There Is No Right Way to Be a Woman

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a woman.

Not biologically.

Not politically.

But personally.

What does a woman’s life get to look like?

For generations, the answer was largely decided for us.

There were roles to fulfil. Timelines to follow. Rules — spoken and unspoken — about what made a woman good, desirable, respectable, successful.

And although so much has changed, I wonder how many of those expectations we still carry without even realising it.

Be agreeable.

Be accommodating.

Don’t be difficult.

Don’t ask for too much.

Take care of everyone.

Keep the peace.

Don’t be too ambitious.

Don’t be too loud.

Don’t be selfish.

And whatever you do, don’t let anyone think you are putting yourself first.

Women are still so often taught to measure our goodness by how much of ourselves we are willing to give away.

I don’t think there is anything inherently noble about that.

There are women who know from the time they are young that they want to become mothers. They build their lives around their families and find enormous purpose in raising children.

I think that is beautiful.

There are women who don’t want children at all. They build businesses, make art, travel the world, devote themselves to their work, their communities, their friendships, their creativity.

I think that is beautiful too.

There are women who become mothers at twenty-five.

Others at forty-two.

Women who freeze their eggs.

Women who use donors.

Women who become stepmothers and discover that family arrived in a completely different form than they imagined.

Women who desperately wanted children and couldn’t have them.

Women who thought they wanted motherhood and later realised they didn’t.

Women who thought they didn’t and changed their minds.

Women who want the career and the children.

Women who want neither.

There are a thousand ways to make a life.

Why are we still so obsessed with deciding which one is correct?

Perhaps the question isn’t whether a woman chooses motherhood or ambition, marriage or independence, domesticity or adventure.

Perhaps the question is:

Did she choose it?

Was it genuinely hers?

Or did she arrive there because somewhere along the way she learned that this was the price of being loved, accepted or considered enough?

Choosing yourself does not mean choosing only yourself.

I think that distinction matters.

It means knowing yourself well enough that the life you build does not require your disappearance.

You can love someone deeply without abandoning yourself.

You can become a mother without extinguishing the woman who existed before motherhood.

You can have enormous ambition and still be soft.

You can nurture other people and still protect your own dreams.

You can change your mind.

You can want more.

You can want less.

And I think partnership matters enormously in this.

The person beside you should not require you to become smaller in order for the relationship to survive.

They shouldn’t merely tolerate your dreams.

They should respect them.

Admire them, even.

And you should be able to offer them the same freedom in return.

Because I don’t know how there can ever be genuine equality between two people when one person’s becoming continually requires the other’s sacrifice.

Maybe love isn’t about merging into one life.

Maybe it is two whole people standing beside one another saying:

Go. Become who you are meant to become. I’m not threatened by your light.

I think about the women who came before us sometimes.

How radically different their choices were.

How many stayed because leaving wasn’t financially possible.

How many had children because there was no real alternative.

How many brilliant, creative, curious women lived entire lives inside roles they never consciously chose.

We inherited freedoms they could barely have imagined.

And perhaps honouring that doesn’t mean rejecting marriage or motherhood or tradition.

Perhaps it simply means using the freedom they didn’t have.

Choosing consciously.

Choosing motherhood because your entire heart wants it.

Choosing your work because it sets something inside you on fire.

Choosing love without abandoning yourself for it.

Choosing another path entirely.

There is no medal at the end for having lived the life other people expected of you.

And there is no single correct way to be a woman.

There is only the question of whether, underneath all the noise and expectation, you can still hear your own voice.

And whether you are brave enough to follow it.