“I am a woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore.”

In this feminist collection of short stories, Cecelia Ahern aims to give a roaring voice to every woman around the world who struggle with the difficult and the demanding situations in their lives. The book beautifully encapsulates stories of 30 women of different age, different cultures, different places, coming together in a book and sharing their individual struggles and how they overcome it by believing in themselves.

ROAR is the newest book from Cecelia Ahern and is comprised of stories that focus on women. Some are funny, some thought-provoking, some enlightening but nonetheless they are all engaging. Set amidst the movement of #MeToo, the author explores the struggles of what it is to be a woman in today’s world, from being married to being a refugee, from being a mother to being the woman who’s clock is ticking.

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”

Have we as women, become so invisible that we have to shout every time to make our presence felt. Why do we feel guilty if we don’t meet other people’s expectations? How we often forget to love ourselves to love everyone else? How in the midst of fulfilling every role in life, we forget who we truly are? How we feel broken when all we are trying to do is hold everything together. How as we age, our perception changes about who we are. It becomes all about who we are as what others want us to be. Are we losing ourselves?

When we as women encourage and support other women, we can conquer anything. When we go through a lot of changes in our lives we often tend to cling to the past so desperately that we forget to live in the present. How in the hustle-bustle of life we start doubting ourselves that we start growing a field of doubts in no time. Sometimes we need to distance ourselves from the people we love for a little while to know how much we love them & need them in our lives.

Why do we think that making genuine, silly mistakes is non-survivable and is worth sinking into a deep, dark hole in the ground? Sometimes you got to tell yourself that everything is okay, even when what you are doing is not making sense. In the hustle bustle of life we forget about the things we always wanted to do, things that make us happy, things we keep aside because other urgent things need our attention. In this process we tend to lose who we are, our brain starts dying. Instead of sitting on it we should do all we ever wanted, take time out for ourselves. It is vital that we know what our strength, our talent is. We often forget what we indeed are good at.

When we wear our heart on our sleeves, we tend to make ourselves vulnerable emotionally. By doing that we let others have control over us. Our heart is our’s to control, our’s to protect and our’s to keep. We are the keeper of our heart. Sometimes doing things we don’t usually do makes us happy from the inside. In this fictitious world, we have become so adept to doing what others want that we forget what should come naturally to us.

We are evolving as a society, but still pink for vagina and blue for the penis is the mindset of the people. We are so busy fighting gender equality that we have forgotten that we are humans first. Humanity is losing itself while we are busy conforming to society’s’ self-proclaimed gender-biased rules. If women were to be given equal opportunity in matters of the country, they wouldn’t have to hide their true identity. In a world where the male population is more, it often becomes a struggle for the female to have equal rights.

Being a transgender even in today’s society is not easy. People don’t really accept and welcome them with open arms. Society still makes it difficult for them to live as they want to. As women, we have often labeled as fat, skinny, pretty, sexy, etc. But what other people tend to forget is that we are more than just that one label.

We often are told to keep our eyes on the prize. To always think about reaching the top. But it is essential to enjoy and know what you are doing to achieve there and what you will do after arriving there. When we become self-obsessed, and everything is just about ourselves, we become shallow, we become weightless.

“Grass is greener on the other side.” All of us at some point in our lives have thought that. We are always comparing ourselves with others, with what others have. In this process of constant comparison, we forget what we have, and we forget to be grateful for it.

When we are so busy fulfilling everybody else’s demands, we often tend to fall apart ourselves. We don’t really give such importance because we think we’ll fix ourselves later until the situation is terrible and we are completely torn. We should take out time and fix us ourselves first the moment we start falling apart.

We all have a different side to ourselves that is not for anyone else to see. A different life we always dream of living. A secret we do not tell others. A secret that we keep to ourselves. A secret place. Our secret sanctity. A secret room with a secret combination. A secret that we Roar.

Words that stayed with me even after finishing it –

“She could do this. She could do it all, because she wanted to and because she had to. Because it was her life, the only one she had, and she was going to live it as best she could, embracing every moment, going to work, being with her family and refusing to apologise to anyone for it, least of all herself. “

We as women, we as individuals, can do whatever we want to accomplish if we truly have courage and belief in ourselves. So women, believe in yourself, your worth, cherish everything you are and dream big dreams.