To the women who raised us and the women of our own history books who cast the longest shadows, the women who silently bear scars and the wounds of holding so much space for so many. The women who paved the path stone by painstaking stone, taking care to cover the ground with your collective wisdom and truth.

To the women who would emerge as the most immense of mountain ranges, strong and imposing against the horizon shielding the valleys and refusing to crumble. To the women who would rise like vapor and rush as wind across the plains, spanning the empty space and arriving on the other side like a whisper of hope. To the earthy women who would nurture us back from the brink time and time again, the fire women who would rage and burn and in those ashy remains hope had a chance at life.

You may not have known when you were locked in your struggle that you would hold this space for those of us arriving with hungry eyes and full hearts. That the audacity of your dreams would become the foundation of our truths and that your scrupulous climb was our launching pad. That your courageous demands would become our luxuries to breathe, to feel, to believe. You gave us the chance to dream bigger dreams that were once unimaginable in the space you’ve won for us.

We will not take that space for granted.

To my daughters, our daughters, and all the women who do not have a voice yet… we are here. Holding this space, won for us, taken for us, bartered, broken and bleeding for us. We will continue to push and pull, growing into every space finding every crevice. We will serve as architects and engineers, builders, creators collaborators… mentors, supporters… lovers, mothers, sisters. As creators of new life.

We will dig our hands and wills deeply into the ground and send our hearts and songs upwards towards the sky so that no space lies unoccupied in between. In this space, this sacred space that has been held for generations by those mythical women before us… the magic will whirr and wheeze and whoosh. The undulating magic of our feminine ancestors in the space that you will one day inherit to hold.

March 8, 2023 is International Women’s Day. Read more about the importance of today HERE.