Women are tasked with being many things…more things than make actual sense. On top of that, our lives usually necessitate us to be even more multifaceted and paradoxical. Women who are subject to the roughness of life must, in turn, develop an edge sharp enough to keep themselves in tact. Yet demure and agreeable dispositions are primarily what remains lauded. Women are to be nurturing; to be the safe places where children and men can ease their fears and rest their minds. But where does she get to rest? Where are her fears eased? Where is she nurtured and held safe? The expectation to hold it all without being held is a damning one.

Yet this creates a special kind of woman. A woman who’s specific and immutable strength has emerged from bearing the heavy weights of life without letting her knees buckle. She has stood steady through the fires without letting them burn her down. This is the woman who has transformed her hurt into healing; alchemizing the ugliness of the world into her own beauty. Who’s had so much taken, yet still has so much to give (and gives it freely). This is a unique grace, a balance to behold, one where the power to be strong and the courage to be soft rest arm in arm.