This blog is dedicated to all of the MOMS out there!
My children are now 8 and 10 years old and it has been only in the last three years that I’ve even bothered to recognize how important it is to take care of myself and stay excited about how I look and how I feel everyday. If you’ve read a little bit into my personal Rebekah Green Biography, you may remember that I ran my own construction company and real estate development firm for ten years. Spending 7 days a week out on the construction site, being beaten down by the sun, wind, dirt and intense physical labor, I prided myself on how tough I was and how little attention I paid to my appearance.
I considered it a badge of honor to sport a physical scar here and there, and I never paid any attention to my hair, skin or anything else. Everyday, my uniform consisted yellow steel-toed boots, a pair of men’s baggy jeans and a sweatshirt that hid any shape that I might have underneath. I never wore jewelry, not even hippie green jewelry, and I certainly never wore make up.
I considered this a good and righteous life – working my butt off, raising two children as a single mom and fighting the good fight for all things green and environmentally responsible. Somewhere along the line, I decided that any form of self-care was selfish and a waste of energy that my time would be better spent on someone else or some greater cause. Believe me when I say it, I really did play out this unfortunate misinterpretation of being green / eco-conscious / socially responsible to the Nth degree. So, I’m here to say with tremendous authority, I had it all wrong.
Even if you haven’t been running your own construction company while raising your little ones, chances are that you find one way or another to make the needs of everyone else around you far more important than your own. You probably aren’t taking the time that you need to to be a little selfish … in the healthiest way possible. This is what we seem to do as women and as mothers – become generally invisible, while we work our tails off, without regard to filling up our own wells.
Well, enough is enough! I was really missing the boat all those years by not enjoying why we’re alive on this green planet in the first place! We’re here to best the best that we can be, to be beautiful, to be vibrant, to be inspired and to radiate our inspiration to others by feeling whole and well taken care of! If none of that is in place, then nothing genuinely positive and world-changing can take root. No matter how selfless we are as mothers, if we can’t model self-love and healthy boundaries for our children, then they will never learn to be the best that they can be.
I sort of stepped backward into the fashion and 14K gold jewelry world by accident. I began pursuing some projects in the Green Hollywood and progressive media arenas, and I had to learn how to present myself properly in that field. It was a struggle for me at first, but soon I discovered how fantastic I felt when I looked better than I ever dreamed was possible for me. I wish that I had found these powerful tools much sooner!
My lifelong passions for art, architecture and design quickly translated into a full-on passion for fashion. Shortly after that, I developed a love of high quality gold jewelry. As a business woman, I researched the industry and found a way to make a line of 14K gold earrings that uses only recycled gold and fair trade gemstones. By manufacturing responsibly, I was finally able to combine all of my passions together and live a truly green lifestyle without any baggy jeans or steel-toed boots.
My sense of empowerment now came from a much deeper place, because it was in tune with my own femininity and my desire for expressing beauty in the world. So, for all of those “self-less” moms out there, please take a page from my book and decide sooner than I did that being a little selfish and little stylish is actually one of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself, your children and the planet!
