The Essence of International Women’s Day

I work as a postpartum doula. I am deeply honored to have worked with so many different women at their most vulnerable, but also often at their most resilient. 
This morning when I got to my client’s house, she was as sleep- deprived, as it is possible to be and still be upright. (She has a new baby and a toddler). I took the baby so that she’d have a minute to focus on her toddler. From the other room I could hear her daughter leap onto her back and mom gallop around the room, making upbeat horse sounds. I could also hear her daughter’s delighted giggles. Where she got the energy to do this I have no idea. I stood there in tears holding her baby, thinking that I had just witnessed the essence of “ International Women’s Day”. She had done what we all do. Love takes us that step beyond what is possible. Not only could she NOT take the day off, she pushed well beyond her real physical limitations. She is indispensible to her family, she knows that, and embraces it.
Today I honor all the women I know who, after hours of exhausting labor, have managed to find the energy to push out their babies, the ones who have gotten up in the middle of the night over and over again to comfort the little or sick ones, or the ones who have gone above and beyond for a friend, or have sat for endless hours at the bed of a dying loved one. I honor the women who have created shelter and space with their own two hands, and cooked enough food to feed the multitudes. I also hold dear the women who have blazed ahead into hostile territory to clear a path for all of us, or have taken a stance when it was impossible to do that. 
YOU are, (we are) the rock stars and we will find the strength to turn the current tide, because that IS what we do!