If my father and son are the bookends of my life, the women in my life are all the books.

If the meaning of vulnerability comes from the word meaning capable of being wounded and courage comes from cor, meaning to have heart, being vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re strong but rather courageous.

If we are strong; determined, articulate, driven, or just not prepared to tolerate or ignore the treatment we have been conditioned to and are expected to endure, we are labeled dragons or witches. If we become activists or leaders in our field — if we show our strength and our power —  we are labelled feminists. And if we choose to remain single, we are considered man-haters.

Yet we still run open-armed with hearts exposed into the arrowheads and daggers of life.

Happy Women’s Day to all those witches, dragons, feminists and man-haters! You are bigger than the labels you are given; you are none of them … and all of them … and everything else besides. You’re my oracles, my guides, my muses, my healers, my teachers, my friends, my warriors, my confidants, my sisters, my mothers, my ALL.

Together we are tribe; together we are strong; together we are capable of doing our work to turn the tides and to teach our boys and men that we need them too … not on their sturdy steeds, but bedside us … in unashamed vulnerability, with heart and in community.