I am Celebrating the Woman in Me, join me.

Today, my usual routine at work was I clicked open my Google browser. I do this everyday at work, because this is the first thing in the morning that helps me warm up before I spend my entire day writing.

The first thing I saw was the little colourful clip featured by Google (I like Google's little surprises) in conjunction of International Women's Day 2014. The short video showed women from all over the world. Although I had my speakers turned off, but looking at the scene after scene of women of different culture, ages and race from all over the world gave me goosebumps of excitement and a smile on my face.

I smiled because I am a woman. And I am happy to know that I am born a woman.

When we were young teenage girls, we had to learn how to face society's challenges; we were told about being cautious about sexual predators, looking prim and proper or dressing well, behaving like how a girl should behave, having your first period, your first pimple, staying away from boys, not allowing to go out after 7, and so on and so forth.

We were told all of these things, yes out of good intentions by our parents. But being born a female, it sounded more as if we are caretakers of something that didn't belong to ours. We weren't told to embrace ourselves. There is a distance between ourselves and our female bodies. Do you get the picture?

Eventually as I got older, I started to realized that the culture that was passed down from generations after generations and later on the "idea" turned negative underneath the layers of beliefs and misconceptions of lack of reasoning and understanding. The message that was ritually passed down to us taught us to 'fear' more than to be 'brave' instead.

I also noticed that as girls, we weren't nurtured to appreciate our bodies or giving thanks that we were born a woman and embracing the female within. We weren't taught to be brave young women, because the "idea" told us focused on the danger much more than focusing on ourselves. Hence, probably the reason why women experience self-esteem issues or self-development issues, which will lead to relationship issues.

Anyways, after watching the "silent" clip, it reminded me once more about how blessed I am to be born a Woman. 

However, today shouldn't be the only day we commemorate our birth as females. It should be everyday that we celebrate the goddess within us. 

In case you are wondering, how do we celebrate being a woman everyday? It is simple, see here:

~ As a woman, you possess natural powers, you are naturally intuitive. Use your insight and feel it in your heart to guide yourself in your daily on-goings

~ As a woman, you are intelligent. Use your wittiness and quick thinking to handle life's challenges. No problems are non solvable. All problems are doors to a new found glory.

~ As a woman, you are naturally creative. Being a multi-tasker is a myth, but being natural creators such as cooking, gardening, painting, crafting, writing, even putting on make up! anything! You don't have to be an expert to create something, you are creative.

~ As a woman, you have empathy and emotions. You know when to do or what to do. You know how to feel and when to hold back. Being a softie is a myth.

~ As a woman, you are a natural creator; you create Life, Love and Food while you carry a divine soul or seed in you, and grow it when you are ready.

~ As a woman, you are a brave warrior. You can endure storms of adversity to showers of blessings. Youcan withstand life's most difficult obstacles and yet still can stay strong enough to experience the joy of our courage.

~ As a woman, you are a natural lover; whether it is romantic love or compassionate love, you are natural at giving maternal-kind of love and affections to your loved ones, whether as wife, sister, daughter, friend, girl friend, etc.

~ As a woman, you are a natural guardian. When you become parents you can take on the role of a mother and a father.

~ As a woman, you are natural at partnerships. When you are paired with your husband, as a wife, you make a good team-mate; as one unit, you make a great team! Hence the saying, behind every successful man, there's an intelligent woman behind them. So be a partner/team-mate with your husbands or boyfriends; don't ever think you are lower or higher. You are both equal existence on this earth.

~ As a woman, you are naturally beautiful. Don't be afraid if it doesn't look like those cover models on the magazine or your favourite celeb. If you want to beautify yourself, do it with the idea of bringing out the YOU. You don't have to be like anyone else, you are perfect and unique in your own way.

and the list goes on...

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Once, I didn't know how to appreciate that I am born a woman. I used to think that it was such a curse because it was challenging to be a girl while you face society's challenges, especially with no role model or good examples to guide me as I was growing up. As a teenager, physical appearance was always a challenge, and as I was turning into a young adult, I developed a terrible low self-esteem which lasted me until after graduation. Little did I know that I was just basically kicking myself in the (metaphoric) nuts!

When I turned 20, I finally learned how to be and what it means to be a woman. Believe it or not, I learned all about it when I started going steady with my boyfriend. The challenges that we faced as a couple helped me learned how to understand my role as a woman and how to release the baggage and the stereotypical vicious cycle of this world.

I have natural dark circles, tanned, dry skin, heavy side on the weight, and bad teeth by the way; people point it out all the time. Years ago, when people commented about my weight, I would be depress about it and had trouble eating because I was reminded about the things they said to me. I used to be self conscious eating in front of my relatives because my weight would turn into a topic. I used to hide myself from cameras during photo taking sessions, because I don't want my bad teeth or dark circles to show. Instead of being proud of my differences, I hide myself; basically I was embarrassed to be Me.

So it wasn't until a couple years back, when I was 25, that I started to question my existence. After much self-discovery, I finally understood that my appreciation of myself as a woman matters; it is a simple Self-Love formula. As soon as I was awakened with that realization, the comparison stopped. The hatred for my existence as a female (weaker gender) stopped! My low self-esteem stopped. And yes I still do get ticked off when people point it out, but I no longer think I am ugly, or wish that I was skinny, because after all, this is me, and there is only one-me in this world. I just learned how to stay strong and cope with comments.

I am one of a kind, and so are you.

Go ahead, celebrate the goddess in you.

Here's something to inspire you; shared by a cousin of mine to nurture her beautiful teenage daughters. =)