Iulia's Manifesto

As part of my 'Love Project', I'm reading a lot of books, including Gretchen Rubin's 'The Happiness Project'.
I find her book packed with lots of practical advice and great at instigating action (for instance, today I unpacked my holiday suitcase, folded all my washing, got rid of junk lying around, tidied up my room, put all my 'research books' into a designated basket, went shopping, called my mum, washed my hair and now I'm writing a blog post!), although, as she said, we are different people and we all have our own approach to how we want to improve our lives. She mentions at some point during her 'Lighten Up' chapter that she (and reportedly many other people) doesn't find 'fun' activities fun. 'I love the idea of playing chess' she says,' going to a lecture on international markets, doing crossword puzzles, eating dinner at a hot new restaurant, or having a subscription to the opera or season tickets to the Knicks. I can see exactly why other people enjoy these activities. I wish I enjoyed them. But I don't.'

This made me think about how lucky I am. I like so many things I can hardly keep up with my likings. I like all foods (except snake - I am scared of snakes - and coriander - which I hate, sorry!), I like most drinks and beverages, I have an endless list of favourite films, books, musicians and bands, I like watching and playing sports, I love sleeping in a tent, I enjoy going to festivals, I like exercising, I like learning new languages, I like fashion and clothes, I like arts and crafts, I like architecture, mythology, history, opera and classical music, I adore travelling and there are not many things in this world I wouldn't at least try.  As I am writing, a favourite quote from Walt Whitman pops up in my head. “I am large, I contain multitudes” he says in Leaves of Grass. I think this quote really captures who I am.

I recently mentioned to some friends that I would love to become a personal trainer or some sort of fitness teacher, because I really love exercising and I love helping other people getting the amazing benefits that exercising bring, whilst getting more of it myself. They all responded amused that I shouldn't forget I recently qualified as a professional stylist and that I am also planning to qualify as an English teacher for when I'm going to go travelling through Asia. Not to mention that I am in the process of writing a book.

I get their point and it is indeed a fair point only that... I wouldn't be me if I didn't try all these different things. Because you see, I am large, I contain multitudes. I see myself as made of rubber, I see myself like an elastic band circling the world, I wish I could stretch myself across the whole world. I am not naive, I know that's not possible, but I'll be damned if I am not going to die trying!

I've been spending quite a lot of time lately defining myself (either to craft my online dating profile or trying to write a credible platform about why should people believe anything I have to say about love and relationships). I was told that I'm trying to tick too many boxes and in my case the only word that's untrue is 'trying'. I don't try, I just can't help being 'large'. So I decided to come up with a manifesto, which I wrote down on the plane last night. Here it goes.

Iulia's manifesto

'I care not limit myself. I want to try it all and I want to be it all. I want to squeeze my life for every single experience it has to offer. I make no apologies for my choices, for my choices choose me as much as I choose them. I am more afraid of not trying than I am afraid of failing. I am limitless.'


Or in the words of the great Walt Whitman, “I refuse putting from me the best that I am.”

My week in words - EMPOWERMENT

I haven’t been able to write ‘My week in words’ in a while. Mainly because I am busy at accumulating words from all sources for my dating book, as if in a race against clock and I’m lacking the time and the headspace. It’s strange, but I finally feel I no longer have all the time in the world to sit around thinking about writing books and I’ve actually given myself deadlines. And time flies. So I’m lagging behind on ‘regular sections’, posts etc.

But this week I feel the need to talk about a word I’ve really been obsessing about lately. I want to talk about empowerment.

 

Source: lipstickandpolitics.com

 

My research about love is strangely bringing me down a path which awakens my solidarity with the women of the world and the still very much present need for our empowerment. It’s really interesting that, despite the fact that many of us don’t feel we should actively engage in feminist activities, we subconsciously recognise that the work is not yet done and there’s still need for a little action. And we’re not talking burning bras anymore (I’m perfectly happy to wear beautiful lacy lingerie, thank you very much!), but we’re talking women with ‘balls’ (hope you excuse my language) who are not afraid to talk about what’s still missing in the world, as far as women are concerned.

