Empowering the Woman Within

Life is a journey. Often, while I was on that journey, I was not aware of the treasures that awaited me along the way. Of all those treasures, finding the keys that allowed me to empower the woman within was by far the most valuable.

The journey to discovering and empowering myself was sometimes a lonely path. During my teenage years, it was wrought by seemingly unbearable loss and tribulations. Many times, when I encountered these challenges, I felt utterly unprepared and powerless. Now, I know that those experiences were a part of God’s plan for my own empowerment.

When the path we take is one that leads to greatness, we may harbor anger towards those who didn’t hold us in high esteem along the way. We may hold resentment against those who only thought of themselves as they lived their lives. Those negative emotions, including feelings of rejection, can cause us to withdraw from others in an attempt to protect ourselves.  At the same time, it can cause us to become a people pleaser, not truly voicing our own opinion and allowing others to take advantage of us. I know because this is how I responded to the challenges in my own life before my empowerment. 

Isolating ourselves and people pleasing can work for a little while, but then we must be ready to move on to the next phase of the journey when the time comes; for we cannot bear the damage that ignoring ourselves deals.

One of the keys to empowering the woman within for myself was embracing my natural tendency to be kind to others and wanting to serve others. As with so many things in life, it is often our perspective that determines the quality of a thing. In this case, my changed perspective of my kindness and service to others transformed my people pleasing to empowering myself and other women. In order to do this, I had to learn the value of rejection and discernment.

Rejection can be like the pain you feel when your body is telling you something is wrong. It’s a signal telling us that either the person rejecting us is not for us, or that the manner in which we are seeing ourselves and that person may be skewed. I have learned that this has to do with our own sense of purpose and our commitment to that purpose. When we realize that we are here on Earth because of a personal plan that God has for us, we are able to garner the confidence and power needed to withstand rejection. Not only does this new awareness lift us above the storm clouds, but it also gives us the discernment to know who is for us and who is not; it gives us the ability and desire to find our tribe and empower one another.

Allow me to encourage you to continue in your own journey as you discover just how priceless and irreplaceable you are. Do not allow lack of support or anyone’s negativity to discourage you from doing your own inner work and empowering yourself. Forgive anyone in your past or present who may not understand the vision you have for yourself and your contribution to the world. And, if you have difficulty dealing with rejection, remember that sometimes rejection is just a signal for us to know that we need to adjust our direction or our approach. Some things are just not for us, and that’s okay.

Above all of this amazing development, we must first and foremost put our faith in God. Everything comes from Him, and without Him nothing is possible. And, if you work with God on empowering yourself and being a powerful representative of His, nothing is impossible for you!