To the Resilient Woman: A Tribute to Your Unyielding Strength

May 31

8 min read

To the woman and the mother reading this, I want to start by saying something you may not have heard in a while:

Well done.

Well done for waking up. Well done for showing up. Well done for carrying everything you carry most of it quietly, most of it unseen.

I'm not going to ask you to do more today. I'm going to ask you to do something much harder. I'm going to ask you to believe that you are doing enough.

Being a woman is not a walk in the park

Let's be honest with each other for a moment.

Being a woman is not easy. It is not a walk in the park. Whether you are single, married, divorced, a working woman, a stay-at-home mum, or a single mother carrying it all on your own you know this in your bones.

And yet, look at what you do.

You wake up every morning and you find the hope to live another day. Even on the days when there is no reason to feel hopeful, you find a little bit of it anyway. You get up. You keep going.

That is not a small thing. That is strength. That is grace in motion.

We don't often stop to notice it, because we are too busy doing the next thing. So let this be the place where we stop and notice it together.

The mornings your body doesn't want to move

There are mornings when your body simply does not want to cooperate.

That time of the month arrives. The cramps come. The heaviness settles over your mood like a grey cloud. You feel low, tired, and stretched thin before the day has even begun.

And still you get up.

You get dressed. You go to work. You smile at people and tell them everything is fine. You sit in meetings and answer emails while your body is quietly aching. Nobody around you knows the effort it took just to be there.

Our hormones do not leave us alone. They shift and change throughout the month, and they affect how we feel, how we sleep, and how much energy we have. This is not weakness. This is simply part of being a woman.

But here is what amazes me about us: even when the discomfort rises, even when we don't feel like doing anything, we still find a way to show up.

As a mother, you don't have the energy but you still feed your children. You still find a way to put food on the table. You push through the heaviness because the people who depend on you need you to.

That kind of quiet faithfulness deserves to be honoured.

The invisible load no one sees

Let me talk about something we don't say out loud enough: the invisible load.

If you are married, there is often an assumption floating around that your husband shares the work equally. And many husbands genuinely do help. But helping is not the same as carrying.

I'll tell you a true story. One day I asked my own husband what percentage of the work at home he thought he did. He is a very supportive husband one of the good ones. But when I really thought about it, I realised that for most men, it would not be more than 50%. And honestly, for many homes, the woman is giving 70% or more.

Why? Because we are naturally the managers of the home.

We are the ones who think about what everyone will wear. We are the ones who remember what is in the fridge and what needs to be bought. We are the ones who notice the school shoes are getting too small, who keep the mental list of birthdays, appointments, and permission slips.

This is the work that never shows up on a to-do list and it never ends.

And then, on top of all of that, we are expected to be 100% present at work. Whether you are full-time or part-time, you cannot walk into your job and give only half of yourself. So you give everything there, too.

If you have ever felt exhausted in a way you couldn't quite explain, this is why. You are not lazy. You are not failing. You are carrying a load that was never meant for one person to carry alone.

The tea time moment every mother knows

Let me share a small moment from my own life, because I think you will recognise yourself in it.

One day I woke up and got straight into sorting the children out. I was so busy keeping everything moving that I suddenly realised I hadn't even given them lunch. It was almost teatime and there I was, already wondering what they were going to eat next.

I didn't pause for myself. I didn't think, "Have I eaten today?" My mind went straight to them.

That is the instinct of a mother. We are always thinking ahead. We are always wanting to know that everyone else is fed, safe, and okay.

If you do this too if your first thought in the morning and your last thought at night is about everyone else then you understand exactly what I mean. It is beautiful. It is also exhausting. And it is one of the most overlooked forms of love there is.

Let's talk about mum guilt

Now I want to talk gently about something that sits heavy on so many of us: mum guilt.

It creeps in quietly. You have a long, hard day, and instead of feeling proud, you feel like you didn't do enough. You snap at your child because you're tired, and then you lie awake wondering if you're even a good mother. You go to work and feel guilty for not being home. You stay home and feel guilty for not earning.

