womanhood: ARE YOU HAPPY BEING A FEMALE?

​ARE YOU HAPPY BEING A FEMALE?

What a question for the first blog post! Nevertheless, how do you take that question? Have you ever taken that thought and reality of being born a female as something you are happy about thus make you also to feel proud about it, confident with your femininity, excited about your naturally more nurturing side, accept the hormonal challenge of your monthly cycle, and so on. If you do feel them, that is a sign that you embrace your female identity in a more positive direction. However, I bet you may have also experienced one or more from these situations that I'm going to share next. You are more restricted from going out alone than that of your brothers. You are expected to do more house chores. You are told to focus on kids and quit your career. I can feel you and I'm sorry that we've to be limited in some sense because of our gender.

​Now, I'm not going to list things people should or shouldn't do to female. That's not my intention for this article. Neither is it to compare whether being a female or male is better for you and me. No. We don't want to live in such a way that we get stuck in wanting something we aren't. That's not helping. We want to live thriving as we accept what is, see the potentials we can be and move towards discovering, learning, adapting, desiring, mastering, sharing and helping others along the way. 

First thing first. Gratitude. 
Gratitude is such a good ground for thriving life. When you are grateful, it can be pictured as your arms are wide open. It's a welcoming posture. You are at peace. No one owes you anything or is to be blamed for your situation. You are calm and relax. Try this. Thing about something you are grateful for, right now. And say it as you mean it. Not agreeing in your thought and mind only but also agreeing with your heart. Pay attention what happened after saying that. Your body feels less tense, am I right?

Next, have you ever expressed your gratitude (to your Maker) for making you as female? I may not know your story. You may have endured so many hardships because you are a female in your family, workplace, community, society, or even country. Tough, it can be tough being a female in this unjust world. However, I want to tell you, you are not punished because you are created a female. There is society that put males before females. I grew up in Chinese culture and I understand how it feels. But, even the culture treats females are less important, I'm telling you again, you and I aren't less because of what the culture tells us. 

We are helper.
The original idea of the female design, dated back to the initial creation of world and human beings, is to make the female a helper to the male. The word helper here doesn't mean like a servant in this modern society, or how we called our housemaid. The helper in the idea of the Creator is someone equal to assist the male counterpart. It is a complementary design, neither better nor less. It is a different design but would function as a team (couple) to make the world a better place. I hope the word(s) that you'll use to describe male and female is no longer a comparison who's better or less, but more directed to how different they are. The word 'different' helps us to frame our perspective. We should then be more flexible to accept the ideas that male and female don't always have to be the same, such as play the same role, have the same career achievement, work in the same industry, etc. It's okay that they are different because they are naturally created distinctively. And, that's very good. 

I know some of you would may question in your heart "Well that's ideal, but in reality and practice, is it even possible?" I feel you. So many things in life doesn't go perfectly as how it is supposed to be. For example, a single parent may have to play double role as a mother and a father for the kids. And, this is how I'd want to respond when you face situation in which you don't see it quite plausible to live fully as how you are designed. I want to encourage you to be patient. Knowing how we are designed to be yet living it out a different way to how we are designed in this present time is going to cause some tension within you. However, in your best effort, slowly and steadily work out the re-orientation to your design as much as you can. Nobody is going to be perfectly living according to her design in this world. This is plain truth. Therefore, don't be disappointed when you find yourself are still at a distance from where you should be. The good news is we know how we are designed and our design is meant for a purpose - complementing. 

Focus on what you've been created with.
Scientists have talked a lot about how different male and female anatomy are. Male and female brain aren't wired the same. If you are interested on this topic and want to dig deeper, you can do research on your own away from this blog. Going forward with the understanding that we are different, now we want to look further into what is special about our female design. 

Women are better in showing empathy. Women has the capacity to sense emotional cues than men in general. Therefore, a child would normally run to their mother to seek comfort because a mother would offer a hug and make the child feel ten times better. A father would probably focuses on causes and rationalize why the child need comfort. Imagine if everyone of us has only dad in our lives. Can you quickly think of what could have been missing hadn't mum been in your lives?

Women are better in multitasking. If you are or have been or have seen someone who is a mother with young child as a full-time caregiver and housewife, you can imagine the almost seem like endless list the mum has for everybody else - the husband, the child, the other children if any, and herself. Men would be amazed with our capacity in multitasking. We are equipped with this capacity according to our design in child-bearing. 

And of course many more. The world needs some feminine touch to make it a better place. A female finds it natural to organize the house and seeks way to beautify it with some color coordination for example. An office space will look and feel different when there's one female colleague in that room. Maybe the pantry will look different because instead of forever being in the store-bought packaging, now the sugar is re-organized nicely in an airtight jar. 

I love womanhood and I celebrate it. A world with women in it is intended to make it better for men and for the world. Let's embrace and cherish our female design. 

Reflection.
1. Have you always appreciate being born a female?
2. Which character of female design that stands out to you the most?
3. Would you live more purposefully as a female for your family, workplace, society?
​