I’m 42. Here’s what I’ve learned about being a woman

[@AnonymousFriend-i7l]

Ana! What I love about you is that I know your life has been difficult in many ways. I am an American and I am so dismayed by what is happening to my country and its affect on the entire world. But when I see you, I see a beautiful survivor and I am given hope... that I too may be able to survive and thrive.... finding the beautiful, giving, elements of myself to reach out to others You are such a strong role model. Thank You Ana.

[@oneseeker2]

She deliberately got her papers AND things together and left het Country, she did not daddle. She AND Brian have since moved around looking for home, AND safety. As Americans, if we just do nothing, we have done nothing for ourselves to prepare to leave. Things will not Get any better in America

[@werewitch9466]

Thank you for this video Ana. I'm 20 and it's very comforting to hear someone share about the parts of life that are not usually talked about, I look forward to the second part💗

[@marmar6692]

Wow, this was one of your best videos, if not the best, the honesty about real female issues, my god, i wish i was your friend in real life... I'm in my 40ies, and i can relate to all those things you've mentioned - the body image issues from a very early teens to health problems, to "mother wounds", to not having children and being given all those unsolicited advices... I'm sending you love, there are so many of us❤

[@margothattingh5911]

You are a wonderful and courageous woman Ana, I so admire you and the grace with which you navigate a sometimes extremely challenging life. ✨🌻

[@SchneppFlute]

Being a woman is very complex! You shared enough to get your points across and stay respectful of those in different circumstances from yours. I'm sure this was one of your more difficult videos to produce. Thank you for your honesty and giving us more food for thought. ❤

[@richardwilliamson1639]

As a man, I'm interested in what it's like to be a woman. Thanks for sharing!

[@summerrain7466]

Hello, my friend! I am 55yrs old, and still working out some of those early childhood mother-daughter challenges! And yes, stepping back to look at a mother simply as a person, and as someone who had their own life and own experiences before you were ever born, does give you a different perspective on things sometimes. About children/no children, I wish you could feel more comfortable and confident, dear friend, to ask people to mind their own business! You owe NO ONE an explanation for anything that does not effect them directly. Sending you much love, Ana!

[@TheShayde2000]

Happy Birthday, Ana! I just turned 62. I am just now coming to terms with my relationship with my mother. I was her caretaker until she passed in 2021. Like you, I didn't realize what was wrong until counseling.

[@richardwilliamson1639]

Most comments about one's status in life can be answered with "Thanks for your opinion." Kudos for honesty and nuance, Ana. "Survivor Bias" explains so much. People often mean well and feel they must share their "secrets to success." Otherwise they see themselves as selfish. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

[@jcsrst]

This was awesome! Doesn't matter where you're from, being a woman can be challenging! ALL valid points that you made, thank you!

[@velvetolio]

I'm so happy I found your channel. Thank you for creating such a calm space here for us

[@Natalia-c8l3e]

Ana, I'm absolutely amazed, what you are talking about is so brave, genuine and unique! Congratulations!!! 💚💚💚

[@superkommunikatoren4987]

Love to listen to you and what you share! Thank you! /Niclas ❤

[@inessilva1859]

Anna I could feel your emotion when you talked about your complex history with your mother, and I cried, because I have that open wound on my self too. My mother is alive, but I feel that the disturbance and distress of my relationship with her will always hunt me. I have been to therapy, I have reflected and got some very enlighted insights, I've tried to forgive all the damage she caused me, how she shapped my life and my personality into a fragile being, who had to made her strong all by herself. We are now on better terms, but its such an ambivalent and never settled mindset I have about my relationship with her. I've been reading a book by one of the most renoumed portuguese psychoanalists, António Coimbra de Matos, called "Depressão" (Depression), in which he deeply explores the mother-daughter/son early dynamic, and I got some deep, freeing yet hurtful insights. It's such a lonely and personal road, but I have an optimistic sense that one day peace will be in ours hearts ❤

[@gayathrigirijathmajan970]

Hi Ana.. it is so generous of you to share so many very personal aspects of your life..these are truly valuable lessons..my life circumstances are very different from yours.. but I could completely relate to everything you said.. really grateful❤

[@WaffleTraveller]

Привет, Ана! Thank you for this video. I relate to a lot of what you said, especially about the mother-daughter relationship. I wish I could have met you in real life, it would be wonderful to have a friend like you 😊 Looking forward to the sequel video! Take care 💚

[@helenavasconcelos4807]

Thank you for sharing your insights which deeply resonated with me 😊

[@siobhanseymour6860]

Thank you Ana for sharing such personal.inaights and being so open in a public space. I resonate so much with your insights. How dearly i would love to have you as a real life friend!

