Women are incredible. This is fact. Besides the miraculous ability to bring another human life into the world, women can do things men can’t. We are just designed that way. We continue to prove how unbelievable, unstoppable, determined, history-making, and all kinds of magic we truly are. A woman is one of God’s most precious works.

After conversations with many women in my life, different ages and ethnicities, I’ve come to a startling conclusion that women are slowly dying in spirit. Somewhere along the way, we have been told that our love and support should be measured by the depth of our sacrifice. It has caused many of us to ignore our own wants in a relationship. We also take ownership of things that aren’t really ours to take.

It confuses me how we are constantly coached how to conduct ourselves in order to get and keep a man – by other men. What we give is often taken advantage of. Because our roles are often rooted in rejection and patriarchy, there are those moments when we wonder if our efforts will ever be enough.

We know what it’s like to give everything we have and it still not be enough. Good enough to be accepted for what we can do but not good enough to give us what we deserve. Women operate from a vision. Once we are presented with that vision, we can expand on it.

Many of us put every ounce of ourselves into relationships and fail to acknowledge that we hurt. However, this guilt shouldn’t be ours to carry.

We don’t want to be honest about how we feel, because revealing these things would be telling the truth. We can’t share with anyone our truth because that would be admitting we have feelings.

Part of living our best life is about giving ourselves permission to speak our truths and put ourselves first; having the confidence to expect excellence be shown towards us because it’s what we deserve. It’s honoring what we truly want in our lives and not settling for anything less.