‘After Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman came out here in the UK in 2011, a younger crowd started talking about feminism and realising that our grandmothers didn’t quite manage to finish the job. But still, calling yourself one publicly can be frightening. It can get you into trouble. It opens you up to a world of criticism about how you are not feminist enough, or that you don’t really understand what you are talking about so should probably just stop.’ says Dawn Porter in her article for Stylist about the creator of Girls series, Lena Dunham.  ‘Personally’, she continues, ‘I like the way that Lena defines a feminist; it’s really just about whether you are looking out for other women or not. It’s inclusive and unthreatening. It’s how it should be. She has said [in an interview with Metro newspaper this month], <Do you believe that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you’re a feminist.>’

 When asked by Stylist what she thinks is the key ingredient of female empowerment, Gwyneth Paltrow responded: ‘I think knowing yourself, but truly. As opposed to the self your parents gave you or your partner or the school bully, or whatever. I think so many people give us ideas of what we are. I think as women especially, because we’re sensitive by nature, we’re more vulnerable, we absorb other people’s ideas about what we’re supposed to think or who we're supposed to be and how we’re supposed to act. And I actually think it ends up killing us, and that’s why we (as women) have 5-to-1 autoimmune disorders, compared to men. I really do. We somaticize that suppression of self, it comes out in our bodies.

I think the most clear, direct way to empowerment is to really know yourself and to really use your voice and to not be afraid of other people’s reactions' she continued. 'And to be really, really true to yourself. That to me, has been key to me in understanding how I want to live the second half of my life. It’s only recently that I’ve really fully understood that.’

And this, my dear readers, takes us closer to what steps we need to take towards empowerment: the realisation that women and men are different, they are not superior/inferior to each other in terms of abilities, they are just made differently. And when everyone will understand and accept that, we’ll all be living in a better world. And steps are being taken. Suzie Shaw, the female CEO of a creative ad agency in Australia, notes in an article for B&T Magazine:

‘Seriously, men and women are equally capable. But that’s not to say they’re the same (…) In our mutual pursuit of ‘equality’ we have all failed (women and men alike) to recognise that women are different, so need a different management approach to ensure they thrive.’

So who knows, maybe this whole discussion about empowerment starts with recognising our female structure and instead of trying to act like men and to beat them at their own game, why not say things like ‘I need more support, so I can do my job better’, ‘I can be a better professional with the right mentorship’, ‘I do work better when my efforts are appreciated’, ‘Why, thank you for the compliment!’ and ‘Men are not the enemy, but our partners in this journey through life’. Perhaps such simple and honest statements may begin to turn things in our favour, once and for all.

This thread of thought actually makes me think of the iconic ‘Sex & The City’ HBO series, which, why not admitting, has shaped a generation of women (group to which I too belong) into thinking that women are perfectly entitled to flaunt their sexuality and to treat men like objects, particularly through the lovable yet caricaturised character of Samantha Jones. It’s the whole ‘Eye for an Eye’ all over again. But the new light shed on the ancient men and women at war conversation makes me think that we’ve been looking at this all wrong: we should not be trying to be ‘THE NEW MEN’ but instead we should be trying to be ‘THE NEW WOMEN’, the women who find empowerment through their own intrinsic sensitivity and delicacy, the women who care about other women and about every living soul on this planet equally, the women who are finally awake and are making themselves heard. The likes of Eve Ensler (the author of The Vagina Monologues), Lena Dunham, Dawn Porter, Gwyneth Paltrow, Suzie Shaw or Caitlin Moran are not alone. We are wide awake, we hear what you’re saying and we feel empowered.

 

 

A word on self-esteem

As some of you know, I've been spending a lot of time lately researching on love and dating for my book. And whether I'm reading the laughable 'The Rules', a spiritual guide to happiness or a scientific paper, I start noticing common themes to all of these various resources. And probably the most common one is the importance of 'self-esteem'.

Everyone talks about it these days but what is self-esteem?

Just think about it for a second. We are willing and happy to project esteem onto someone else, usually a person who has done something magnificent, unique, courageous, fantastic. To hold someone in high esteem is heavy, it means to respect and to honour. There is no doubt that in our minds that person is almost a saint. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what really bothers me (and God is my witness how little self-esteem I've had for myself) is why do we find it so difficult to hold ourselves in high esteem?...

Is it because we know how flawed we are? Because we know ourselves inside out and tend to be more critical than loving? But maybe the people we have high regard for are as flawed as we are. Maybe we're not even supposed to be perfect to be worthy of esteem. Maybe by starting with feeling esteem for ourselves, we will become perfect. I don't know...

