This post by the YarnHarlot sums up a state of mind/way of being that I feel really speaks more about women in general than just those who knit. In this great post, Stephanie says about her community of knitters:
“This desire to make everything we do seem easy, our uncomfortableness with the recognition of our talents, it’s a unique approach. Do you think this is something other people do with their skills? Do lawyers say “It was nothing”? Nope. They say “That’s $250 an hour. It took me a long time to learn how to do this.”
I really feel that this attitude/mentality can be applied to a majority of women in most areas of their lives. When someone says to me “your kids are so polite” I never say “Why Thank you, they are, but you know I’ve had to work really, really hard at it and go half out of my mind teaching them the same lessons over and over until they stuck.” No, instead I say “yeah, I guess I got lucky…” Why do I do this? I do it so that the person with the less polite child doesn’t think I am being proud. I do it because I don’t want to seem arrogant. I do it because that is what I am supposed to say.
I know women who have this same “it was nothing” attitude about the wonderful meals they slave over, burn, try again and finally get right, the homes they restore, clean, decorate and care for endlessly; the children they raise and discipline, clothe and carpool; the marriages they fight for, the love they tend to again, again, learning and growing and giving and accepting; the million jobs they perform everyday, and the careers they have worked hard to gain and to keep and to move up in.
Women don’t always know their own worth, and they don’t always take the credit for the things they have learned and accomplished – especially in the artistic and domestic areas of their lives.. For many of us we try to make it all look easy or at the very least, we act as if any good thing is some sort of happy accident, instead of what it might just be – the payoff for a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
Sometimes we are so busy trying to justify our choices, trying to make ourselves inoffensive and acceptable, that we don’t give ourselves or our lives the respect they are due.
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