"...strong is what we make each other..." a repost in preparation for The Women's March

The following post is a repost from last year's International Women's Day which. It felt apropos to post today, the week before the Women's March. Photos individually credited, here. 

Jose CABEZAS/AFP/Getty Images

One of the first articles I clicked on this morning -- on this International Women's Day was this extraordinary collection of photos/stories of female protest worldwide, and as I scrolled through and read the stories of these women, all of whom REFUSED to accept status quo -- who continue to REFUSE... who fight EVERY DAY for their lives and livelihood,  I thought of another poem by the remarkable Marge Piercy... about strength in the face of weakness and the power of vulnerability, about what it means today to be a woman and what it has ALWAYS meant to be a girl, about solidarity and camaraderie and the harmony of female voices whose megaphones were pulled from the ribs of every Eve who ever dared refuse an Adam.... About the GLOBAL village and who is doing what to raise whom. 

Because in the same way it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to embolden her -- to empower her and elevate her world. And so. Today, and every other day, I salute our international community of women and girls with love and gratitude -- for teaching and raising and risking, and pushing and powering on.  I salute you. 

For Strong Women

by: Marge Piercy

A strong woman is a woman who is straining

A strong woman is a woman standing

on tiptoe and lifting a barbell

while trying to sing “Boris Godunov.”

A strong woman is a woman at work

cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,

and while she shovels, she talks about

how she doesn’t mind crying, it opens

the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up

develops the stomach muscles, and

she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head

a voice is repeating, I told you so,

ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,

ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,

why aren’t you feminine, why aren’t

you soft, why aren’t you quiet, why aren’t you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined

to do something others are determined

not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom

of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise

a manhole cover with her head, she is trying

to butt her way through a steel wall.

Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole

to be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding

inside. A strong woman is a woman making

herself strong every morning while her teeth

loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,

a tooth, midwives used to say, and now

every battle a scar.
A strong woman

is a mass of scar tissue that aches

when it rains and wounds that bleed

when you bump them and memories that get up

in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love

like oxygen or she turns blue choking.

A strong woman is a woman who loves

strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly

terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong

in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;

she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf

suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she

enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving

her equally for the strength and for the weakness

from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.

Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.

Only water of connection remains,

flowing through us. Strong is what we make

each other. Until we are all strong together,

a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.