Celebrate Woman Today
by Laura Gontchar

Women are heroes. They have always been heroes.

Being heroes, they hide their identity behind the costumes of everyday life. Hidden from view, doing daily deeds unseen by others, they allow others to shine – the bosses, the kids, the men, the parents, the friends in their lives.

Women do extraordinary things so often, we think it is ordinary. They shape the world in every way they can, to make it kinder, softer, more compassionate. More beautiful.

But it is a world they do not control. Over recent generations they have wrested spaces for themselves, for the ones they love, for the work they do, to give them greater control over their lives.

Yet, it is often an unkind world for women. One that constantly challenges them with lower pay than men, longer family hours than men, less voice in the affairs of their organizations, communities, and nations – many forcefully telling them what they can, and cannot, do with their bodies. The threat that they may lose all they have gained this past half century is ever present. Still they labor on, quiet, unsung heroes doing extraordinary feats to make their portion of the world a better place – if not for themselves, at least for their children.

In these difficult, tumultuous times, when men are thrown out of work, or off to war, or underemployed, sometimes absent as fathers, it is the cadre of women who have moved into the breach to become primary bread winners. Paid less than three quarters that of men doing the same jobs, still they retain the overtime duties of homemakers, mothers, wives, caregivers to parents, patient friend, and still expected to be expressionate lovers.

How do they do it all? How can they? When is their time for themselves? Where is the space for them to be who they are, who they want to be? Whom they intended to be before life intervened and changed their course forever?

Heroes have a way of surviving, and if not thriving, at least they bear it all with dignity. And before they go to sleep exhausted at night, they give a wink to a tomorrow when maybe they can find a little place to experience their personal selves – to express themselves as their own original being, and not just live out a role defined by need, history, convention, and outside expectations.

It is time, is it not, for all to celebrate women? Or, barring well-deserved applause, at least for women to celebrate women? For women to celebrate their individual self? If you don’t do it, who will? If no one else is going to give you richly deserved applause, you must do it for yourself. Nourishing your soul grows your power to nourish others.   

As Celebrate Woman Today grows, and evolves, and sharpens its focus, I want to provide for you what I need myself: Support, motivation, inspiration, surprise, and a true sense of community – valued others with whom to share the precious and fleeting moments of life.

I have been blessed, these many years with my blog, to have met exceptional women who do quite exceptional things. I am blessed to have been inspired by women who say they are ordinary but have reached – however briefly – into my life and expanded my horizons and lifted my spirit.

Contact Me Here