- A Women’s Day brunch in Durbanville featured motivational talks encouraging women to confront life’s challenges and rewrite their stories.
- The speakers emphasiSed the importance of dealing with personal wounds to prevent them from affecting future generations.
- The event highlighted the strength and resilience of women, inspiring them to take control of their lives and achieve their dreams.
Life has thrown us some curve balls. We have to deal with some of them. Curve balls cause wounds, which will play a vital role in impacting everything in our lives if we don’t deal with the curve balls.
These are the words of a prophet of Anton’s ministry Kingdom GPS to women at a brunch by Durbanville Business to celebrate Woman’s Day last Wednesday.
Kari Smith, also founder of IHT Hotel School in Cape Town, and the TV and radio presenter Success Lekabe from Smile 90.4FM were guest speakers at the brunch at Rust-en-Vrede gallery. It was the first event by Durbanville Business for women only in its 82 years of existence.
“Being a woman myself, I know how much we have to go through; that we have 150 hats on our heads at one time and must still be able to smile and be everything to everyone out there. And we do it,” Smith said.
“Twenty years down the line, did you achieve the dreams you were dreaming as a little girl? Why did you stop living?
“Some says life happens; life threw my some hard curve balls. There is no time to deal with the curve balls; there is no time for me to dream.”
“Some of you are sitting here and life have thrown some curve balls at you. I believe we have to deal with some of the curve balls, otherwise it will affect the way we live our lives when we grow older.”
For her, she said, it all started just with a choice – “that I decided that I’m not going to be a product of where I came from and what happened to me. I’m going to rise above the occasion”.
Wounding
“Curve balls cause wounds. These wounds will play a vital role in impacting society, impacting people, impacting our children and our lives with our husbands, the way we do things … everything gets impacted if we don’t deal with the curve balls. If we want to bring change and encourage our children to become the change, it starts here, inside.
“The wounding on our inside put limitations around us and we cannot become who were are supposed to become; it literally forms a prison around you.
“You might jump over it right now when you are young, but if not deal with it, your wounding will create wounding.
So many people say they feel threatened by other people, especially women. “We feel threatened by other women, because there is wounding on our inside,” she said.
“With curve balls, you have two choices: you can either use the curve ball to jumpshift you like a springboard into a place of greatness where you make an impact, or these curve balls can get you stuck in the past and constantly take you back to what happened to you when you were a little girl and that triggers. These kind of curve balls has an effect on you emotionally and stops and blocks you from connecting with the people around you.
“It becomes like a ball on a chain that you drag with you your whole life. It you do not deal with it, it will stop you from impacting the people around you that is supposed to be the ones you need to help. It will steal your confidence and cause you to feel insecure when you are around other people.
Smith said your wounding will be displayed in your behaviour, “how you will react to other people. We need to come to a place where we understand who we are.
“Some of the curve balls have such a detrimental effect on us – things like your parents got divorced when you were a little girl, you were sexually abused, or your mother did not have the ability to show you love … it leaves a mark on you. It will impacts the way you live life when you grow up as an adult. I believe women is the heart of the family. If there is a problem with the heart, all the organs take strain,”she said.
Break the cycle
”If we want to break the cycle and make sure it does not go on to your children and your children’s children, we need to stand up and deal with it. Nobody else is going to do it for you, you have to do it.”
Smith said the first step to healing is acknowledgement.
“Many say you past does not determine your future. It is true, but it does affect the colour of your future – whether you will have a bright future or not.
“Women are wired for endurance, engineered to overcome against all odds. We are sometimes scared to go back and deal with the stuff that causes us to feel insecure, feel rejected and that you don’t fit in,” she said.
“Confront some of the stuff and deal with it. Face some of your fears, and perhaps the biggest of it all, is to forgive some people that have caused you to be in a prison.
“One story of an incredible woman that really touched my heart was Tina Turner. When I read her story, I was amazed. She really had a lot of curve balls and dirt being thrown at her. At the age of 11 years old, her mum took her and divorced her dad because he severely sexually and emotionally abused them. They moved in with her grandmother and they were extremely poor.”
As a young teenager, she met a guy and started a band.
“They started doing music and later quite good until it was found out he was severely abusing her – exactly the same as what her father did.
“She decided that she’s not going to give up. She’s going to push back against all odds. After her divorce she went back into the music industry and all the big names said, listen, you won’t be able to make it as a black woman, especially a black woman in the rock and roll environment. You might as well go home and, you know, look after your babies.
“She she says, no, I have a story to sing. I have something to give. And she started singing.”
Rewrite her story
“When she died at the age of 83, I was absolutely amazed to see that she had 12 Grammy’s.”
She was twice nominated in the Hollywood Hall of Fame. She had a Hollywood Star of fame in her name, Smith said.
“Not only that, but she appeared in the biggest magazine for music – on the front cover of the Rolling Stones. She was also a Guinness World Record holder for the largest fame audience in 1988 of 180 000 people – the first time in the history that a woman did something like that. This is to me an inspiration because not only did she decide that she was not going to allow the curve balls that life was throwing her to make an impact and change the course of her life, but she rewrote her own story.
“I believe that all of us have the opportunity to rewrite our story. We all have an opportunity to change things, but it starts with you,” she said.
“We can’t all do big things to change the world, but each of us can do something that will make a big difference in the life of someone else,” she said.
Lekabe from Smile 90.4FM said this month “is so important to look back and see how far we have come, to celebrate where we are, but also to look forward and see what still needs to be done”.
“People will become moulded and shaped by the people that they surround them with – whether it is good or bad.
“If you think that you can do it all by yourself – you can’t. That is one thing I’ve learned in my life: we need each other. And the quicker we hold hands and do things together, the better – not just for ourselves, but also for the people around us.
“Just believe in yourself. That is the first step in what you want to achieve. When your back is against the wall, you tell yourself, come on, there is one more fight left in you; one more chance that you can take to make it happen; one more word that you can share with someone to help them do whatever they are going through.
“Every single woman in here has something to bring to the table that no one else does. You have a purpose that I cannot fulfil, but only you can fulfil.
“It goes hand in hand to compare ourselves with other people. They say that comparison is the steal of joy.
“It’s also not going to be about the disappointments; it’s about how many times you stand up. And I hope that you never stop standing up.”