[@keepfocused]

Thanks for being so vulnerable. I get asked why don't you have children alot. It is difficult to explain that it is a combination of things. It was great to hear someone talk about it from a different perspective. ❤

[@vickymaddenbonillas5910]

Thank you for your honest conversation, Ana! I appreciate you and your videos!

[@shamsahumayun4693]

Happy birthday to you. You’re a sweet person 🎉❤

[@HelenaHovorkova]

Happy birthday Ana and thank you for being so nice and kind woman.

[@katarzynapiatkowska]

I will turn 42 in June this year. Thank you for what you do here, on KZbin. And for being such a beautiful and wise person ❤

[@petrabutler3463]

Such a heartfelt and honest video. Thank you you Ana ❤ Your hair always looks lovely too ❤

[@pansyflowerboy]

Ana, it was quite brave of you to share this on this public platform. I hope people are kind in the comments. I enjoyed this video very much even though I'm not a woman. ❤

[@jessicabulloch5302]

Anna, you are a lovely person. I am a mother of a large family. I find that some people are just judgemental and mean, I have received unkind comments asking why I have so many children. ❤

[@meursaultscourtroom8886]

Always a voice of reason and kindness, your ideas are much appreciated. Wishing you the best.

[@judithrussell9162]

As I become older, and older, I realise how fortunate my life has been. My parents were very poor and there were many children, but they were kind, if not overly warm. My mother only did two cruel things to me, one when I was a child which I repressed for a long time, and one when I told her I was separating from my husband. She told me that I was a spoilt brat and didn't deserve a good husband. I went home in anger and when I settled down I realised that she was grieving, because she loved my husband. I also realised that she was just a person with no magic status, as you said Ana. We never spoke of it but she brought me a cake soon after, cake being her love language😊. I also have no children, mostly from choice, but the strange thing is that people have rarely asked me if or why, which I'm grateful for. I mustn't look like a mother? Great video as usual, very thought provoking.

[@sharonshmuel3386]

Lovely seeing you. You are so brave to tell your stories ❤ I think you are amazing & very talented ❤

[@alexandraw.7920]

What you said about your mother - what you realized, when she was dying - hit me right in my heart and made me cry immediately. Thank you so much for your wise words, Ana.

[@Amra-h5w]

Dear Ana as an HSP this video deeply resonates with me, thank you so much for sharing!

[@margarettownsley9500]

Hi Ana I resonate with what you say thank you for sharing this topics can

[@Michelle-bk5uq]

I so appreciate you and this channel. Thank you! 💛

[@debj9680]

You are amazing Ana. So ethereal and wise. I relate to all your points, especially the one re children. It never happened for me either due to a variety of complex factors x

[@dorispetersen663]

Happy Birthday!🎉

[@vanessalcx]

Dear Ana, Thank you so much for sharing such personal topics with sincerity. I know how hard it is to face our truth and to talk about it. Some memories are painful, even years after. I am now at peace with my mother who is still alive and healthy but it took me years before I was able to forgive some behaviors I suffered from. I am now 46 and the mother of a wonderful 21 yo girl who I managed to build a real love relationship with. It required a lot of work. I had to call all my childhood wounds into question, to embraced my struggles of being a girl and after that a woman because of the society I grew in and the family I was born in, family that had also been shaped by this society, not to mention mental health and social conditions of its members… I totally feel you. I also said things like that about women and I regret. However I forgive ourselves because we were raised hearing and being forced to think such things. I deeply respect what you say and what you don’t say, what you feel and think, I am fully convinced that competition within women is harmful and unproductive. We need to be all together in sorority. We need to stop judging other women for what they are or are not. I am sorry if I made mistakes saying all this, since English is not my mother tongue either but I wanted to show you my support and pure love from a female human being to a female human being, and to pay tribute to the beautiful, strong and complete woman you are, just the way you are. And also to all women who feel those struggles. Amitiés, Vanessa

[@sunflowerBlume-is1ug]

You are a kind woman and I love the way you talk about different things, but you don't own anybody an explanation or sharing things you are not ready to share. Just be yourself. I don't have any children, at first I wanted children but couldn't have any, but now I am glad that it didn't work out. I truly believe God knows what he is doing and I so thankful that he didn't answer all of my prayers. Thank you for sharing part of your story.

[@LL-qi9mb]

A very good video, interesting and from the heart obviously. I feel for you, your struggles and journey, and am happy that you are/have come to terms with a lot of it. Nothing in life is easy, and sometimes it is impossibly hard, but facing the challenges and trying to overcome them is so important. As for rude prying people, and having or not having or not being able to have children, is nobody's business. It is a very personal thing, and one that should not be brought up lightly. Thanks for sharing your journey.

