Power Girls: 7 Reasons I Love a Woman Who Takes Charge
I have no idea how it all started.
Probably when some ultra-hairy dude peered out from under his unibrow one morning long ago, staring coldly into the eyes of his "lady friend" (who he had taken by blunt-trauma force from a neighboring village), and let a couple of masculine snorts and grunts fly - and that was enough to get the unspoken message across.
"You stay here and tidy up the cave and cook something - and maybe have a baby while you're at it - while I hit the forest to do whatever the heck I feel like doing."
Either way, the whole idea of men being in charge of just about everything took a nice, firm hold,and stuck around for the next gillion years. It's one of the modern marvels of progressive history, really. It never fails to blow our collective minds that we humans have continually managed to get SO MUCH WRONG for SO LONG.
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Lots of us guys are born into this world thinking we're tougher than the opposite sex. We are raised up believing that since we're more physically-suited for fairly useless stuff, like the NFL or, I dunno, sumo wrestling, then we must be the right choice to also "man" the helms of just about every other ship out there.
Whatever.
You know and I know that after a while, history kind of refuses most blatant lies and ends up spitting them out slowly, like a gross green wad of steamed kale. And truth be told, judging by what most of us have experienced in our lives, women have likely been the unseen driving force behind way more history than any textbook will admit.
So c'mon and join me. In honor of Sadie Hawkins Day, I've taken the liberty of putting together a little slideshow to illustrate my own decade of love and life with just the kind of lady I am talking about.
The kind who marches to her own drum.
The kind who helped make me a better man than I ever thought possible.
1. She's willing to think for herself.
Life isn't easy, especially for a woman who was born in to a very religious community where change and difference are often unwelcome. From the moment I met my wife Monica in Salt Lake City, Utah nearly a decade ago, I could just tell that she was a person who had taken charge of her own world, even if it meant turning her back on so much of what she had been told is right. She was a girl who had chosen to move away from her church's teachings in order to find out some truth for herself. And I knew right away that I was in love.
2. She leaps before she looks.
Lots of people need to ponder decisions and moves for a seriously long time before they make up their minds - for better or worse, I am guilty of this myself. But meeting my wife changed my mindset on a lot of that. I met her in the middle of a cross-country road trip with my band, and just a few days after I pulled away from her home in Utah, she spontaneously decided to call in sick to her job, drop her dog off at a friend's, and drive hundreds of miles through the night to meet me in far off El Paso, Texas. I had never met anyone with that sort of beautiful recklessness. We got married six weeks later.
3. She's not afraid of change.
After meeting each other one night in August, and then getting married six weeks later in October, my life and my wife's life were suddenly thrust together. There were no long term joint plans, no big future that we had dreamed up together. I had been wanting to move to New York City, and Monica had never lived anywhere but out west. But when I mentioned the possibility, she not only dropped her entire existence (job, condo, friends, etc.) in order to go with me, but she also pretty much orchestrated the entire move. How's that for taking charge?
4. She helped me become a grown-up.
As a a full-time musician in my early 30s, I was not the most responsible person in the world when I married Monica. I didn't know jack about keeping up with my bills, and I didn't even have my own place to call home - I'd been couch surfing for years. My new wife, upon figuring out that I was a clueless man-boy, could have easily bolted for the hills, but instead she patiently took charge of the murky situation and gradually helped me sort stuff out. I like to think that I grew up a heck of a lot in the process.
5. She turned a dream into reality.
Monica was a free-spirited, progressive, creative woman when I met her, and that had a lot to do with why I was crazy about her. So one Sunday shortly after we had moved to Brooklyn, NY together, I saw an article in the New York Times about a young woman in the city who had started her own personal blog and found a huge readership writing openly and honestly about her life. I told Monica that she should do that, too. A few months later, she had started her own blog and was having pizza with that very same blogger from the article. A decade later, she now makes her living writing on the internet, a dream she honestly had from the moment she started writing as The Girl Who.
6. She took charge to make our marriage work.
New York City was a dream come true for both of us, but when life got in the way and our marriage was being tested by work and stress and a million other things, Monica looked me in the eye and said, "I'm going back to Utah. Are you coming or not?" It might seem blunt and cool in writing, but the truth is, that choice was one of the most important ones I have ever made in my lifetime. We went back to Utah together, and Monica called an old friend of hers with a thriving business. Before I knew it, I had found my first real job outside of music in 12 years, learning construction. I was so proud, and once again, it was thanks in no small part to my wife taking charge.
7. She created the best life possible for us.
As our lives were changing rapidly, I began to really notice that so much of what was happening to me, to us, was pretty wonderful. I also began to recognize that most of it was a direct result of this fascinating girl I had met in a Salt Lake City bar one night and married soon after. Monica's commitment to finding the best life possible for her and me, no matter how scary or overwhelming the prospects seemed, wasn't something that she was even aware of, of course. And that is what was, and still is, so attractive about her take-charge attitude to me to this day.
-By Serge Bielanko
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