Unbreakable Women

One week after seeing the new short film Stories I Told My Mother by Nusrat Durrani, founder of MTV World, I was moved to make the 18-hour drive to visit my own mom, who is age 80 and still a model of courage. 

Nusrat’s beautiful film debuted at the end of the second day of the remarkable 2018 PopTech Conference where, for two days, we listened to Nobel Prize winners, amazing scientists, conservation heroes, and a dozen other global thought leaders speaking about their valiant efforts in the pursuit of progress.

 And for me, Nusrat’s film was the thread that tethered all that courage to a common source.

Now I understand that the origin of almost everything that is good may be an unbreakable woman. 

Think about it. Where does “original courage” come from across human history, if not for a woman who—even in the bleakest circumstances and against the worst physical odds—would find a way to succeed for the sake of her children until her last breath was drawn?

Maybe it wasn’t a mother. Maybe it was an aunt, a neighbor, or a family friend, who taught you the true meaning of courage and took you unconditionally under their caring wing. We will call them your “mother” for the purposes of this blog post, because they are the mother of your access to your best self.

The film, Stories I Told My Mother, made me think about all the people we’ve featured on Ever Widening Circles: extraordinary innovators and thought leaders who persevere even in the face of dispiriting odds. Here is a link to some of the best Ever Widening Circles articles about women who changed history in ingenious ways. 

After thinking about all the thought leaders we have written about - women and men - I was left asking myself, "Where do these 'warriors for possibility' come from, if not from an amazing woman in their lives (or genes) who modeled all the courage, grace, and resilience they would need on their journeys to change the world?" 

How about you?

When you let go of all the quirks that make you roll your eyes about your mother (and even giggle a bit) and excuse the things said that make you bristle, are you left with a woman who is a survivor and a warrior in some ways: the source of some of your best character assets?

Would she have walked over hot coals for you and others? Did she successfully and humbly beat the odds stacked against women of her era and make it look easy?

I will probably never know anyone as courageous as my own mother. After both her parents died, she survived crossing the entire United States alone, on a bus, at the age of eleven, and the rest of her life mirrored the elements that made that journey successful.

Even in her 80s, my mother, Janet, still makes a point to get that platinum-blond hair done every Friday and her makeup is always just right. (Somehow she’s always been able to rock her signature orange lipstick!) If the fog of her many pain meds for a collapsed spine has dimmed her former beaming smile, her once boundless gratitude for life is indelibly etched in me.

I will remember her as an uncomplaining, female chieftain who could entertain 20 people for dinner, balancing her Maker's Mark and cigarette in one hand while loading the dishwasher with the other. 

And the very next morning might find her packing up the station wagon for a family outing of impossible scale, while making sure my father’s shoes matched, frying chicken the old-fashioned way, making bread and butter sandwiches cut in perfectly geometric triangles, AND uncomplainingly supervising one of my many creative escapades.

I’d be willing to bet that you have an unbreakable woman in your past; one with her own remarkable story of courage, good humor, and resilience.

It’s time that we ditch our trivial, fault-finding habits and see these unbreakable women for who they are: women who have sacrificed their needs unconditionally to make a better life for others. Let’s love them up with all we have in us.

Here’s a quote that reminds me of the kind of moxy that many of us have inherited from an unbreakable woman’s example, somewhere through the generations: 

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

Give a good woman you know a hug today and tell her how much you appreciate her indomitable spirit, for it is probably the source of yours!