A Woman's Business - to be the Best

Women have always provided for their families, nurtured children and kept the household running whilst men merely went out to hunt or Work.

My own grandmother has been a great role model to me; married to a miner, living through the Great Depression in England, in the early 1900s, when there was just no money about at all; and living through two World Wars. She was as they say, just a housewife, a Woman of her day. She never had a full time, paid job, what she did was keep an amazingly beautiful house, by buying second hand furniture and bringing it back to life; baking bread and cakes and cooking the most delicious meals from next to no ingredients; sewing her own clothes and that of her 2 daughters (one of whom, my mother, who also took on the skills of her mother) and giving them the reputation of being three of the best dressed Women in the village where they lived. She also supplemented the family income by Working in the fields on a casual basis during the summer months, pulling peas or picking strawberries when they were in season;

this on top of the hard physical Work of Washing, cleaning and baking.

As a child I would go shopping with her on a Saturday afternoon to the nearby town, which was two miles away. We always walked there, she was in her '70s by then and she always said that maybe we would take the bus back home. We never did, we always walked the two miles back as well. The bus isn't coming just yet, she would say, 'we might as Well set off and Walk it home.

Although I can't say she changed the World in anyway, she was not part of the Women's Movement, she did not invent penicillin or some other drug to save mankind, but she made me aware that Women can achieve whatever they want to achieve just by her sheer determination to carve out a better life for herself and her family when others around them were affected and dragged down by the poverty of the time; by her making of her small World a beautiful place by caring about it and being very clever with the resources that she had.

Women can have the joy and pleasure of bringing up children, nurturing them to be successful in their lives and giving them the wherewithal to achieve whatever they want to achieve.

Having your own business is the ultimate expression of defining yourself. It gives you the freedom and the pleasure to design your own life, to create something Worthwhile, maybe something that you can pass on to your children or something that you can sell and enjoy the profits when you have decided that you cannot take it any further.