Comments on: The stories we tell ourselves

By: Bebhinn

Bebhinn — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:33:35 +0000

I love this post, it is very powerful in turning around that myth that we must be saved. We must reframe our thoughts. Indeed, we should be our own knights. Even the strongest women I know succomb to this myth that a man will make everything alright for them. It’s almost in the dna, it is so inherent in us. It is time we started to take care of ourselves. As pointed out in a previous response, I don’t think it is that men hold us back, as women, I think we hold ourselves back. We are our own worst enemies sometimes, and particularly when we have relationships with men. This is our Achilles heel. Let’s start being our own knights in shining armour!

By: ElinAnna

ElinAnna — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:27:07 +0000

Karen, thank you for sharing your story. Let me know if there is anything I can help you with on your new journey. It is never to late to start on a new path. Make sure that you sign up for my free newsletter and e-course so you can attend any teleclass I have on this very subject. The sign-up is in the upper right hand corner of my blog.

Love and peace,
ElinAnna

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:44:28 +0000

This is a great post, very true. I am a middle-aged woman who was taught from childhood that my “career path” would be to grow up and hope to marry a successful man to support me. While I was waiting for the “one”, I was encouraged to be a secretary or work in some other administrative position. I always hated the idea, so when I was in high school, I asked my mother to help me gain financial aid for college. Well she almost hit the roof — in part because they didn’t have the money to send me to college so I should just let it be and not start trouble, and 2) a college education would be wasted when I most likely would “get married and “have babies.” I felt suffocated, angry and frightened. I had so many hopes and dreams but I bought into the lie my family fed me. Well, “Mr. Right/White Knight/Piggy Bank” came along for 15 minutes of married life and left me in worse financial shape than before.

I spent years doing menial office work (not that I consider all office work menial, I do not. There is merit in every job) and all while dreaming of my true path … a career where I could use my intelligence and whatever God-given talents I possessed to do something I really loved. During the years spent years working in an office, I was “used and sometimes abused” all because I was working willingly and knowingly working under my capabilities, therefore having my supervisors “dump” more and more work and responsibilities on me simply because I could do it (and do it very well) while still accepting a meager paycheck. I was hesitant and afraid to ask for raises, or the salary I was worth within that capacity. I became like a hamster on a wheel — working just to survive and pay the rent, and most of the time, barely doing that. I am now pushing 50 and I have hit a brick wall. I finally get it. I’m swimming upstream, but as they say – you cannot change what you do not acknowledge as the truth.

This is a wonderful website. Thank you.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:14:49 +0000

Hi Elín Anna,
Thanks for this post. It’s so true that we women have been known to wait to be “rescued” or even just helped by someone else. Especially those of us who are a bit older and grew up in the dawn of feminism.

I grew up with lots of myths: men should pay for everything, women aren’t smart enough to handle money, women *should* earn less, what we women do is less valuable than what men do. And of course, I think that men perpetuate that image because it would be scarey if all those powerful women out there came in to their own. I’m not saying that I think men keep us down as much as I say men buy into the picture just as we have. It is a rare man out there who encourages a woman to compete with him.

I think attitudes really can be changed. But you have to practice it. At first it feels funny to say “I’m great with money,” but I think if we were to say that every day several times a day, we would eventually begin to believe it and the actions we take would change to make it true.

Keep up the good work. Great articles.