Freedom is something many of us aspire to. Financial freedom, spiritual freedom, lifestyle freedom. Little wonder whole industries have sprung up to support you in realising these freedoms.

Rarely however does anyone say, ‘Pursue the path of visibility. That’ll free you.’

Perhaps that’s because people assume the pursuit of visibility is a vacuous path. The path of celebrities and reality tv stars who want to be loved and who’ll do anything to capture the spotlight.

That however, is not and never will be the kind of visibility I’m speaking of.

Fame is of course, a form of visibility, but it’s only one form.

The visibility that interests me is about so much more.

It starts with seeing yourself. Really seeing yourself.

Not the constructed version of womanhood society has created for you. Not the conditioned female you’ve become after years of being told to focus on pleasing others rather than making your own needs a top priority. Not the compliant, people pleaser; or the acquiescent wife; or the easy going friend who never actually puts forward her preference for where she might want to catch up for dinner or which movie she might want to see, for fear of rocking the boat and being seen as ‘too pushy’.

None of these iterations of womanhood are free. None of them are even real. They’re a manifestation of a society that’s pathologically obsessed with an ideal of womanhood rather than the reality of it.

And to a greater or lesser extent we’ve all become slaves to this ideal.

The rare woman who has actively deconstructed her conditioning though is a different species altogether. She’s unencumbered. She’s uninhibited. She doesn’t swallow her words. She doesn’t pull punches when she expresses an idea. She makes waves with her presence in the best possible way.

And that my friend is what it is to be a visible woman. That is freedom.