Women Inspiration

I have always been interested in what coming of age means, and I have many female inspirations.  I feel that having your own girl pantheon is so important for young girls growing up.  I have been writing about growing up and my inspirations in journals since I was 13, and have always wanted to create work on these topics.  So I have really loved this class because it has shown me how important it is to have a space for discussing and sharing girl inspirations.

Growing up, I loved reading Rookie magazine because it felt like a space for young adults to find other creative youth talking about topics of growing up.  When Rookie, ended I was so sad, but I am constantly looking for inspiring people who talk about being a young woman coming of age in this world we live in.  In this post, I am sharing a few of my female inspirations in the hopes that it might inspire you to look at your own girl pantheon.  I could talk about this for years, and I have been in my journals.  This project is the introduction, I am going to be experimenting with different ways to share more on girlhood and growing up in the future.  For now, I start with sharing the stories of Potentilla and Echo, some of my girl pantheon, and a short list of some coming of age books for girls.

Growing up can be full of chaos and confusion so its all the more important to anchor yourself in finding positive influences who are empowering.  That is what my project focuses on, looking at some of my female influences in current times, historically, and in mythology and fairytales.  Girl icons, female support and wisdom need to be shared.  Everything we’ve learned in this class isn’t only for us, it’s to be shared with more people, as we are doing with our blogs and projects.  These seeds need to be sown so that future generations of girls don’t have to struggle so much with the oppression of their voices and stories.  It is important for us to share ours.

When I was 13 years-old, I read Anne Frank’s diary.  I was in awe by how truthful and honest her writing was, and how she was able to capture the feelings of being a teenage girl even in such oppressive circumstances.  She wrote, “who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl.”  I think many girls can relate to this who understand how complex their inner world is.  As we grow up, we also start to notice how loud and controlling the external world can be to young women.  Anne Frank started writing her diary at 13, and reading it inspired me to start writing my own at 13 too.  I have never stopped writing, with countless journals filled, they were a huge part of my teenage hood and helped me to make sense of both worlds.  I wonder if many girls including myself would have started writing if we hadn’t read this book and had Anne as a girl inspiration. This is why it is so important to have girl inspirations, they help you to understand the world and yourself.  In my journals I have written over the years about all the girls and women who inspire me, but I usually keep it to myself.  Talking about the “Girl Pantheon” in this class has made me realise how having a place to discuss and share ideas about these women is really important for young women.

We are so lucky to live in a time where we have such diverse girl inspirations.  Earlier generations did not get to see themselves represented in the way we do now.  However, there have always been female icons to look up to if you choose to look.  I have always been enthralled by fairytales and mythology like many other girls.  A female icon that has been around for centuries is the Goddess Artemis from Ancient Greece or the Goddess Diana from Ancient Rome.  They were both the goddess of the hunt but also of maidens, and they protected and mentored girls.  This connection between girls and women is so important.  

The goddesses were also connected to the moon whose rhythms match our own menstrual cycles.  These are the kinds of things that are important for girls to learn about.  We get taught a very basic scientific, surface-level interpretation of our bodies and cycles in school, but most girls don’t know about how their cycles connect to the moon and how powerful it is.  Girls and women from some cultures in previous generations had more knowledge of this as communities because they had the red tent.  When women would get their period or give birth, they would go into the red tent in their village, where they were supported by women only.  The red tent was a sacred space where women could dream, and it was at this time when they would get their most powerful visions.  

The red tent is important because it is about women supporting women in safe spaces to dream.  Our culture doesn’t have many of these kinds of spaces, so its important that we create them ourselves by finding innovative ways as women to create community and support other women, and share our stories.

Now, we live in a world that tries to be so separated from this natural feminine knowing.  Instead of honouring women’s wisdom, often, visionary women face huge oppression and reactions in society.  We have seen this with Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Emma Watson, RBG, AOC, Kamala Harris.  All these women are outspoken about what they believe in, and we have seen how much they have to face.  It takes courage, passion, and a true want to create change to be a girl innovator.  Society often tries to hide women who use their voice, or make them smaller.  It is our responsibility to highlight, uplift, and surround these voices with our own, and to share our voices too.  Understanding how important female inspiration is, we need to create more spaces to share and discuss our girl pantheons.  This class has been so powerful giving us that space each week to talk about diverse girl innovators.  I have always been so inspired by the passionate women in my life and in media, and this class has added more girls to my pantheon.  There are not too many places that dedicate space to this incredibly vital topic.  

