Yesterday I gave a workshop for an incredible team of women who lead an organization called Encouraging Women Across All Borders.
Their focus is on helping college-age women from around the world strengthen their confidence and transform into better leaders and communicators.
Our workshop focus was on how to use your authentic voice in both your job and daily life.
The organization’s leaders are all young women themselves. They are leaders both within and outside of the organization. They all have other jobs and are rising leaders in tech, finance, and academia.
It was such an honor to be with these young women. They are a passionate group that care deeply about the development of the next generation of women leaders. It made me feel like we are in very good hands!
One of the areas we focused on was taking up space.
As women living in a patriarchal culture, we have all too often made ourselves small in order to not “step on anyone’s toes,” “be too loud,” “be too much,” receive “backlash,” or call on unwanted sexual attention.
This has literally made some of us collapse in our very own bodies. Our shoulders hunch, our posture folds, and we feel tightly held in space.
Our body posture becomes a metaphor for how we show up in the world. For many of us, it’s the “I’m sorry” epidemic we carry around just for being a woman. This has a profound effect on our voice.
No matter what our age or station in life, at one point or another, we’ve all had to play small with our body, our voice and our presence.
No matter what our age or station in life, we’ve all had to squelch or mute our authentic voice just to fit in (or avoid backlash) either with our family, friends, colleagues, in our workplace, in our industry. Somewhere, anywhere, everywhere.
Now is the season to change this!
We are living in a critical time for women to be taking up more space — with your voice, your body and your presence. With your ideas, your opinions, and your values.
If you are struggling with taking up space in any way — with your family, friends, colleagues, followers, industry — I have a gift for you today.
It is one of my favorite daily meditations to literally take up more space. Download here.
I hope that you enjoy!
We are living in a critical time for women to be taking up more space — with their voice, their body and their presence. I hope that you will heed the call.
Thank you for being a part of this community of changemakers. Together, we rise. In sisterhood, we thrive!
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Tabby Biddle is the author of the bestselling book, Find Your Voice: A Woman’s Call to Action, the co-founder of 50 Women Can Change the World in Media & Entertainment, and a popular women’s leadership coach, educator, strategist, and group facilitator for her unique approach to activating women’s leadership. Learn more.