Blessed I am among women.

My Wonder Women

Hey tribe! 👋🏽

How are y’all doing?

It was international women’s day yesterday so in that spirit I am dedicating today’s post to women everywhere (especially to Miss C who is a constant support and "encourager", particularly on this blog matter. Thank you babe for helping me evolve into the best version of me 😘)

“Blessed among women” this is how my male friends in secondary school sometimes referred to me. I have been blessed among women indeed and so I always wear that reference with pride (although I suspect they made the reference to somehow shame me for being a way they considered to be feminine and for getting along with the female folk) I was also called “woman wrapper” a lot as a much younger kid, especially when I’d be playing in groups with boys and girls and I’d care about what the girls thought, how they felt, and even seek to support them to take the lead on how we should play without being ashamed of following a “girl”. This always made the boys in my play group upset. To them I was weak, because, “why should a girl lead?” I didn’t understand it then, and I haven’t since. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t weak or a “woman wrapper” for seeking fairness and treating girls as equals, so I went on living my jolly life and subtly over time becoming the “Blessed among women”.

Every time I reflect on why I’ve always been Mr. Blessed among women, I always land at the same answer - I was raised by a force of a woman who’s my archetype of femaleness, and she embodied compassion, grit, strength, kindness, wit, hard work, forgiveness, integrity, community, faith, love, generosity and so many more important values. It is through the lenses of my mother that I have seen women most of my life, and I was in awe of her, perhaps this is why I don’t see the “lesserness” that our world has told women that they are destined for.

While my mother has shaped my view of “woman”, that view has continued to be expanded by so many amazing girls and women that I have been fortunate to encounter along my life’s journey. The girls who were better than me at school, both at math and athletics showed me that excellence has no gender. The women who I’ve loved and shared different degrees of intimacy with taught me that the entire spectrum of emotions are human, not male or female. The women who have taught me showed me that knowledge can be accessed by everyone and greatness can be achieved by doing the work (this was a very stark lesson, comparing my male lecturers to the female ones in Uni. Omg! Men please we need to do better). The women who have hired me showed me leadership was about me and not them - they were there to serve and help me reach my aspirations, as I worked with them to build something great, not the other way around, beautiful stuff! (shout-out to Misan and Liz ❤). The women who’ve been my colleagues have showed me what badass means 😎 and almost effortlessly too. The women who’ve been my friends have demonstrated what it means to stand with someone. The women who inspire me make hope real, by looking at them I know that tomorrow will be better than yesterday if I keep putting one foot in front of the other (shout-out to my sister Bose and Michelle Obama). Finally, the girls who call me uncle (can’t wait for the one who’ll call me daddy ☺) have showed me a glimpse of the joy in raising a woman.

As we keep pushing to make our world a place of gender equity, I am more hopeful that we’ll be the generation of equity.

I am blessed among women and proud.

#EachforEqual

PS: Thankful that I’m able to get this week’s blog out earlier than last week’s and hopefully I can keep up the momentum! Don’t forget to comment and share. Have a gender equal week! 😘👋🏽 (I mean it. I challenge you to challenge yourself to be mindful of the gender stereotypes and biases you hold as you interact with others this week. I’m speaking to both women and men (myself too))