The Inspiration

So I've decided to write a blog about women. Women who inspire me. Women who were (or possibly even are?) smart, competent, passionate about something good, and are documented in history. I am going to try to highlight one woman a week - a female role model, if you will, to inspire me (and maybe any faithful readers) throughout the following week.

The impetus behind this project is a conversation that my husband and I had one night. We were talking about what to name our kids (not that we have any ACTUAL children... but whatever, technicalities) and he said I could name our girls if he could name our boys. I thought to myself, "Aight, DEAL." So Tyler starts naming off all sorts of ideas for boys names, all of which were derived from historical figures (i.e. America's founding fathers), Biblical names, characters from books, etc. Then it was my turn and it was a hard act to follow. I couldn't think of more than one name that had the same kind of meaning that Tyler's names had. I suddenly realized that I could only think of cute names, but I wanted names that MEANT something - especially since our boys are apparently going to be named after such high achievers. But what women did I know of that were historically prominent? Sacajawea? Joan of Arc? Betsy Ross? Was this the extent of my female role models? (I'm not dissing these women, I just can't say that those are viable name options for me... heh heh heh) So, I googled the phrase "female role models", only to find a bunch of articles lamenting the lack of strong female role models in American society today. Kind of discouraging. Apparently lots of people are worried about the fact that the only people our girls have to look up to are pop stars who wear no clothes and inspire the female public to anorexia. This just isn't going to cut it! So, I studied and searched some more and I realized that actually there are a lot of impressive women out there and really its my own ignorance that has kept me from knowing more about them. Thus, my hopes for this project are two-fold: 1) I hope this will propel me into a more focused study on impressive women throughout the ages, and 2) I hope this project will help my future daughters. Not only in what they will receive as their name at birth, but also as a way of leaving them a legacy of power and capability that teaches them to DREAM as big as they want to, becoming INDIVIDUALS who are free from fear, low self-esteem, or small thoughts.

So, allow me to borrow a line from Martina and say... "this one's for the girls."