What is womanhood?

Well, it's been a while and I've been doing some very deep thinking and praying about my own version of the disastrous Queensland Government's 'Strategy for Women'.

 Here's my version, as promised.
Strategy for Women
The hallmark of womanhood is endurance. Women can withstand more emotional and mental trauma than men. We are strong in the long haul of challenges. We endure. We see things through when there's no hope and things are bleak.

 Women are nurturers. It is biological and innate. If we can't have babies, then we nurture something else: pets, plants, nieces/nephews, friends' children or friends themselves. To deny this fact is to deny biology. Women care. We give life and nurture life.

 Women do NOT need to become men to be 'empowered'. Our empowerment comes from meekness and as previously mentioned, endurance. We are quietly strong and do not need to do what men do to be complete. We are enough.

 Women in Queensland literally bring new life to our state and our nation. We nurture those lives with every fibre of our being and never, ever give up on those lives we are given.

 This is what womanhood is: endurance, meekness, life, nurture, care and hope.

This is me with my third baby. I love the photograph. It also embodies everything I have mentioned above. Nurture, care, life are easy to see in this photograph. However, this was a very difficult time for me. I had two other children aged 3 1/2 and almost 2 years old. My baby didn't sleep well and had oral thrush which he passed to me when feeding. My husband was away a lot and I had multiple bouts of mastitis. 
We moved 400km west to a rural town when he was nine weeks old. Every single day for the first nine months of his life was really difficult. I had to endure physical pain, mental exhaustion and emotional trauma. I did it with quiet strength. I wasn't like a man, I endured my difficulties like a woman. I went about what I had to do, day by day by God's grace and quiet endurance.
There was nothing rough or manly or surly about my endurance at all. Would a man be able to cope with what I did? I don't think so. It was my womanly strength that got me through. Tears. Hugs. Prayers. Closed eyes. 
This is who we are, women. Tough as nails, but with meek strength.

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