As a woman grows, she becomes more exposed to the world: to its rawness, its realness, its beauty, its pain. Along the way, she learns how to be a woman in that world. In a perfect world, this is done at home by watching her mother and father work together and seeing how they raise their young woman and letting the love they have for each other set the example for how she is to be treated.
In a perfect world, how a woman learns to be a woman is by first observing how her father treats her mother. This is followed by how her mother reacts and then reciprocates, returning that love, attention, respect, and admiration to him. If done correctly, a young woman will get a bird’s-eye view of what love means and what respect looks like, and she will have most of the necessary tools to prepare her for the real world.
Sounds good, right? The truth of the matter is that sometimes our world is not so perfect. Many of us live in what society calls “broken” homes. I am not a fan of labeling these homes as broken, because whether we realize it or not, sometimes our minds subconsciously accept these terms in a negative way. Sometimes such descriptions may cause us to feel guilt or shame about our family structure. While some young women may be wise enough to understand, some may not. Even if one child develops insecurity or self-worth issues because of a label she had nothing to do with creating, we have a problem.
“The last thing you want for a child, especially a woman child, is for her to begin life believing that she is broken or that she is a product of something that was broken, especially when the break happened well before her arrival.”
Since we’re not using broken, I would argue to call these situations alternative homes. Nonetheless, many a woman has not had, does not have, and unfortunately will not have the opportunity to witness both of her parents in the home, laying the foundation for how she is to act and be treated. There are many reasons why this often doesn’t happen. It could be anything from death and divorce to a change of heart. In any event, the person who hurts most is the child. My heart goes out to each and every one of you.
If no one else has yet, let me apologize on behalf of those responsible for you falling victim to this unfortunate circumstance. Furthermore, I’m here to tell you that while it is indeed unfortunate, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, there is light in the tunnel.
1.Understand that it is not your fault. The same way having children doesn’t bring families together, it doesn’t tear them apart either. No matter what you think or how you feel, if your parents’ relationship did not work, it was because of them—not you.
2.You are not alone! While your path to the crown is not ideal, it is most certainly still possible to achieve, and your situation is actually pretty common. The solution is that you may just have to give yourself your own crown— and teach yourself how to wear it. Hey, look on the bright side, at least you’ll know it fits!
3.There is a lesson in even the saddest of situations. Nobody else can set a better standard for how you can be treated than you. As much as you can learn by watching a family that did work, you can learn by being a part of one that didn’t.
Hopefully you feel a little better about yourself, but you’re still not done. Actually, you’re just beginning. So, what is to be done? First, be thankful, thankful for what you do have and who you have it with—whether it’s a mother, father, grandparent, guardian, older sibling, or perhaps at times even a complete stranger. Regardless of how much better you think they could have been to you or how much of a more “comfortable” lifestyle you think you could have had, there are 400,000 children in foster care or up for adoption right now because someone decided that they weren’t even worth trying to raise.
As a woman, you have to understand that this world is not fair and that no one in it owes you anything, not even your parents. As you grow into womanhood, you’ll learn that the people who have titles in your life are sometimes the ones who hurt you the most. You’ll also learn that not everybody who’s supposed to care does. So, what do you do with that? You can either let it break you or let it make you. The choice is yours.
Now about that crown…want to know a secret? It’s already there. It’s just waiting for you to put it on. It’s waiting for you to look in the mirror and say, “My home may have been ‘broken,’ but I am whole.” It’s waiting for you to say that you can’t change your past, but you’re ready to take full responsibility for your future. I think we would all love to have witnessed real love at home as children. Of course, it’s a beautiful thing to be brought up in an environment where you get to see people in love firsthand, all day, every day. When it’s done correctly, it’s obvious that it makes you want to duplicate it in your own family in the future. However, sometimes it doesn’t work like that.
Sometimes you’ll learn how to wear your crown by watching how your mother doesn’t always wear hers. Sometimes you’ll discover how you want to be treated by witnessing how your mother is mistreated. You’ll see how important it is to find somebody who wants a family before you two start doing things that make families, since you’ll have witnessed how hard it was on your mother doing it alone. You might be in a situation where your father is the one giving you your crown and telling you how to wear it. It might be a situation where your mother isn’t even able to give you yours because she’s still waiting for someone to give her hers.
There might be other things going on within your family that I haven’t mentioned here. Every woman’s situation is different, and no woman’s situation is perfect. So, this is what you do, you work harder. You take it upon yourself to accept what you cannot change and use it as fuel to make it anyway. You take a hard look at what was wrong with your family life and where your parents fell short and use it. Not being able to witness the crown at home is not a handicap unless you make it one. At the end of the day, regardless of where you were raised, who you were raised by, and who stood around watching you and chose not to help, you have the responsibility to yourself, above anyone or anything else, to be the best woman you can possibly be.
You have a duty to go and get your crown, place it on your own head, and keep moving. It’s the only way. Otherwise, you’re going to sell yourself short. You’re going to start questioning your worth because no ever told you that you were priceless. You’re going to start giving people discounts because part of you will feel like you’ve been alone your entire life. So, the first chance you get, you’ll let someone in, not realizing that some men may not be interested in you because they see your crown, but they will be interested because they see that you don’t have one.
Go and get your crown.
The more she found herself, the less she felt the need to find a man that made her feel like she was worthy.
A man’s job is not to give a woman her crown.
It is only their job to respect it.
“A woman’s first line of defense is her standards. They are the bar by which she differentiates who is even worth her time. How will you ever know how much work a person is willing to put in if you don’t require any in the first place?”
Let’s face it, no matter how low you set your standards, no matter how much you’re willing to compromise, there are always going to be people who feel like it is still too much work. It will have you questioning everything about yourself and almost nothing about them. You will start second-guessing
