[Bella’s intro: I do not know Laura Backes, but when she sent me this essay, I liked it and thought some “All Things Single (and More)” readers would appreciate it as well. For future reference, though, I will reiterate the point I have often made that I especially welcome posts that speak both to single women and single men.
I do like this topic, and Laura Backes has inspired me to reprint my own take on “having it all” – an excerpt from Singled Out. I’ll post that sometime soon. (Here it is. I posted it at my “Single at Heart” blog at PsychCentral.) I hope others will also share what “having it all” or a sense of balance means to them.]
A Balanced Woman
By Laura Backes
As I writer, I often try to find balance in what I write. Balance between first person and third person, between sentimentalism and practicality, and between sensuality and wholesomeness. As a modern woman, I face the same struggles.
I think that modern women have it hard. We are told to be men and women at the same time. To provide revenue and be homemakers, to have children and a profession, and to be sexual and yet stay pure. Most of these choices have an all or nothing approach. You must choose one and discount the other, or focus on one and let the other degrade. There are very few women who can successfully balance the demands of modern life.
But should we? Should we have to balance them, or are they ridiculous in the first place? Since when have we, as women, heeded what society told us to do? There have always been rebels, been women who showed the world what it meant to be a woman; why should today be any different?
I think that writing, real women writing, reflects this fight, this struggling for balance and liberty to choose. I see it everywhere; from the popcorn romance that desires pure love and feelings irrespective of logic, to dominant, sexual women who control the men around them with their sensuality, to irate independents who desire nothing more than rationality, to proud businesswomen with no yearning for children, or proud mothers with no longing for a career.
It all comes down to finding balance, whether it’s created or achieved. The passive, the aggressive, the housewife, the CEO, those are all just archetypes; examples of what we could be instead of what we really are. Real women do not struggle with one phase of their lives at a time; they struggle with all of them simultaneously. Reading about it, writing about it, gives us an outlet for our frustration and qualms and wishes that we push aside in our struggles.
Writing and reading what women write also gives us the capacity to test what we can’t or won’t in real life. We can see what it feels like to be aggressive or passive, to have the responsibility of children or a company, to have money or to be free to do whatever you want. We are empowered and empowering of each other, even through secondary means. By sharing our excursions, our struggles and qualms, we become stronger together. We help each other find balance.
About the Author
Laura Backes enjoys writing about all kinds of subjects and also topics related to internet providers in her area. You can reach her at: laurabackes8 @ gmail.com.
