Don't fit in too much because it doesn't work!

Hello - I haven't been blogging for a while because I've been writing my next book. It's going extremely well. I'm not a multi-tasker - I like to focus on one thing at a time. Today I wanted to look up and write a blog and say that I have a title and a very good introduction! I'm not going to tell anyone as yet because I don't like to jinx it. To any writer out there I would suggest you keep your writing very close to your chest until you are ready to let it out into the world. Show it only to those whose opinion you trust and  who will hold your writing voice with tender respect.

I wanted to write about how lately I've learnt an important lesson - fitting in with other people doesn't work - it only leaves you invisible and creating a normal that then becomes extremely difficult to change. Just like with businesswomen who give their time and skills away for free who then have a difficult time getting paid because they have set a normal, I without realising it, set a normal in a few situations where I did too much fitting in and fitting around without voicing my needs. I didn't realise that my bending-over-backwards would be not be acknowledged because it had become normal. 

Recently I tried to speak what I need and it wasn't welcomed. At first I was angry and shocked at how invisible my support had been and then I thought sod it - this is ridiculous, I need to return my gaze to within myself and stick to what is right and best for me and in the future be far more verbal and sure about boundaries and where an okay give and take is. I have noticed that as a woman and a woman who loves to empower other women, I hit against the expectation, most often from other women, that I don't have any needs and that my needs are their needs. Though this is frustrating, it's all part of the same issue - women's needs are invisible, as I write about in "The Silent Female Scream".

And over the last months I have realised that I still have some work to do myself!