The resolute women of gen X.

I’m not a Gen Y (aka Millennial) nor a Gen Z — though I wish I were, simply because it would be killer if I could add some more time to this great life. Instead, I am smack in the middle of Generation X, the “forgotten generation”. I would prefer that we were called the ‘sleeper generation’, and I certainly don’t mean because we’ve been getting a lot of sleep, but because we are the dark horse at the end of the alphabet. The lesser known generation that is waking up and pulling out in the lead … especially the resolute women of Gen X.

While we “adulted” on grunge music, and some of us even listened to vintage Cat Stevens (super guilty), we grew up believing that we could do anything with hard work and were raised to believe so by both our mothers and fathers. We also grew up witnessing our own mothers holding the family unit together while simultaneously establishing (and grappling with) their own value and independence outside of the home.

Now, the women of Gen X are coming out from under their parenting rock in droves. My news feeds are full of content from this words-driven tribe, and the highly educated, well experienced women of Gen X are holding court. While raising our own sons and daughters, we came face-to-face with the reality that the work-life struggles we confront are not all that dissimilar from what our own mothers faced. Shocked with the reality of this fact, we know that we can’t pass this on to yet another generation. So, we double down, and are resolute in our determination to make change for our children.

We talk a lot about Millennials as being values and meaning driven at work and in life. Yet, it is now the Gen X women that have a razor-sharp purpose and it goes much deeper and is far less self-serving than the generations before or after. We are deeply engaged in where this world is going. We have children that are growing into mini-adults and, simply put, we want this world to be extraordinary for them.

Yes, Gen X women are massively independent and super ambitious. Anyone that has ever questioned the ambition of a Gen X woman is going to eat their words over the next decade. For most of us, especially those who built their career before having children, we are in the throes of our 2nd, 3rd, and some of us our 4th life. Reinvention is part-and-parcel of Gen X women and re-inventing they are.

For this Gen X’er, I get to put all those lives worth of knowledge and experience together and provide value, scope, breadth and depth to modern thinking companies that strive to look past the narrow and linear view of what it means to do good work. Driven by the purpose of building a world that is not just okay, but extraordinary for both the women and men of the next generation, change is imperative. Change in the way we work, change in the way we partner at home, change in the way we value time, change in what constitutes leadership, and change in what our leaders will look like.

The resolute women of Gen X are not shying away from the hard work, instead they are confronting outdated historical norms head on and cementing new foundations upon which future generations can build their craft and flourish.

We are Gen X, and we are not backing down.

Originally published on Medium by Kristi Rible at: https://kristi-rible.medium.com/the-resolute-women-of-gen-x-846bcbf1cb2e