She makes phone calls from her car, calling the utility companies, banks, and family members, checking the clock on the dashboard to make sure she doesn’t exceed the allotted 15 minutes of her break.  She is trying to arrange, from two states away, the final details of her move from one city to another.  Over $8,000 in debt is due on Friday, and she’s scrambling to find an insurance policy or a family member who will help her out.  Her boss scowls when she comes in ten minutes late.  She can’t get her children from daycare in time today and calls a neighbor to pick them up, promising to make it up to her.  She’s known the neighbor for three weeks.

Another woman bikes to work every day, even though she is eight months pregnant and it’s cold outside.  The baby’s father abandoned her and she is working full time at a job that doesn’t pay enough for her to afford rent and groceries and gasoline.  She lives in the spare bedroom of a family she met at church, trying to take up as little room as possible.  They are kind and have helped her find doctors and maternity clothes and baby supplies.  Still, she feels like a failure because she wants to provide better for her child.

A woman in a down jacket and expensive looking leather shoes stands in line at the grocery store, paying for her groceries with WIC coupons and a food stamp card.  The couple behind her make little effort to lower their voices as they speculate aloud how it is that some people can afford fancy clothes but still rely on the government to pay for their groceries.  A red cloud of anger boils up in the woman, and she clenches her jaw, closing her eyes.  It’s not even worth the interaction to turn to them and tell them the jacket and shoes came from a donation box at the battered women’s shelter.  She knows their opinion of her is, as the old saying goes, none of my business, but when they try to make it her business, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

A college girl scurries from one building on campus to another, her backpack digging an indentation in her shoulder.  Her heart pounds in her chest as she sees a group of guys walking toward her.  Two of them give her filthy stares and wiggle their eyebrows up and down.  A third points to her and grabs his crotch.  She puts her head down and walks faster to get past them, remembering how they held her down at the party she went to a month ago with her friends.  Tears stream down her face as the wind carries back to her their jeers and taunts, as they shout back at her the word “whore.”

These are women we know, women we love, women we may have scorned, or women we have been. 

When life is bad, may we be blessed with people to help us through.  And when life is good, may we remember these women and reach out to them and others in need.  We are stronger than men, it is said.  I’m sure it’s true.  But only because we have to be, and only when we band together.  It’s not so much feminism as sisterhood.  Let us be there for one another, be kind to one another. 

Please.