On 8 March, the world celebrated International Women’s Day. Although a day largely marked by protests and clamouring for equal rights, it is also a celebration of womanhood.
Yet, merely a week after this celebration, the news is still dominated by reports of women being abused, ignored, disrespected or treated unfairly. But, something that is even worse, is women being mean to each other and breaking each other down.
A social media post by a good friend and colleague of mine, who is fighting a battle with infertility, caught my attention recently, and, as I read her words, I had to fight hard to hold back the tears. She described how she and her husband have always chosen not to discuss this battle with others, because of the comments they receive.
“Today I could not stop the tears from flowing. I read a post about a hospital who said they are helping couples from four different provinces at their infertility clinic. The problem was not the story but the amount of people that commented and the things they said. As someone who is suffering with infertility myself this broke my heart,” the post read.
She went on to explain that one comment in particular was very hard for her to ignore. “When people say ‘our orphanages are overflowing, why do you not just adopt’ I cringe inside. Yes, I know this too and eventually that might be where my road will lead to, but just adopting is not as easy as it seems and who does not dream of carrying and having their own baby, made out of love?” she wrote.
And this made me think. Why are women so quick to attack a fellow woman? Why is it so easy for us to be mean? Why are we so quick to judge someone who only has one child, the woman who has seven children, the woman who made the very hard decision not to have any children, or the one who is desperately yearning for a child of her own, but is battling?
Let us try to be kinder to each other and support each other during our times of need, and most importantly, always remember that we all have our own battles. Let us stand together and uplift each other, instead of being so quick to break each other down.
I will leave you with the following, “Be the woman who fixes another woman’s crown without telling the world that it was crooked”.
Until next week …
