Stepping into your 20s can be daunting and confusing. On the one hand, you’re left to grapple with the uncertainty of future aspirations while being catapulted into a world that continues to demand more of you. On the other hand, you may be faced with the realization that who you’ve been is not entirely who you want to become. For many women, life turns into a quest to find out who we are, what we really want, and what exactly is womanhood.
This desire to become can often be shrouded by media and societal expectations. We can subconsciously put ourselves in boxes: “this is what success looks like”, “this is the path that I should take, because everyone is taking it”, “this is what it means to be a man”, “this is what it means to be a woman”. The last statement is what I want to focus on: what it means to be a woman.
Ideas about womanhood are often given to us by society, our friends, and family members. For too long many of us allow external forces to dictate who we should become, what we should look like, what we should think, and how we should speak in order to be accepted and deemed worthy. This path neglects the fact that acceptance and worthiness is something that one must claim for oneself.
No one is allowed to decide what you are worth or what makes you worthy as a woman. It cannot be confined in the clothes that we choose to wear nor the way that we choose to style our hair. It is important to define for ourselves what womanhood is, because that is when we can truly step into all that we were created to be.
The spirit of the woman, just like the spirit of the man, is essential to healing the broken world that we live in. The problem is that true womanhood has often been covered by trivial externalities and vanities. Getting in touch with true feminine energy can heal generational curses, uplift communities, and foster environments of love and peace.
Womanhood is not marriage, it is not motherhood, it is not meekness, and it is not shame. It can be defined in many ways, but it is important that we do not attach it to other notions of being, such as motherhood or marriage. Although these modes of being may overlap, womanhood is a single experience and entity within its own right. Equating womanhood with motherhood or marriage can exclude and shame women who do not desire such things.
To me, womanhood is the embodiment of love. It’s gentleness, warmth and being nurturing. It’s lifting up the people around you: supporting, encouraging, and healing. It’s vulnerability, creativity, and self-expression. Womanhood is less about how you look and more about how you feel and how you make others feel while in your presence. It’s bigger than you, it’s bigger than us. Ultimately, womanhood is something only God, as Creator, can reveal and define.
I would love to hear what womanhood means to you, in the comments below!
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