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My daughter Joy is the most ironic toddler because her favourite book is “Sadness,” from a popular children’s movie. We’ve been reading it for weeks and the character’s heavy sighs make my weirdo of a kid smile and giggle. This week, however, she’s been handing me “Fear,” and after a few days of feeling a weird, generalized melancholia, it has finally clicked in that this little genius is handing me my own problem to read out loud every night. So there it is: fear. Of what? Nothing in particular...and everything. I guess when you’ve experienced a worst case scenario- the one without the happy ending— it makes sense that you could come out of that afraid. Afraid of what the future has in store, afraid of what could happen, what may not happen, afraid of being not enough, or of being too much. Of failing, of leaving, of being left. Of change. There are a lot of rabbit holes I work hard to skirt around. But while turning this revelation over in my head I also stumbled across a reflection...

I want to talk about women. Not, this time, about human rights, misogyny, politics, or reproductive rights, as often times (as many of you know) I like to go on very passionately about. But while I proudly maintain my unequivocal desire to smash the patriarchy, right now I want to talk about women in a different context; a different level that is (like many important things that women do) largely overlooked, because women amaze me. Not just those women whose voices have been picked up—often begrudgingly—by the media/history books/general public. Not just those names that many of us now know. I want to talk about the women I know because every day they amaze me more than any celebrity, superhero storyline or epic trilogy plot. They are the heroines of life who often go unacknowledged because their acts of selflessness and bravery become so commonplace that it can be easy to grow accustomed to them, and forget that they are extraordinary.        ...