Because the Sara Henderson quote with which Nikki ended her weekend column absolutely made my day. My week. Possibly my month. It is now printed out and stuck to the wall in front of little writing nook and I see it every time I lift my gaze from the computer screen. Which I do quite often. Usually when I'm considering the really important questions, like should I have a boiled or a poached egg for breakfast?
I actually had a kind of bodily response to this quote. Partly it gave me shivers because, as a midwife, I often find myself telling women that they have all the strength they need within them for their labour and birth. But also it gave me a kind of heart-expanding, shoulder-squaring moment of understanding that equally crucial to having the strength, is the capacity to own it, to wear it fearlessly and unapologetically in plain sight.
So, armed with this fantastically take-the-bull-by-the-horns attitude, I headed into uni to attend a research session run by Professor Ginger Carrieri-Kohlman. (I already liked her just because how can you not like a woman named Ginger?)
In her session she asked each of us to write one word inside a circle on a blank page. One word. The word that sums up the thing you are most interested in. The thing that you could think and write about for ten years if you had to. The thing you are passionate about. The thing you could base a PhD on. And I didn't even have to think. In a split second, it was there in front of me. A one word guiding framework for the next three years. It was a bit of a rabbit-out-of-a-hat moment. Hallelujah. Eureka. And all that business.
I couldn't quite believe it. After a month of reading across acres of topics, days spent on diversions and many hours spiralling down into a subterranean maze of databases, of course I really knew what I wanted to write about all along. I just didn't know that I knew it.
So how great are these women? I don't even really know them at all and yet somehow they both found ways to help me turn my brain around and move forwards with this project. I love the way humans interact with one another without even knowing it. And I love the way smart and helpful women are everywhere in the world, just lurking about, unknowingly being inspirational to someone like me.
