Happy International Women’s Day!

TODAY’S BREW: Hawaiian Chocolate Nut from Marylou’s News, the best local coffee place you’ll ever meet.

By Julie

International Women’s Day has become one of my favorite holidays. Real quick, I’ll tell you some of what it means to me:

Nothing Can Stop Me. For instance, when I redid the kitchen in epic Julie vs. Apartment proportions a few years ago ALL BY MYSELF. All of it. Stripping the horsehair walls, taking down and sanding the veneer off the cabinets, climbing on top of the fridge with a flashlight to strip the wallpaper and paint the cabinet fixtures, painting up high, down low, putting tracks in the slapped-together drawers, with my own toolbelt and having done all the supply shopping… And those few cabinets that I “couldn’t get up alone…” Yeah. I got them up all alone. I was the master of the universe.

I don’t have to do anything to celebrate it. No presents to buy, no cuisine to prepare, nobody to please but myself. No change to my “routine” at all–because this is a day to realize that everything we as women do is worth celebration. WE ARE FORCES OF NATURE.

We are burdened with glorious purpose every minute of our lives. And we handle that shit like champs. EVERYTHING we do matters, and not just in the you-are-special-because-you-are-you way. And it’s not just because you’re a mom, if you’re one of those–though for me it’s the first thing that comes to mind. Everything we do matters. We’re big picture promoters. Our choices in how we treat other women in casual interaction matters! The eye contact you make at the grocery store, the way you listen, the way you do or do not judge, the way you hold your head up, all of it matters to the big picture. We aren’t afraid to change everything. We aren’t afraid to grow. We aren’t afraid to be wrong, to make mistakes, to be ourselves when the world tells us from birth that what we are is THIS ONE THING. We are the definition of “big picture.”

We don’t have to be demure, sweet, and/or “beautiful.” WE define our identities. We make the standard and then we tear it down. Beauty is what we think it is. And it is what we celebrate in others. It’s what makes us stronger together. It is also the fact that I feel most beautiful in sweatpants and a tanktop with mascara and lipstick. It’s the fact that I feel beautiful when I’m lifting heavy-as-hell stuff and driving the pallet jack at the Warehouse Job. It’s how I feel when I’m writing and when I’m out on the porch listening to the birds and digging in plant dirt and giving my lizards a bath. Beautiful is what I think of myself when I see the silver hairs and I leave them just like that. The most beautiful thing I can think of is being unique and appreciating what stands out.

Whatever International Women’s Day means to you, I hope it makes you happy today! Be you, be proud, be the master of all things great and small.