The sea was rough and choppy for our Seagirls International Women’s Day swim: a reflection of the turmoil many of us are feeling or living through, and of a world convulsing with sorrow and suffering.
Women are still living through unimaginable trauma world wide. One thing we can do, I believe, is stand together as best we can against these injustices. Society tries so hard to keep women apart, set us against each other but we know that we are stronger, happier and safer together.
The sea was rough and choppy, but we showed up anyway. Forget flowers and chocolates – International Women’s Day is a day of solidarity. Solidarity with the women supported by Women’s Aid who we fundraised for, but also with the women of Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico, India and everywhere. After all, patriarchy knows no borders.
Like most women I know, I feel ambivalent about International Women’s Day.
Up until 2020 when I found my pod of Greystones Seagirls, I never celebrated it. Why only one day?? Why one miserable tokenistic day, when every hour of every day in Ireland several women are subjected to domestic abuse; when every three days in France, a woman dies at the hands of an intimate partner; when in Mexico femicide is committed every single day of the year? Not to mention Iran and Afghanistan – two of the worst countries to be a woman.
What is there to celebrate, when all over the world violent misogyny is on the rise? When there is still so much to do to simply survive? When there is still so much more fighting ahead?
When we are most under attack, it is even more important that we recognize and live in the moments of safety and joy that we have.
The sea was rough and choppy, yet it was an invitation to play, laugh and celebrate – feel her wild energy rising with each wave and within us.
Be more like a wave. Rise and rise and rise some more, conspiring with wind and sand and rock, with kelp and pink and seal, to sculpt a new world. Surrender, flowing yet unstoppable, leaving behind a changed landscape.
Do it all over again, and again, seemingly the same but always different.
It’s March and there is a quickening. Something is rising up, women, the sea, old wounds, new life
Watch us rise like waves, soft and inconceivably powerful, as we burst out of our shackles.
The sea may have been rough and the wind icy for our Seagirls IWD swim. But we went in anyway, straight into the waves for the bravest, cautiously, undignified-ly, hilariously for the rest of us, but together - to remind ourselves, each other and the world that we’re still here.
We’re still here, standing, rising. We're still here, breathing, swimming. And that’s worth celebrating.
Some fierce writing to stoke the feminist fire…
“It is woman that will save this aching, burning, beautiful world, and you know it.” For this sentence alone, please read Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s achingly beautiful Women’s Day, also on Substack.
Imagine… I’ll leave you with the beginning of a poem Anna Lovind shared on Instagram on International Women’s Day. Do yourself a favour and give her a follow.