These are the parts of me.

I see it all the time. People tearing themselves apart because of what other people say or think about them.  I say there are two words for situations like this. Fuck you.

I never say that in my blog, and I seldom say it out loud except for special situations, but I say it often and always, and always with a smile on my face.  It’s like taking a deep breathe and exhaling for the first time.  It’s that good.

I am not angry at anyone or anything.  I don’t wish bad things for anybody. I do believe in accountability and I do believe in karma.  But beyond that, judgement is not up to me.  What is mine is the ability to not carry other people’s garbage on my own back, and not take it into my life.

That is a practice in itself, because somewhere in the journey of women, we became the mules of our lives, and I believe it is self inflicted. I believe we do it to ourselves when we accept other people’s garbage and carry it as if it were our own.

I too have tended to carry other people’s garbage around. I worry about my daughters, and worry about our daughters collectively. I worry that we are about to round the corner to 2015 and nothing has changed since the turn of the century where women are concerned.  Everything else has changed beyond imagination. The way we communicate, the way we live, work, do business . . . but the way we treat our women has not.

I remember one day in my corporate career I challenged one of my male bosses by asking him, “If I were over 200 pounds would we be having this conversation?” He replied, “No.”

At least he had the guts to tell me the truth - that the parts of me were more important than the person that I am, my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations, my pain and my joy.

There is no point in wishing and saying “if only”.  There is no “if only”, because I learned that the only person who makes “if only” happen is  me.

It’s a question of capacity.  If we carry other people’s garbage around in our heads and hearts, they are taking up space that we will never get back.  Time is like that. It passes and its gone.

And so it comes back to my favourite words.  Fuck you.  Say it out loud when you must in extreme situations where time is of the essence, but develop a practice of saying it in your mind, and with a  smile on your face always.

Think of it as healthy defiance.  It’s normal and natural. It’s how we grow. How we resist status quo.  Walk against the traffic in our lives and in our minds.  No living thing has every survived without defiance.  Not ever.