We can also find wisdom in fairytales.  Many people have heard of the story of Narcissus and Echo, where Echo can not use her voice, but can only mirror other people’s words. And she echo’s Narcissus until she completely fades away.  

Once, there lived a wood nymph named Echo, who loved to talk so much that a goddess cursed her to have no voice, apart from an echo.  She could never speak her own truth, only mirror the words of someone else.  One day, a young man named Narcissus came through the woods where Echo lived.  She saw him and immediately fell in love.  She couldn’t tell him her feelings, but she echoed his words, and once she revealed herself to him, he said he could never love her.  Echo was heartbroken and wandered around completely distraught, echoing and echoing throughout the mountain.  Meanwhile, other nymphs declared their love for Narcissus but he always refused them, until a nymph put a spell on him so that he would understand what it feels like to love someone who will never love you back.  One day, he stopped by a spring in the woods to drink from the cool water and he saw his reflection in the clear surface and fell madly in love.  He could not love himself back, so he turned into narcissus flower at the edge of the water.  Echo watched from behind the trees and could be heard wailing throughout the woods until she turned to rock.

In perhaps the same time, a baby princess was born, named Princess Potentilla.  She was so beautiful that her parents decided she needed to be kept away from the castle in a secret cottage deep in the woods.  Potentilla grew up in the forest, and became a young maiden.  One day, Narcissus visited her parents kingdom and somehow found his way towards her house in the woods.  There he saw a beautiful young woman, walking amongst the flowers by the spring.  He had a fairy godmother who helped turn him invisible so he could speak to her, which she enjoyed.  He returned everyday until one day he revealed himself to Potentilla.  They fell in love, but then an evil wizard came and wanted to take Potentilla.  The fairy godmother protected her, and Narcissus and the wizard competed for her, while her love remained with only Narcissus.  However, one day the wizard took Potentilla back to the palace to marry her.  Narcissus and the fairy godmother came just in time, and the three of them banished the evil wizard far away.  Potentilla and Narcissus got married and they ruled the kingdom restoring balance and harmony to the realm.

These stories are both about Narcissus, but the female protagonists are different.  Many of us have heard the story of Narcissus and Echo, it is widely told and available in books and online.  However, there is another version of this story, where her name isn’t Echo, it’s Potentilla and Narcissus isn’t the protagonist, she is.  It is challenging to find this version of the story unless you know exactly what you are looking for, or have The Green Fairy book published in 1892 by Andrew Lang and Leonora Blanche Alleyne.  The story of Potentilla has been published for hundreds of years and is in the public domain but is not widely know.  It made me wonder, why is the story most of us know about Echo, and why is Potentilla seemingly hidden? To me, it reflects how a large part of society is eager to encourage girls and women to become echoes of men or the patriarchy, instead of living our true feminine potential.  It takes more searching and exploring to find this story, just like it takes courage and wisdom to share your voice in the world.

To a contemporary reader, fairytales can seem anti-feminist with their princes and princesses, rescuing, marriages, and happily ever after’s.  However, these story elements are all there to represent something.  The Princess and Prince marrying symbolises harmony and balance which they are then able to bring to their world.  These stories have important messages for us.  We can choose to be an Echo of society, a person who doesn’t use their own voice and follows others.  Or we can be a Potentilla, who symbolises our potential.

I’d like to end this where I began by sharing a poem I wrote at the beginning of this class when we were asked to write about how we would define the word “girl.” 

A girl is potential,

Creative, imaginative, curious,

Asking questions about herself

And the world around her

Transforming and changing,

And still the essence of who she is becoming

A girl is the child self, youthful, courageous

The maiden in a fairytale

Learning and growing

Observing the world

And changing it too

The Echo story and Potentilla story demonstrates what can happen when certain voices become the dominant voices in a culture or environment, and when the other voices and other stories not only don’t get heard, but also get buried and disappear.  The red tent is part of this disappearing knowledge too, where these stories don’t get told as much, and women no longer have the same kind of support.  So it’s really important as girls and women that we keep telling and looking for these stories.  The older fairytales and myths often tell stories that give women wisdom on matters of psyche and soul.

Creating spaces for expression and discussions that highlight girl inspirations and stories, provides an inspiring space for girls to develop their own sense of self and voice in a complex world that needs girl innovators to create change and tell stories.