Amy Newmark - Chicken Soup for the Soul: Be You: 101 Stories of Affirmation, Determination and Female Empowerment

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Be You

101 Stories of Affirmation, Determination and Female Empowerment

Amy Newmark

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Be You

101 Stories of Affirmation, Determination and Female Empowerment

Amy Newmark

Published by Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC www.chickensoup.com

Copyright 2021 by Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

CSS, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and its Logo and Marks are trademarks of Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the many publishers and individuals who granted Chicken Soup for the Soul permission to reprint the cited material.

Front cover photo courtesy of iStockphoto.com/max-kegfire (max-kegfire)

Back cover photo courtesy of iStockphoto.com/NickyLloyd (NickyLloyd)

Interior photos: White woman courtesy of iStockphoto.com/drbimages (drbimages), Black woman courtesy of iStockphoto.com/FangXiaNuo (FangXiaNuo), and Asian woman courtesy of iStockphoto.com/bo1982 (bo1982)

Photo of Amy Newmark courtesy of Susan Morrow at SwickPix

Cover and Interior by Daniel Zaccari

Distributed to the booktrade by Simon & Schuster. SAN: 200-2442

Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data

(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Names: Newmark, Amy, compiler.

Title: Chicken soup for the soul : be you : 101 stories of affirmation, determination and female empowerment / [compiled by] Amy Newmark.

Other Titles: Be you : 101 stories of affirmation, determination and female empowerment

Description: [Cos Cob, Connecticut] : Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC, [2021]

Identifiers: ISBN 9781611590654 | ISBN 9781611593006 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Self-actualization (Psychology) in women--Literary collections. | Self-actualization (Psychology) in women--Anecdotes. | Self-esteem in women--Literary collections. | Self-esteem in women--Anecdotes. | Women--Conduct of life--Literary collections. | Women--Conduct of life--Anecdotes. | LCGFT: Anecdotes.

Classification: LCC BF637.S4 C45 2021 (print) | LCC BF637.S4 (ebook) | DDC 158.1082--dc23

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933831

Changing your world one story at a time

www.chickensoup.com

Introduction

No one is you, and that is your superpower.

~Elyse Santilli

W e open this new Chicken Soup for the Soul collection with a poem by Rebekah Iliff in which she describes a woman happily sitting by herself in a restaurant. Shes confronted by a waiter who cant believe that shes okay with being alone. Yet she isshes comfortable in her own skin.

And thats what we aim for in our lives, right? Happy with who we are, or at least happy with the vision we have for who we want to become. When we have goalsgetting fit, raising children well, getting promoted at work, finding love, being adventurousthose goals should not involve a wholesale change in who we are. They should just involve being more of who we already are and knowing that we are enough.

Thats why Chicken Soup for the Soul: Be You was created, to be a source of affirmation, determination, and empowerment for women of all ages as they figure out how to be the best versions of themselves.

Sometimes that means spending some quality time with yourself. In Who Was I? Katie Kennedy explains that she goes on a vacation by herself each year, away from her family, and free to make her own choices. Mary Guinane upped the ante, with her ten-month journey around the United States with her dog, picking the new place she would live. She calls her story Brave, Crazy or Both.

Being brave is indeed a big theme in these pages. It wasnt until her mother died young that Rachel Dunstan Muller decided to shake up her life, explaining, For most of my adult life, Id chosen to stay safely anchored in a series of sheltered harbours, both literally and metaphorically. She made a resolution to live by the word fierce for an entire year, and say yes to all the things that she would normally turn down. In Leaving Harbour she says, Ive come to believe that were not fully alive if were not at least a little frightened on a regular basis.

Leaving safe harbors is important for all of us, even when it means doing something frightening like sticking up for ourselves. We have dozens of stories from women who stood up and spoke outfighting discrimination, sexual harassment, or career roadblocks. Captain Laura Savino, for example, became a commercial airline pilot at a time when women were not welcome in the cockpit. She may have been your captain if youve flown on United Airlines in the last thirty years. In My Flying Tribe she shows us how far weve come when she describes her preschool-age son saying he didnt want to grow up to be a pilot because thats a girls job.

Laura knew from an early age that she wanted to be a pilot. But sometimes were not exactly sure what we want. Thats why we have so many stories from women who did the work and figured out what they want from life and with whom!

Aleksandra Slijepcevic did that after her boyfriend broke up with her, advising her to figure out who she was. She realized she had been putting his needs first, adopting his likes and dislikes as her own. Six years later, she reports in What Breaks You, she realized he was right. She says, He never lost sight of himself. Through yoga practice and a lot of introspection, she says, I shed massive layers of the shy, reserved, afraid, and dependent girl I was at twenty-one. I took back the power I had ceded to men. And it was like coming home! Now Aleksandras ready for love again, but this time with full knowledge of who she is and what she wants and deserves.

When Carol Andrews left her career as a television news personality, she set out to rebrand herself. These days, what better way to do that than hashtags. Carol says you should list who you are now, and also who you want to be. In her case, she lists #Author #Speaker #TVpersonality and #ExecutiveCoach. She also hashtags her values and traits, including the ones shes still working on. In Put a Hashtag on Me, she walks us through all the ways she uses hashtags to direct the course of her life, be of service to others, and identify her strengths.

Strength is a key element of this book, because we women are so often surprised by the inner reserves of strength and resilience that we call on when we need them. In these pages, youll meet dozens of women who discovered just how strong and capable they were when they found themselves alone after divorce or death, or navigating other kinds of challenges.

Carin Cameron is a great example. She tells us that her biggest fear had always been that she would lose her husband. But she never expected she would lose him to a prison sentence. Carin didnt think she could make it a whole year without him; in fact, she erased all their appointments from the whiteboard on the refrigerator and replaced them with one word: Survive. And survive she did, magnificently. She even signed a three-book publishing contract during his year away. In The Prisoners Wife Carin says, He came home to a wife with a renewed sense of self, who could set healthy boundaries and take care of her family with or without him. A wife who had chased her dreams and made them come true in the midst of incredible hardship. He came home to a wife who was not only healthier, but stronger.