You know it, right? The quote that will undoubtedly fill your social media feed this International Women’s Day – just as it does every year.
Here’s to strong women – blah, blah, blah…
The sentiment is well meaning but, in its simplicity, the quote has lost its power for me. Not even close to breaking through the surface of the complexities of womanhood – and that’s what we should be doing on IWD. Digging deeper. So, let’s dig.
In what is most certainly a man’s world – here’s to the women who refuse to be invisible. The women who stand up, speak out and push back against systems that keep us small and injustices carried out against us.
Here’s to the women who won’t confine themselves to the tidy little boxes society says they should fit in to. The ones brave enough to be exactly who they are, regardless of what anyone else thinks.
Let’s celebrate the women who are learning that their vulnerability is not a weakness. The women navigating feelings they have never allowed themselves to feel before, dreaming dreams they were too scared to dream before and having conversations that, for the longest time, they couldn’t find the courage for.
Here’s to the women breaking cycles. Facing their demons, healing their trauma, refusing to pass it on to their children. It is not easy work; you are changing the world.
Here’s to the women raising little girls who love themselves unconditionally, trust themselves wholeheartedly & who know that sacrificing self for others is never the answer.
And the women raising little boys who know kindness comes above all else, emotions are not a weakness and violence is never the answer.
The intuitive women, who trust their heart & their gut before their head and listen intently when their body is trying to tell them something. The women who know that everything they need is within them…and to the women just beginning to recognise this too.
Here’s to the women who have met their lowest self and are finding their way back out of the darkness. Keep going toward the light, however long it takes – you must.
Let’s celebrate the women who have figured out that ‘busy’ is a social construct designed to keep us small & quiet. The to-do list will never be finished. The bottom of the wash pile never comes. There is always something that needs doing.
As long as we keep doing, as long as we chase the elusive completed to-do list – stretching ourselves so incredibly thin – in the name of productivity…
We don’t have the energy to think, to feel, to create & to stand in our power. To live.
And that’s just the way the patriarchy like it.
So, on this International Women’s Day, let it be about more than strong women. Consider your message, dig a little deeper. We are so much more wonderfully complex than ‘strong’ .
Here’s to the cycle breakers, the brave, the free. The dreamers, the deep thinkers & feelers. The gentle, the soft & the joyful. The women standing strong in their truth.
May we know those women. May we be those women. May we raise those women.
