It started happening about eight months ago, I think. I’d be walking down the street and pass another woman. It could be any kind of woman. An elderly woman. A middle-aged woman. A bright-eyed youthful woman. A woman on her own. A woman pushing a buggy. A woman with a partner. A woman walking her dog.
It didn’t happen with every woman but it happened with enough to make me take notice. As we passed one another, we’d both look up to meet one another’s eyes and exchange a smile and sometimes a hello. Nothing too unusual there.
But it was what happened in the immediate moments afterwards that piqued my interest. Right after we’d passed one another, I started to feel a swell of emotion and sometimes tears would push themselves to the surface.
The emotion told a story. It told a story of all the women throughout history who’d been silenced, pushed down and made inferior. It told a story of vast potential and chronic self-doubt. It told a story of sacrificing one’s own needs to satisfy the needs of everyone and everything else.
Though I did not know any of the women I passed, and whilst we more than likely wouldn’t make natural friends in daily life, I felt bonded to these women and in their smiles I felt seen and supported, unified by the collective trauma of our gender, passed down through generations.
Sometimes we can feel that our healing journeys are selfish; that we’re spending too much time and energy focusing on ourselves. But these women that I have passed and the women I continue to pass have convinced me that time spent healing is not selfish.
Healing, actually, is our sacred duty. Healing is how we say, “this ends with me”. When we heal ourselves, we are also sending healing back through our family lines and we ensure the same trauma doesn’t continue into the future.
As one woman rises, all women rise. And as all women rise, we bring everyone and everything else with us.
Love and courage,
Leah