It feels like there is no version of you that is allowed to be enough.

But I want you to hear me clearly today.

You are doing enough for your children.

You are doing what you can at work.

You are not the failure that the guilt is whispering you are. The guilt is loud, but it is not telling you the truth. The very fact that you worry about being a good mother is proof that you already are one. Mothers who don't care don't lie awake worrying.

So please, don't be so hard on yourself. The standard you are holding yourself to is impossibly high far higher than the one you would ever hold another woman to. Show yourself the same kindness you so easily give to everyone else.

Why so many of us are working mums now

Sometimes women carry a quiet shame about working instead of staying home. So let me put this into perspective.

In years gone by, many women stayed at home and cared for the house, and that was perfectly okay. It worked for that time. One income could often stretch far enough to cover a family.

But today's economy is different. For most families, one income is simply not enough anymore. So women have joined the workforce not because we abandoned our homes, but because we are doing whatever it takes to provide.

And here is the remarkable part: we didn't drop the home to pick up the job. We picked up the job while still carrying the home. We added a second full-time role on top of the one we already had, and we still try to be present through all of it.

If that's you, please understand you are not doing too little. You are doing an enormous amount. You are providing and nurturing at the same time, and that is no small calling.

The woman is like a flower

I want to share one more moment with you, because it has stayed with me ever since.

I was sitting in the park one day, just waiting. A father came and sat down nearby with his two little children a girl of about six and a little boy of about four. The little boy was playing a bit roughly with his big sister, the way small children often do.

But it was what the father said that stopped me. He gently corrected his son, and he taught him to treat his sister like a flower. Treat her gently. Handle her with care.

I have never forgotten it. Because in that one small sentence, that father was teaching his son something the whole world still needs to learn: a woman is like a flower.

A flower is strong. It pushes up through hard soil. It survives wind and rain. But a flower also needs care. It needs sunlight and water. It needs someone to notice it, to tend to it, to say, "Look how beautiful this is."

We women are exactly like that. We are strong far stronger than we are given credit for. We carry so much. But we also need to be noticed. We need someone to see us and say, "You are doing enough."

And if no one around you is saying it right now, then let me be the one to say it. Let these words be the sunlight on your day:

You are seen. You are appreciated. You are doing enough whether the world notices or not.

A word of grace for the woman doing it all

I want to speak especially to the woman who feels like she is doing everything on her own.

If you are a full-time working single mum, holding up your whole family by yourself, with no support system around you I see you. Doing it all, every single day, with nobody to share the weight, is one of the hardest things a person can do.

God bless you. And may He give you more grace for the road ahead.

You are not just surviving you are holding an entire world together with your two hands. That is not ordinary. That is extraordinary.

And to every woman, married or single, with babies or without, with a partner or without you are still moving through all of it. The emotions. The tiredness. The hormonal changes. The mornings you wake up feeling unwell and decide to show up anyway.

None of it is wasted. None of it goes unseen by the One who matters most.

So today, let this be your permission

Before you rush back into the doing, hold onto these few things:

You are allowed to be tired. Being tired does not mean you are failing. It means you have been carrying a lot.

You are allowed to need help. Asking for support is not weakness. It is wisdom.

You are allowed to rest. Rest is not a reward you earn after you've done everything. It is something you are permitted simply because you are human.

You are allowed to be imperfect. You were never meant to be a perfect woman. You were only ever meant to be a real one.

Well done, woman. Well done, Mum.

So here we are, back where we started.

To the woman and the mother reading this: well done.

Be proud of yourself for being exactly who you are. Be proud of the showing up, the carrying, the feeding, the providing, the loving all of it.

You are doing enough.

You have always been enough.

And tomorrow, when you wake up and find the hope to live another day, remember that you are not alone, you are not behind, and you are most certainly not failing.