[@oneseeker2]

U R fine, I found everything relatable. Over the years I have given answers to questions of "you aren't married" to, "no children". Once I found the questions were noisy, intrusive, uncomfortable, until, I answered the way I chose to and matter of factly and no lingering.

[@liammcweeney1674]

Another great topic Ana have a great week

[@verapurrio5462]

Frauen sollten aufhören, sich immer zu rechtfertigen. Ob man Kinder hat oder nicht, ob man verheiratet ist oder nicht usw. , geht niemanden etwas an.

[@pameehanson3866]

A mother - daughter relationship is complex. We lived on a farm and my mother sent me outside to help my Dad. I never learned housekeeping and my Dad was abusive to me as I wasn’t fast enough , clumsy and awkward 😢. My mother did not support me when I shared abuse so I learned to live a life and became able to spend many hours alone my whole life. Did take many years of counseling to make peace with myself and let it go ❤. Thanks for sharing as I got older women began to share and be more open about relationships with their mothers and I’m no longer feeling alone or lost!

[@UppityRib]

Lovely insights! And just my 2 cents on being a woman: In patriarchal cultures (which is pretty much all of them), women are socialized to be as misogynist as men are -- and of course, most of us don't realize it at first. It's like we are fish in a pond, saying, What's water? So glad people around the world are waking up to it earlier and earlier.

[@AA-hy6nb]

You yourself noted that in Siberia there are more women than men, and traditionalism pushes ordinary women to fight for a potential partner. A similar situation is in most provincial Russian regions. The reason for this is Russian provincial traditionalism, but also the aggressive policy of the Russian state, which for centuries waged endless wars one after another. As a result, many men died, depriving women of the opportunity to find a potential partner. And at the very time, militant traditionalism demanded that Russian women find a partner at any cost. Alas, many women submitted to this pressure of traditional attitudes and tried to acquire a man, as an absolutely necessary status object, even taking husbands away from their existing families. For educated, self-sufficient, independent women during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the only way to escape the pressure of militant traditionalism was to move to Moscow or St. Petersburg, where relations between people were more progressive and based on the principles of mutual trust and camaraderie.

[@annbissinger5295]

You are very precious and inspiring

[@lilianpoberezny4933]

💛

[@sheliamaynus9869]

Thanks for your vulnerability.

[@Anita-rq9ev]

Thank you for being honest about you and your mother. I respect that you don't want to go into too much detail. It's your life and your choices or sometimes even not by choice. We don't need to justify everything, it's not all under our control. Though on one point I disagree from personal experience: I find it hard to work with some women, some are really nasty. Thank you Ana and all the best 🙏

[@lucyadams9884]

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌻🌻🌻🌸🌸🌸🌸🤗☺️x

[@ShelleyTwedt]

The last words I ever received from my narcissistic, histrionic mother several years before she died, "Don't write to me. Don't call me."

[@karoana8759]

Ana,..unfortunately these clueless ppl exists ,there is a polite way to stop them and you can not ! give explanation to anyone about your private life ,ever !❤

[@GeeBri]

❤️❤️❤️

[@grady4757]

❤🍵🍵

[@sanetzwiegers564]

🫶

[@karoana8759]

Ana please stop talking about aging ,as if! You are ONLY 42 ! As you know ,what we think over and over again, our mind plays with us and you will become really old today 😄Concentrate on living ,love you!

[@Megpezz]

I understand your perspective and I personally appreciate when Ana talks about aging. I think she’s not talking about from a place of shame, but rather from a place of acceptance. As a younger person who is noticing the first signs of aging in my body, this is a helpful perspective for me.

[@christineb8148]

Perimenopause can begin in your 30's and along with menopause is the most significant aging event in a woman's life. It's not negative to acknowledge the change that is certainly taking place in your body. And it is positive and helpful to acknowledge reality and talk about it so that if management or treatment of perimenopause needs to be considered, it can happen instead of wondering and suffering in silence.

[@oneseeker2]

Yes can, not usually

[@urabagofcells2228]

who are you to tell someone what to do?? :-(

[@AA-hy6nb]

You are 42, but you look like a 24 y.o. girl. Well done!

[@oneseeker2]

She is still 42

[@oneseeker2]

Obviously she was never a sun goddess, I was, skin aged due to sun, squamous cell sun cancer. Of course my Vit D was great, still... Aging AND skin not as healthy

[@mihaeladaia4673]

🤍