I have spent a fair amount of time studying what Our Mother Mary did when she said yes to the angel Gabriel.
- She didn’t ask for proof.
- She didn’t need certainty or a detailed explanation.
- She didn’t hesitate.
She surrendered.
And in that surrender, she became the most powerful woman who ever lived.
There is a lot of noise out there on the Internet about women’s empowerment. I fell into that trap sometime during the COVID pandemic. It feels like a bit of a blur.
I am rarely on Facebook, but sometime back in 2020, I probably logged in to check out some community announcement. Then I clicked on a woman’s post that resonated with me, and I messaged her about her program. She was an executive coach. I learned some valuable business tools and strategies from her that helped me refine my messaging. If it had ended there, it would have been fine.
But it didn’t.
One of her marketing strategies was to build an online community for myself. She told me that Facebook was ‘free advertising’ and that it would be silly for me not to post there, to attract clients. This meant ‘friending’ people. Soon, I had over 2,000 friends. What a joke! Friends? Of those 2,000 friends, I probably know around 50, which include family members and perhaps 20 close friends.
Long story short. That ‘free’ advertising cost me a lot of money, because it led me into a toxic wasteland of female empowerment coaches, which I now realize, wanted my money and my money only. They charged exorbitant fees to ‘lead’ me to feel empowered. They were disguised as kind, thoughtful women who wanted to help me reach my full potential. Women often exploit other women’s emotions. Women are often underestimated as salespeople because they excel at understanding and manipulating others’ emotions.
What was I always meant to be?
They promised they would lead me to be ‘what I was always meant to be’.
They did the opposite of that. They took me away from what was most important in my life, and they encouraged me to do things that I was not at all comfortable with. My purpose in life is not to build a community of women who are ‘rising’ above all others (including those who retire their husbands) – my job, instead, is to help women become more like Mary. More potent than any other woman, not by her ‘status’, online presence, followers, or bank statement, but instead by her humility, honesty, sincerity, submissiveness, and prudence.
That sick, toxic group of online coaches tells us that strength comes from control, that value comes from output, and that motherhood is something to work around. We are pressured to outperform men, delay family, and make ourselves indispensable to everyone but our homes.
This kind of thinking is not making us stronger. It is making us resentful, disconnected, and confused about what it means to be women. It is damaging our marriages. It is robbing our children of the presence and warmth they long for. And it is leading many women to believe that children, whether unborn or already in their arms, are obstacles to success.
Next week, I am going to remind you AGAIN of what it truly means to be a woman. We need more reminders like these due to the influence of social media and the current state of the world. A world that has become transactional. What can you do for me?
Facebook honestly makes me want to gag. I wish I had never clicked on that one, a rather innocent post. But that ‘rather innocent’ act led me into a hole of deceit.
I think most of you, man or woman, know what I am talking about. For me, they stole away my purpose and joy (thankfully, for only a couple of years and not a lifetime) and I will bear the scars of it for a lifetime, but I am now fully aware of the evil that is out there and my mission is to make sure it doens’t happen to anyother woman or man. Whether it is an ‘innocent’ message you sent someone one day that led to a full-blown affair, or clicking a link that drained your bank account, or a call you answered that led to identity theft – those vultures are constantly swarming around you.
Next week, we will continue with Part 2.