I can’t think of a better time, than the week before Mother’s Day, to start a series I’ve been noodling…the topic; women. In particular – women who are powerful, strong and smart. Whether it’s your mom, your sister, your wife, or your direct supervisor, there is an awful lot of female ingenuity around you. If you haven’t seen it, open your eyes. Women get things done, using their many, varied powers…

I am one of those girls who was taught that I could do anything I wanted to do. Solder copper pipe, wield a hammer, get A’s in science and math, bake cookies, grow a beautiful garden, hail a cab in rush hour, climb a mountain, become an engineer…change a tire – on a truck, even.

I listened to those elders who were speaking. I listened all my life. I learned from the best. (Many of them were women, but not all – I do think balance is important – learn from whomever can and is willing to teach.)

Today, I can, in fact, do all of these things (or I have in the past) even though many of them are NOT my favorite. I actually loathe gardening, prefer to cook over bake and I’d rather walk or press the Uber button than hail a cab in the city – actually I’d rather drive but sometimes it’s just not practical.

I come by this honestly, it runs in the family. My mom and my sister asked a man the other day for a tire iron – because they didn’t have one – to change the tire on the truck they needed to use. It was a quicker solution to calling triple A (AAA or the three As as I’ve heard it referred) and required them to use their female ingenuity to get the job done. Why didn’t they ask the guy with the tire iron to do it? They didn’t need him to do it for them…learn, do, grow.

~ Dawn aka Hat Girl

PS here’s the before and after.