International Women's Day - We are Enough!

Beth Jones Author

It’s International Women’s Day, and I’m sitting here wondering, “what can I do?” The message I want to share is that we are enough as women.

For the past 10 years, my business has been about supporting women. I’ve approached this in a number of different ways - pregnant women, postpartum women wanting to return to sport, women suffering from pelvic floor disorders, our teen and tween girls, and all of those looking to get unstuck, physically and mentally, so they can return to play.

The past year has been a lot of introspection for me and what message I want to bring to my business, and I think today is a great day to declare it.

As I look through the ideas on the IWD website, I love that so many of them are related to my message and vision, but there is something we’re not talking about.

I want to give women the power to take back their bodies and their health. 

What do I mean by this?

Ever since I started venturing on my own ten years ago, a big pain point for me was the fact the women are so singled out by the health industry when it comes to how we look. Our insecurities are taken advantage of, and we are marketing to using the goal of perfection, and it’s just unfair.

We’re told that we must be all things, and usually, this comes down to how we look and present ourselves to the world.

• Are we thin enough?
• Are we wearing the right clothes?
• Are we eating the right diet?
• Are we moving in the right way?
• Are our children conforming to all of the above?

These messages starting hitting me in middle school, long before the age of social media. For the past 30 years, I’ve been struggling with being good enough in the eyes of my peers and strangers alike. I’ve spent more money than I’d like to admit on diet programs, supplements, and the like trying to elevate myself to this level of perfection - and I’m done.

Furthermore, I don’t want my daughter to fall into the same patterns I was susceptible to. I want her to grow up comfortable in her body, knowledgeable in her health and movement options, and knowing herself as fully as possible. 

So, what message can I bring the International Women’s Day?

It is that we are enough as women.

We don’t need the diets, the pills, the high-priced gym memberships. All we need is to come inward and draw upon the foundations we were taught and the intuition that is that innate female power. 

If we don’t have those foundations, then we learn. Instead of throwing money at the 30-Day programs and magic supplements, we instead invest in a health or life coach to educate us and help to guide us to our goals in a way that sticks. If we are struggling mentally, we seek out a therapist to look at what is needed there. We find a community of women who supports who we are truly and wholly and not just the mast we’ve put on to fit in.

For me, I’m committed to building these foundations with our girls so that they can grow surrounded by the knowing and support as they move through the seasons of womanhood. That also means supporting their moms as we make shifts in our own mindset to silence the message that continues to bombard up even as we approach middle age.

As we move towards many of the other messages shared during International Women’s Day - gender equality, athlete equality, normalizing aging, and menopause, etc. - we must have that inner confidence that we are enough and we are powerful. 

Women have superpowers, and now is our time to use them. 

Let’s create a better space for our daughters to rise as confident leaders, stop the diet-culture messaging, and return to our roots of health.

Categories: : life balance