“Be the Heroine of your life not the victim…”
The title quote is from a speech made by Nora Ephron at Wellesley college.
When she spoke in 1996 she was making it very clear how the world was a very different place and that women did have choices, and in her words “it will get messy but embrace the mess”. In 1996 the Oscar nominations for actresses were for parts played as hooker, hooker, hooker and nun …and it was the year the WonderBra was launched. However all this said Ephron did say it is, delicious to be a woman we do have everything and we can make shifts in our lives often more times than men.
To explain how her own life shifted (which was made up of 4 different careers) she explains the game they play as a family:-
“We have a game we play when we’re waiting for tables in restaurants, where you have to write the five things that describe yourself on a piece of paper. When I was [in my twenties], I would have put:
- ambitious
- Wellesley graduate
- daughter
- Democrat
- single
Ten years later not one of those five things turned up on my list. I was:
- journalist
- feminist
- New Yorker
- divorced
- funny
Today not one of those five things turns up in my list:
- writer
- director
- mother
- sister
- happy
If you were to write five words on a piece of paper that describe you now would it be the same in 10 years and was it the same looking back 10 years.
This blog was inspired by listening to Great Lives on Radio 4 – follow the link to learn more
In Ephron’s words again “There is no dress rehearsal for a life to lead – it is yours to lead”
For life coaching please contact bev@nuggetsoflearning.co.uk
