first business, her trips all over the world, and I hung on to every word. She was artistic, religious, funny, sharp as hell, witty and beautiful. She was the “well rounded” person your mother makes reference too when you complain about having to do the dishes. (“Just do them it will make you a well rounded person one day). People would often tell me in front of her that I was, “so tall, you should model,” and without doubt every single time, I could count on her saying, and “she is too smart to model”. She taught me I can do absolutely anything I want to do, that the only thing standing in between me and my dreams is myself. I adored her, and I miss her.

I am the Golden Girls. This might seem ridiculous to you, however it makes complete sense to me.  I grew up with this show. I can remember watching it my grandfather's house. It makes me smile everytime I remember sitting on his lap, listening to him laugh and smelling his morning coffee. I was safe then. Watching that show connects me to him again. I watched it when I was living with my ex-husband- I would be sad, I would feel alone, but I would put that show on and feel connected to my family, my home, and I would be okay. I still watch that show, almost everyday; but those women feel like family to me. I have so many memories with that show it's more than television. It keeps my grandpa alive, it keeps my childhood close, it is home.

I am you.  I am every woman that is worried about her weight. I am every woman that is torn between career and family. I am every woman that sleeps with the TV on as a way to quiet her brain. I am the woman CEO; I am the woman transient that made a few bad decisions. I am the divorced woman, and I am the woman waiting for love. I am the strong woman who survives anything, and I am the scared woman who needs her mom when she’s sick. I am the woman with the eating disorder, and I am the woman with enough confidence to go days without wearing make-up. I am the woman marathon runner, and I am the woman who would rather shop the work out. I am the woman that avoids her reflection; I am the woman that stares at herself in her rearview mirror. I am the friend, I am the sister, I am the boss, the co-worker, the daughter. I am you. And you are me.