After I wrote my post on the Dove event I attended, I started thinking about WHO my role models are, who they were in the past, who helped make me the woman I am today. (Dad, you have always been my role model but this post is strictly one for the ladies, LOVE YOU!).

My role models went from this….

… to this very quickly.

Funny how that works – one minute you’re looking up to Belle and Cinderella and the next you want to be Baby Spice. I can’t seem to remember looking up to any woman who wasn’t in the mainstream media – although I did love Phoebe Gilman (my favourite children’s writer), I can’t say that I considered her a role model at that age.

Do you really think about who your role models are when you’re 7 or 10 or even 14? I don’t think we really THINK about who we’re looking up to and quite frankly until last night I hadn’t given it much thought.  I have found a lot of my role models in the characters that I meet in books (i.e Hermione Granger). The funny thing is that I have a lot of real, strong, and wonderful female role models in my life and I’ve been a little blind NOT to see it or acknowledge it.

Mama Helen and Sister Jessica have ALWAYS been my greatest role models. Hardworking, honest, successful, beautiful, and modest women. When you’re growing up it can sometimes be difficult to relate to your own family members, not realizing that they have been through the same things. Finally at the age of twenty-three, I see what amazing role models they are and always have been.

My aunts, my older cousins, my eighth grade english teacher, my best friends, writers that I’ve met this year (Jeanne Bannon and Romi Moondi), the bloggers that I follow, writers that I may never meet (J.K Rowling) – they have all been my role models. I have looked up to them my entire life and I haven’t even thanked them for being AWESOME! So, Ladies, thank you for being awesome. Thank you for being women worth looking up to. All of you are strong role models and you should be famous. Seriously.

–

Love Always

Vanessa Xo