Women, Exercise Your Power: Ode To Us On International Women’s Day

Click to listen: Women, Embody Your Power: Ode To Us On International Women's Day

It’s Women’s International Day, 2023. I’m coming at you a few days early this week with The Rehabbed Runner’s Audio Blog because this a day I can’t just let pass by. It’s too valuable an opportunity to say what needs to be said more than once a year.

Women are incredible. Sorry guys, but we can pull off a lot of shit, all at once – everything, everywhere, all at once – all the time.

Everyday we wake up with the power to make decisions. Every new day our cup is refilled with the opportunity to chose. I think of Women’s International Day as a recognition of the power, choice and inspiration in each and every one of us to realize the life we desire.

It’s from this place that I see women boldly going after their dreams and fulfilling their desires for a happy and meaningful life. We should never give this strength within us away. It is what manifests all the beautiful and badass moments, achievements and adventures that make the world a better place for all women and girls.

To know that the woman who stands next to us has the wit, bravery and relentless strength to go after what she wants, to express her deep intelligent nature, to fight for what is good and worthy, to fall and get back up … helps me to recognize my worth, find my own flame and press me forward. When each of us shows ourselves, we help others find their strength.

If you find yourself stumbling along the way, unable to feel anchored, finding a community that believes in you and nurtures your strengths is the soil from which you can grow into yourself. We are better united than alienated or alone. We should cherish each others worth and fertilize a space in which women can feel empowered and authentic.

I will shout loud and proud that I am grabbing life around the waist and dancing with fervor! I love to share my wins and losses and absurd misadventures along the way – its messy and brilliant, heartbreaking and exhilarating. It brings moments of intense grief but also moments – though fleeting, that are so profoundly rewarding that we whisper to ourselves, “I did it, and no one can ever take it away.”

Share your sins and your sorrows. Your wins and your “Kilimanjaros.” Your story fans the flames of my own fire. When you celebrate “you,” you celebrate us. We are the sum of all our parts. We are not just mouthparts, pushcarts, data charts. We are ramparts, kickstarts and bravehearts. Take inventory. What are all the moments, big and small, that lit your fire, or filled you up, or brought a shy smile to the face of a tentative, uncertain young girl?

How can we pay it forward to our daughters? Our young sisters? Our lost and lonely girls? How do we show them that they too wake up everyday filled with the same incredible power to make choices. How do we teach them not to give that power away? We have to show them. We have to be them. We have to be seen so they too can be seen.

This week I challenge you to stake your claim. Wave your flag. Shout at the top of your lungs. Smile from ear to ear. Take a young girl’s hand. Name it. Own it. Take it.

Happy Women’s International Day!