Build Bridges to self - Connect to your ROAR!
Do you remember the first time you felt inadequate? The first time you were told you were not good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, demure enough, quiet enough etc. These memories often date back to childhood, and though you have since grown up, she hasn’t. That little girl still is. insecure, unsure, convinced of the words of her teacher. Even though you are grown up, these voices continue to tell you who you are.
I thought I was not good with languages. I had failed French all throughout secondary school. Why? Because a French teacher told me in an aggressive manner that I would never be good enough.
Many years later I went on to learn 5 languages including French, German and Chinese.
Why do I share this? To illustrate the power of the voice of the other over us. I could easily have gone a lifetime believing her words and in believing, allowing it become my truth.
Many of us go a lifetime having internalized these untruths as our reality. This was my story. A struggle to conform to expectations. A struggle to reconcile, to be liked. Which sometimes meant dismissing my intuition — of my truth — listening instead to the external clues
This disconnect left unchecked has dangerous side effects that lead to the repeated argument, that women pull each other down. Do we pull each other down because someone somewhere pulled us down and we never learned to pull ourselves up?
The first step to reclaiming our truth is to build bridges to self and not walls that keep us trapped in believing what ‘the other’ tells us we are.
Do we know how to clear the path for the bridge to self?
Following years of working with hundreds of women across Africa, I came to the realization that there is a needed for space to support women on their journey of bridge building connecting the personal, to the emotional and to the professional. Hence why I founded She ROARs — Reimagining Our Africa Rising.
At She ROARs, we connect you to your whole. We give you the tools you need to build your own bridge and liberate yourself and the little girl inside of you that thought she couldn't.
“There is no profound transformation which can take place unless it involves precisely those who have been oppressed massively to be engaged because they have to liberate themselves to liberate others.” — Graça Machel, international advocate for women and child rights