For the last two years, on International Women’s Day, I attended a tea hosted by the Kwakiutl District Council in Campbell River.
The room was full of women who had survived residential school, women who had fled abuse, women who cared for children every day, women who owned businesses, women who worked minimum wage jobs and many more. The common factor could have so easily been the struggle that everyone faces, but it wasn’t, it was triumph.
That is why I love taking a day to celebrate women.
It is so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day struggle, it is even easier to get caught in a cycle of complaint. It is easy to point fingers, to blame society, to blame the patriarchy, to wish for more, to wish it was better.
The struggle is real and there is still a long way to go. International Women’s Day acknowledges that, but it is also a time to celebrate how far we have come.
That is what this feature has become; a celebration.
Choosing who to write about was difficult; every woman has a story and every woman is inspiring in her own way. From the stay-at-home moms to the CEOs, the daily fight for health, happiness and success is a shared experience.
Once we chose who to write about, then came the problem of writing. How do you tell a story about a person who seems to do everything?
How do you summarize a person’s career path or capture a person’s passion with mere words?
It is impossible to do justice to the stories of these women, for what we write is a drop in the bucket of what they are truly all about.
So let’s celebrate all of us, for the successes, resilience and beauty that we see in others and the uncertainty, pain and struggle that we don’t.
This isn’t a competition. This isn’t about comparing yourself to others. We are here and we are enough. Let these women and the others in this town be an inspiration to you and you to them.
We are better together.
Jocelyn Doll is the editor of the
Revelstoke Review