Make Your Own Waves

I was inspired to write on this topic after reading this post by Adrienne Sandvos over at the LightHouse Women’s blog.

 “Instead of appreciating each other’s beauty, we need to feel like we are surpassing it in order to feel comfortable in our own skin.”

Adrienne makes such a strong point here at the way women’s thought processes quite often automatically goes into a negative gear even when we know nothing else about the other girl except the way she looks.

Sometimes I think we forget that we were all made differently and that if we really did look like our own (or societies own) unrealistic ideals we would all be clones and very, very boring clones to say the least.

To be honest I have been a culprit of being completely threatened by other girls many times. Mostly, these ladies are the most incredible people, especially once I took the time to get to know them.

Sometimes our competitive streak goes beyond beauty and we can get to thinking that other women are more talented or ambitious or intelligent as well as more beautiful than you. This is a dangerous thought path to go through. It highlights our own insecurities in ourselves and also may mean we miss out on the opportunity to befriend incredible and inspiring women.

My confessional story of this nature, I am ashamed to say is from within the last two years. My boyfriend’s sister is just over two years younger than me, is at uni doing the same course I did and is beautiful, funny and has an amazing personal style. Not to mention her incredible photography and editing skills.

It took me a long time to feel like I could call her friend as I always felt threatened by her, I think perhaps because we have so much in common that maybe deep down I somehow thought she would outshine me. It was nothing she ever did openly towards me but my own insecurities that drew the line in the sand as if we were in competition.

The craziest thing about my thought process is that she is the one person in the world that I shouldn’t ever need to compete with. She is my boyfriend’s sister for goodness sake (and potentially a future sister-in-law for me). Once I got this through my head we were able to become closer and I began to see the amazingly unique differences that made her inspiring to me and I let go of the competition I was having in my own head!

Women are amazingly beautiful and empathetic creatures and there is no need for us to be in competition with each other, whether it is because of beauty or skills or intelligence. There is no excuse for our sometimes catty actions other than personal insecurities. God made us all unique for a reason. The only way we should now act is to learn to love ourselves and admire and celebrate each other.

Let us stop putting each other down or holding friendships back. Let’s rise up together for we are women and therefore we are all winners.