I AM WOMAN - WHEN WILL I ROAR?

I wonder at what point in a woman’s life does she begin to feel that she has full knowledge of herself. Where she is self-assured and confident, knowing her likes and dislikes and she cannot be easily dissuaded from her convictions. I know that such comes with age and maturity, wisdom and life experiences, but I wonder if there is actually a magical moment when it just comes to her, so full and momentous that she has no doubts that she knows herself. When there is a full blessing of contentment. When it just is what it is.

I still muddle through much self-doubt. It comes in waves and has on occasion been so debilitating that it has left me wondering whether or not I would ever survive it. I question my purpose in life. Why am I here? What am I meant to be doing? Am I truly fulfilling my destiny? Then I question whether or not I’m being selfish. If my many accomplishments should be enough and if so, why am I so discontented?

I follow in the footsteps of my mother, and her mother, and all the women in our family who’ve led the way. We have an outward face that meets and greets the public. It smiles. It is more times happy than not happy, and rarely will it show any discontent. Our trials and tribulations have never been on public display. We don’t carry our “stuff” out into the world with us. It’s left at home, behind closed doors, where no one will ever know it exists. Lord knows we could be a complete and total mess once we get home, but no way in hell will anyone know such about us once we ease past that front door. It has at times been a deception that we ourselves haven’t even owned the full truth of.

I am a mother, a wife, a lover, an author, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and yet I still do not know who I am. I am still searching for myself, still curious to learn about me, to see the woman I have yet to be, to fulfill all that I am challenged to accomplish. And although I would readily admit to liking most things about myself, I know that I don’t love me nearly as much as I should.

I have doubts and I imagine that safeguarding that secret from those who know me does me a greater disservice than if I were to just allow myself that moment of exposure and vulnerability. I’m anxious to get to that moment when I know myself. Fully and completely. When the woman who exposes herself to the outside world is the same woman when that world is no longer watching. When I have a full blessing of contentment. When it is just what it is.