When I was growing up I was always told that there was no way I would go to college, there was no way I would stop living with my mother, and that I would never be successful. I think that hearing this for so long is one of the main reasons I am so adamant about feeling empowered and helping to empower those around me, especially women.
When I was growing up I felt like a nobody, I was just a dumb girl in a one bedroom cabin that I shared with my three brothers, dog, mother, and her addict boyfriend. It was horrid. We never had enough food to eat, I rarely had enough time to do my homework because I was always cleaning up the horrible place we lived in, and our clothes were never clean. I was regularly bullied because of how I looked, dressed, smelled, and who my parents were. But there was always this thought running through my head. Someday I was going to prove them wrong.
Someday I was going to show all of those girls who called me Anorexic that I could look normal, without my bones jutting out. I was going to show my mother that I wasn't worthless because I was a girl, that I could be smart and successful. I was going to show that nurse who regularly sent me back home for having head lice that I could come to school lice free someday. I was going to be pretty, and smart, and successful, and I was going to make a difference in this world and when people saw me in the news they were going to think to themselves, "I was wrong about her".
That's the goal. To make people realize that just because I am a girl, I am not less capable than them. Just because I am from a one bedroom cabin in the sticks, I am not stupid. We are not where we come from, we are where we go from there. I know that a lot of people excuse people failing in life because of how they were raised, or who their parents were, but I refuse to see that as an excuse. I don't want people to think that I couldn't make it through college because my mother never finished the eighth grade. When people start expecting less of us because we are women, we need to prove them wrong.
There are so many women in the world who did great things even though they came from nothing, and women who are continuing to do so. Since the beginning of time, women have been proving people wrong. When men said that women couldn't rule a country, Cleopatra proved them wrong and as the last true Pharaoh of Egypt USED the fact that she was a woman to keep her beloved country out of Roman hands until her death. Benazair Bhutto became a Prime Minister for Pakistan, and became the first woman in Pakistan to lead a major political party. When men said that women couldn't do math, Ada Lovelace, a mathematician, became the first computer programmer. Hedy Lamarr invented techniques for transmission that eventually made Bluetooth and WiFi technology possible. Whenever anyone says women can't do or be something, someone stands up and through their action states that yes, we can.
Looking at these women through history gave me hope of a future where I too would be able to inspire young girls to make for themselves a life where they are empowered and able to work and think for themselves. Anything is possible if we believe there is no limit to what we can do as a gender.