But what I do know is this: having a high level of self-esteem is the main engine for attracting the right kind of love into one's life without any effort (I'll speak about this more some other time, but my view is that a true loving relationship is supposed to take little or no effort at all) and that self-esteem needs to be constant and consistent.

Imagine you've read all the self-help books in the world about how to get over a guy, how not to call a guy after you break-up, how to play the rules of dating etc, you've finally broken your destructive patterns and started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but you're still allowing your boss not to treat you with the proper respect you deserve and feeling like a bit of a failure in the work place. And if that wasn't enough, you're still allowing your friends to only make last minute arrangements with you or use you as a listener to brag about their career achievements. Surely this is a sign of depleted self-esteem and in order to make your life (in every possible aspect) work is to make sure you're honouring yourself and the others every day, in every interaction.

Sure, sometimes we can't change people. Sure, we can rationalise into it as much as we want, we can tell ourselves it's just temporary and it doesn't matter anyway, but I tell you one thing: it does matter. Every day you are not defending your true self against esteem erosion, your core dies a little bit. Every day you carry on allowing people to 'mistreat' you, you're losing difficult to recover self-esteem and it impacts on every other aspect of your life. Sooner or later your new-found confidence in love will recede and you'll find yourself back in the attention begging seat.

So sometimes we can't change people. But we sure can change ourselves. Have a look at your life, is there something or someone not honouring you? What CAN and what WILL you do about it?

Every day is a choice for you to make.

It's YOUR LIFE I'm talking about.

The Holstee Manifesto

Stay inspired.

Of women and love

Source: google image search, collage made via photovisi.com

8^th of March is the International Women’s Day.

I don’t often think about this day with too much emotional investment but today is different. Today, this day means a lot to me. Today I want to celebrate the fact that I am a woman, together with all the women I know, have known and will ever know.

I was born in an era when women were allowed to study, work and think for themselves. I am fortunate to live in an unprecedented time in history, when women have already proven their worth in just about every single aspect of life, be it work, family or society. I am convinced I’ll get to live through times when women will be the leaders of this world and will succeed in making it a better place. And that’s because I am convinced women are made of love.

I’ve never really been a feminist. Never had to. Never felt I had to fight harder because I was a woman. No, sir. I  felt I had to fight harder because I was from a modest family, because I was an immigrant, because my English wasn’t English enough, because I was a bit fat and a bit ugly, because I wasn’t knowledgeable enough, because I didn’t know the right people to get to the right places and because I was impossible to love. Ever felt like that? Then you know what I mean. I never stopped to think with good thoughts about my femininity because I had so many issues to deal with, so many things to prove (or not to prove), so many battles to lose and so many things to feel sorry for myself about. It wasn’t because I was a woman. It was because everything was against me and everyone was right not to love me.I didn’t even love myself. And sometimes... I wished I was a man!

But once I got all those issues sorted and I began to love looking at myself in the mirror, I started to have feelings about my womanhood. I am convinced I was put into a woman’s body for a reason. I’m not saying women are better than men, I’m just saying women are different than men. There’s a different kind of energy going through a woman’s body and “…when you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet” as Eve Ensler rightly said in her famous 'The Vagina Monologues'. I feel we have a sacred duty towards ourselves as much as anyone else does. To deny our own femininity is to deny life and that, as sure as hell, is a deadly sin.

I feel privileged to live in a world (or more accurately, in a part of the world) where I don’t have to defend myself from attack and abuse. And precisely because I have this luxury, I have no excuse for not loving every single bit of me, for not rejoicing in what I am, for not being ecstatic at the thought that I exist in a form and shape so unique and wonderful and life giving. There is no reason in the world why I shouldn’t celebrate International Women’s Day with every ounce of my heart, there’s no reason in the world  why I shouldn't be grateful for all the beautiful, wonderful and loving women in my life, there's no reason why I shouldn't be grateful every single day to my mother for bringing me, through her own sacred womanhood, into this world and for protecting me through the gift of her unconditional love, so that nothing was ever going to be strong enough to break me. She bathed me in amniotic love and birthed me into a world which I chose to believe is a good one, with the potential of becoming an amazing world, if only we could start by loving ourselves a little bit more every day.

“The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change it's shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina. I was there in the room. I remember.”
― Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues