I love being a woman, I always have.  Ever since I was a small child, I’ve loved the fact that I’m female.  I was fortunate to be born into a family that celebrated women and believed that women could do anything.  This was just as well because early in my childhood my mum discovered that she was going to have to do just that – anything and everything.

My mum is one of my heroes.  She’s a straight talking East Londoner who calls a ‘spade a spade’.  She’s comfortable with having an opinion, finding the right words to express herself and is comfortable if you don’t agree with her.  It wasn’t until I was much older that I realised how amazingly freeing this ‘life lesson’ was. I’ve found that knowing that you have the right to an opinion is a powerful tool to yield in life.

When I was growing up, as much as I loved being a girl, I also loved doing things that were usually associated with being a boy.  Most of my childhood, I could be found climbing trees, making dens, playing on building sites and riding motorbikes.  In fact, for quite a few years every Sunday I’d spend my day at a motocross track racing around it trying to win.  Another amazing ‘life lesson’ I didn’t know I was learning. On that track I found out that being a girl didn’t matter if you good at riding a motorbike. Winning wasn’t about gender it was about skill.

These life lessons framed my childhood – they spoke loudly and clearly into my young soul.  They defined much of what I’ve become as an adult and as a leader who also happens to be female.  I grew up believing in equality, justice and freedom.  I believed in them because every day I experienced and lived in the fullness of each of them.

And just in case after reading all that you think I had an idyllic childhood I, like many of you, only knew what idyllic meant because we read books about the ‘Famous Five’.   My mum went back to work when I was about 4 months old, she always had to work full-time which meant that I often came home to an empty house, my parents separated when I was 9 which wasn’t at all commonplace when I was a kid and, then, when I was 16 years old three members of my immediate family, including my dad, died of cancer in the space of just six months.  Life was far from idyllic. But I became the person I am because of my circumstances not in spite of them.

I totally believe that the most powerful words you hear are the words you say to yourself.  Growing up the words I said to myself were incredibly powerful and very simple. My constant internal monologue was: ‘Be good, be kind, try your best. You can do it Beechy.’  I cheered myself on with these words while throwing myself at life at full speed (often on a motorbike).

The late, great Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, used to say: ‘To succeed you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality.’  I love Anita Roddick but, contrary to popular opinion, she didn’t start the Body Shop to build a global brand and change the world while doing it.  Her aspirations were much more meaningful than that: she started the Body Shop so she could feed her children while her husband was trekking across the Americas.

The trouble with quotes like this is that we use them to define what success looks like – especially if we hold some leadership responsibility which clearly we all do because we’re women and that’s what us women do!  So if doing something like starting the Body Shop feels beyond your reach right now celebrate every success you have in life no matter how big or small you think it is.

After all, when Anita Roddick, one of the UK’s most successful business entrepreneurs ever, started  out she thought that being a success was about making enough money to ‘put food on the table.’  And if that was good enough place for her to start, it’s probably good enough for us too.

This article was first published in Liberti Magazine.

The post BE GOOD, BE KIND, TRY YOUR BEST first appeared on Wendy Beech-Ward.

For many ‘having it all’ means effortlessly juggling work, family, friends and a social life perfectly while feeling equally fulfilled in every role.  Maybe you can get close to ‘having it all’ if you’ve got a job where you get paid the earth for doing not much and can actually pay other people to clean your house, run your errands, do your shopping – AKA run your life for you.  But for the rest of us who get paid regular money for increasingly longer hours I think ‘having it all’ is, probably, fast becoming a long lost dream.
While reading all the articles around this debate I read a fascinating quote from Amy Walburn: ‘It is our responsibility as educated career women to understand more comprehensively what the quest to “have it all” really means. It means that we need to fight for women’s equality everywhere.’ Oh wow!  Now that puts a whole new perspective on what ‘having it all’ means.  That quote has challenged me to the core and made me ask myself the question: ‘if I’m wanting to have it all – how and where am I fighting to ensure that others get it (all) too?’ I’m an ethical shopper.

The fact that I refuse to buy from certain shops draws a wry smile from some of my friends and complaints from my daughters.  But I refuse to give my money to corporations who don’t take their corporate responsibility seriously and won’t bow to consumer pressure to change their work practices. And continue to exploit women and children who have no voice to complain. I’m often asked by younger women leaders how I make my life work.

My answer is pretty much always the same: decide what’s important to you, be prepared to compromise (none of us ever gets everything we want), do the best you can, be determined to make life work for you instead you for it.  And, really importantly, realize that you’re making up your own story so there aren’t less right or wrong answers than you think.

Following these recent discussions I’ll be adding to that list.  When the next person asks me, I’ll add that making life work for you must also include making life work for others who don’t yet have the privileges we take for granted.  Unfortunately, women aren’t equal in many spheres of life in the UK – the fact that so few women are in politics, in the boardroom or represented in culture is an outrage. However, the fact that basic human rights are not even a dream let alone a reality for  hundreds of thousands of women across the globe is actual a travesty.

Women are routinely exploited, tortured, denied their rights and persecuted just because of their gender in many places throughout the world.  I was utterly outraged when I heard that Saudi Arabia has only just bowed to pressure and allowed women to compete in the Olympics.  Currently they only have two female competitors who both live outside Saudi and apparently have no influence there. It’s a start and hopefully a signal to Saudi women and needs to be celebrated as such but there is so much more to be done.  Because, as a friend of mine  says, until all of us are free none of us are free.

Stuff to think about…

What do you think ‘is it possible to ‘have it all’?

Do you think we have a responsibility to speak for women who face gender injustice? If you do, how do you go about doing that?

The post IS ‘HAVING IT ALL’ A LONG LOST DREAM? first appeared on Wendy Beech-Ward.