I first uncovered the inequalities and challenges that girls face at a very young age. When I was a girl, I loved basketball. It made me feel free, fast, strong, and in control of my own power and body when I played. But I learned really...
Stories
Every woman and every girl inspires us. We are deeply grateful to those who have shared their stories about breakthroughs in their lives, the ways in which they have overcome fears, beliefs, or events that once kept them from connecting with their inner strength and recognizing their amazingness. Some of these stories are stories of pain and how a women or girl triumphed over it. As you read these stories, rather than focusing on the pain, choose to focus instead on the triumph and the ways that others have overcome what may once have seemed impossible to overcome. Let's celebrate their triumphs!
During the three decades I have lived as a woman, I have experienced, felt, and witnessed many discriminatory practices, especially harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and child/forced marriage against women and...
I started my work as a volunteer and I still volunteer. Late at night, in the weekends, travelling in and out of my city alone for 10 hours for both work and volunteer work, sometimes I get to travel in groups and that is much more fun and...
I believe that every woman is powerful, and just needs to explore her inner strengths. This is a story of an ordinary woman who opened her eyes in the very normal middle class family, where no women was allowed to seek/find and or explore her...
For the last eight years I’ve been working on HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Mexico but also globally, and I really feel that I have one of the most beautiful jobs ever. How can I say that this is the most...
We create and re-create our life in the stories we tell others about ourselves and in the stories we tell ourselves. Several years ago I heard Ben Zander, conductor of The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, speak about the impact of our answer to...
Blame is a way we discharge pain. We blame others, hurling insults and digging our heels into the cushy comfort of self-righteous indignation. Or we blame ourselves. We beat ourselves up. We call ourselves names like “loser” and...
Cuando yo tenía 12 años, nosotros (mi madre y mis dos hermanos y una hermana) nos mudamos desde Colombia a los EE.UU. para vivir con mi padre que había emigrado 7 años antes. Llegamos a descubrir que él se había convertido en un...
The year was 1997 and I had worked for Pathfinder International for 6 years in Program Administration and I loved my job. At the beginning of that year, my husband got a Post-Doctoral Fellowship opportunity in Glasgow, Scotland that would last...
I am inspired in the hope of destigmatizing menstruation and be period positive. It was one of the days whereby you feel that everything is against you. As a mother of two boys and a girl I did not know what to give my children when they came...