Transcriber: Maddalena Bruno Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Audacity.
It is defined as having the courage to make bold choices
or excessive confidence.
It is both of those
or either of those.
I define female audacity
as having the excessive confidence a woman needs
to make bold choices between two seemingly conflicting
but significant elements of her life.
All young people entering adulthood are faced with a stressful decision -
our career path -
because we believe that that choice will define who we are
for the rest of our lives.
And in some ways, it will.
But the truth is, we are not who we were ten years ago,
or who we will be ten years from now.
So we must have the courage to make a bold choice
to live our truth now.
Women are sometimes faced with additional stress
once they decide to bring a child into the world.
How are we defined now?
Are we a nurturing mother or are we a career woman?
This seemingly polarizing event in a woman's life can be tragic
and very difficult to deal with.
The dichotomy exists between working career woman
and mother.
It exists so powerfully that our culture has labeled it,
"Mommy Wars."
A war between women,
simply because they have made different choices.
Will they have the audacity to forgo their family
to chase after their ambitions?
Or will they have the audacity
to be a nurturing mother and dedicate themselves to their children?
Either way, it seems to have a negative connotation.
But the fact remains that the war exists.
In the mid-90s,
I was at the beginning of a great career.
I was working for the computer and technology industry
which, at the time, was still very heavily male-dominated.
And I was doing great.
I was enjoying the financial success and posh that went with it.
I knew who I was.
I was defined by my career,
and I was certain that I had made the right choice.
And then, in 2001, my world changed with the birth of my first child.
And in four years, I had three children.
My identity came into question by my peers, my social circles,
and by my self.
Who was I now?
Would I have the audacity to continue to chase after my own ambitions
and neglect my family?
Or would I have the audacity to leave my career
and be a nurturing mother?
I had to choose one or the other.
Or so it seemed.
And I did.
I stayed home with my family, and I was sure about my decision.
It was concrete and I knew that I was right,
so I became a soldier in that war.
And I took on a hobby.
I started a podcast.
I talked about the benefits of stay-at-home mothering,
and I supported stay-at-home mothering.
And I found people to interview that would legitimize my choice for me,
and talk more about the benefits of stay-at-home mothering.
The podcast did very well,
and I ignored the irony for three years while I worked on the podcast.
And then several years later, things changed again.
The dynamic of my family changed.
I changed, my children changed.
They grew.
So my role in their lives as a mother was different.
I was compelled to go back to work full-time.
But I was more than just a soldier in the war;
I was a five-star general.
I was telling the whole world about how right I was.
And now, I was choosing the other side again -
the other side of this dichotomy
that I realized, finally, doesn't exist.
It exists
because we have fear.
It is a difficult decision to make.
And when we make it,
we spend a long time legitimizing it and defending it
and creating the "Mommy Wars," this dichotomy.
Since the women's suffrage movement,
women have swung back and forth on a pendulum.
Rising to work during World War II,
proving that we can, proving our strength,
replacing the men that had gone to war,
and proving our equality.
And then, coming back home in the 50s and 60s,
to raise what we believed to be the picturesque American family.
Encouraging strong daughters who would roar into the 70s and 80s,
heroines of feminism.
And then the pendulum would swing back the other way,
when Generation X would decide in favor
of natural, stay-at-home parenting.
The truth is, however,
that we are not locked into the far corners of a dichotomy
that as a society, we've made up.
Women are not either-or.
The woman that goes to work is no less of a mother,
and the mother that stays home with her children is no less of a woman.
And we must make decisions based on the phases of our life
as we move through life.
Because they are phases.
And we must have the courage to make those choices
over and over again throughout our lives.
We are not ever, as women or as human beings, either-or.
We are, in fact, "and" and "both."
And we must have the audacity
and dare to live the truth of who we are.
Right now.
Thank you.
(Applause)