Grief, Strength, and the Unstoppable Spirit of Women

Grief is an uninvited guest in a woman’s life, and it is deeply tied to our ability to feel. Women often experience the world with open hearts, feeling emotions in their fullest—love, hope, joy, and pain. This capacity to connect and empathize makes our grief unique. It’s not just a reaction to loss; it’s an extension of how deeply we care.

And as women, we don’t just grieve death. We grieve in ways uniquely tied to our lived experiences.

We grieve the everyday vigilance—the need to clutch our keys like weapons when walking to our cars at night, to bring a dog along just to feel safe on a solo hike, or to update friends with our whereabouts before a date. We grieve the unease of stepping into an Uber alone or the fear of traveling without company. We grieve the times we’ve been underestimated, dismissed, or exploited, labeled as “too weak,” “too emotional,” or simply “less than” because of our gender.

At Work

In the workplace, we grieve inequities that linger despite the progress we’ve made. Sure, we’ve moved beyond being solely the “secretaries,” the coffee runners, or the meeting schedulers, but let’s not fool ourselves—we’re still proving our worth every day. Often, we’re working twice as hard for half the recognition, grieving the lack of equal pay or opportunities. And let’s not overlook the sting of watching other women climb the ladder only to neglect lifting others along the way. This grief isn’t just personal—it’s systemic. And it cuts deep.

Grieving the Rights We Fear to Lose

Then there’s the grief that turns into fear and anger—the collective mourning we share as women when our rights are threatened or stripped away. The idea of our daughters, nieces, and granddaughters growing up with fewer freedoms than we had feels like a gut punch.

What about the right to make choices for our own bodies, our futures, and our freedoms? What if opportunities that generations before us fought to secure are taken away? The fear is heavy, but it doesn’t paralyze us.

Women have always risen to the occasion. We’ve marched, protested, advocated, and fought with everything we have—even when the weight feels unbearable.

Our Personal Grief

Grief can also be found at home, settling into our kitchens and bedrooms, invading our quiet moments. Losing a job, for example, isn’t just about money. It’s about the loss of identity, purpose, and pride. It’s questioning whether your age, gender, or refusal to play by unspoken rules led to this moment.

For women in unhealthy relationships, grief takes on yet another dimension. It’s the mourning of what could have been—the love that turned sour, the betrayal, or the partnership that became a prison. It’s grieving the pieces of yourself you’ve lost along the way, the isolation, the self-doubt, and the fear of leaving or staying. This kind of grief is heavy and deeply personal, but acknowledging it is the first step toward reclaiming your power.

I’ll admit it: I’ve been guilty of bypassing grief. Instead of sitting with it, I first turned to alcohol. I drank, and I drank, and I drank. And it got me nowhere healthy. Once sober, I would simply refocus and stay busy moving towards what’s next and avoiding the weight of it all. But my cancer diagnosis brought all that to a screeching halt. There was no job to occupy my time, no next step to distract me. And I grieved. Hard. The betrayal of my body. The fear of what’s next. The loss of a job and security to the uncaring corporate machine—it all came crashing down. And as painful as it was, it was cathartic.

Rising Through Grief

Grief isn’t just an ending—it’s a transformation. It bends us, shapes us, and reveals a strength we didn’t know we had. It teaches us to value what truly matters and to lean on those who share this path.

When I reflect on my own grief—whether from a cancer diagnosis, job loss, or countless other trials—I see more than pain. I see resilience. Grief pushed me to fight, to grow, and to hold tight to the people and moments that mattered most.

Something else I’ve learned is that grief is necessary. When we allow ourselves to feel it fully, we don’t just come back stronger—we come back wiser.

Carrying Each Other

Every woman who has carried loss knows this: we hold ourselves—and each other—up. We wear our scars—every wrinkle, gray hair, and yes, even the occasional sneeze-induced bladder leak—not as marks of defeat but as proof of survival. They remind us of what we’ve endured and the strength we carry within.

Grief doesn’t define us—it reveals us. It shows the depths of our love, the courage in our fear, and the strength we never knew we had. And when we rise, we don’t rise alone. We rise for every daughter, sister, friend, and stranger who needs to know that no matter how heavy the weight, we will carry on.

Beyond Strength: What It Really Means When a Woman Bends but Doesn’t Break

Beyond Strength: What It Really Means When a Woman Bends but Doesn’t Break

One of the greatest strengths of being a woman, I believe, is our ability to feel deeply. I learned this first hand as I fought my battle with breast cancer. It’s a life event where you have to allow yourself to feel. If you stifle the emotions one would likely suffocate from the weight and worry of it all. It was part of the process to accept this life changing event and to build the strength to get through it. And as women, we don’t shy away from our emotions; instead, we embrace them as a source of resilience and energy that carries us through life. Our joy, our love, our sorrow, and even our anger—they’re all part of what makes us who we are. But this openness comes with struggles, too. Feeling deeply is a double-edged sword, a strength that also leaves us exposed to the weight of our own vulnerabilities.

We are woven with empathy and compassion, yet this openness often brings us face-to-face with sorrow. We love with intensity, and when loss hits, it strikes with a force. And in those moments, others may see our tears and mistake them for weakness. But in that pain, we find resilience because we are resilient. We rise, not because it’s easy, but because our hearts—no matter how wounded—are still able to give, to feel, to grow once more. We may bend, but we do not break. Even when we feel we’re broken, we find a way to heal.

And yet, society often misunderstands the strength in our emotions. If we’re expressive and allow ourselves to feel, we’re labeled as “too emotional”, or seen as “an annoyance”, or even “unstable.” Our natural responses to life—be it sadness, joy, anger, or fear—can be dismissed as “hormones” or reduced to “emotional baggage.” How many times have we been told to “calm down” or had our feelings downplayed as irrational, or simply dismissed? There’s this perception that having feelings somehow weakens our credibility or makes us “a hassle” to deal with. And that judgment is a weight that we quietly carry.

But our emotions are not a weakness, and they’re certainly not baggage. They’re a testament to the depths we are willing to go, the courage to face our vulnerabilities head-on, and the willingness to engage with life wholeheartedly. Feeling deeply isn’t about losing control, or being weak; it’s about allowing ourselves to fully experience life’s spectrum, and in doing so, we grow stronger. We transform pain into strength, sadness into compassion, joy into hope—and we carry on.

This understanding helped inspire my current series of sculptures depicting women as trees– rooted, complex and exposed. Trees stand tall and resilient, but they carry their scars, branches bent or broken from past storms. Like trees, we grow in every direction, grounded by our experiences. We carry the scars of what we’ve been through, and those marks are proof of our strength.

These sculptures are a tribute to every woman who has faced the world with her heart wide open. Yes, we feel deeply, and yes, it can hurt. But through those feelings, we find resilience. We bend, but we do not break. And that is the beauty—and the power—of being a woman.