March 8, 2015
It has been 22 years since I wrote the poem below about a woman who was “broken down” from all she had gone through in her life. She knew she wasn’t alone, there were plenty of other women who also had the “broken down woman blues.” Today, on International Women’s Day, I am reflecting on how far we’ve come in the past 22 years, and recognize we still have a long way to go. Looking through some old writing the other night I ran across this poem and felt it fitting to share on International Women’s Day.
We come together as sisters, the women of the Broken Down Woman Blues. We’ve come to feel that no man will ever save us, that we can only rely on ourselves. We come from abusive relationships, we carry a lot of painful weight as we struggle to find ourselves in a man’s world.
And for some of us, we come together as sisters united by the struggle for our own rights as women, our own empowerment, the idea women still don’t have equality. When we stand up and we keep getting pushed down, we sometimes break down.
Women around the world know this truth… (more…)
