Women’s work is ancient and deep. It runs through the generations like a fine golden thread. I feel connected to the thread in moments of stillness, in moments of silence.

Women give life, and are often the ones there at the end of life. We understand the nature of the soul, and the passages from one way of being to another.

It’s through other women that I’ve come to understand leadership. How the work of our hands can transform love into action. This is the kind of service we need on the planet right now.

We each come from a lineage of wise women, from medicine keepers, midwives, pioneers, artists, teachers, healers and storytellers. We’ve been many faces, and we’ve had many hands.

The voices of our ancestors speak through us. Our bodies carry their stories, their errors and their gifts. In healing work, there’s a need to remember where we came from, and to reconcile with the voices of the past.

I believe that a woman’s life is born from the prayers of all the women who came before her. We’ve climbed a mountain together, and we’ve gathered together at this moment in time.

We are the ones who can transcend the silence, and speak the words that have been carried throughout the generations like seeds.

I’m a third generation Canadian, and my ancestors were Irish and German immigrants to who lived through poverty and war. Their passage into the unknown didn’t end with their lives.

My grandmother Sophie grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, and had few options in her life. She was a spiritual woman who meditated every day on the Christ. I remember her rosary beads, and the stillness of her daily practices.

She helped dream my world into being, and I’m blessed by the words of her prayers and the clarity of her heart. My grandmother reminded me of the internal spiritual life, and that was a gift of a lifetime.

When she died, I was there for her passage. I gathered around her hospital bed with my aunts and cousins, and watched her body transform as the hours went by.

Nothing about her remained the same, not ever the colour of her eyes. The force of death is palpable. It enters through the breath with an undeniable presence. This was the moment when I was initiated into women’s work, into the work of many hands.

It’s a call that moves through me, whether I like it or not.

I’m reminded that my life is a privilege. Many times I’ve forgotten what I’ve been given. I have the kind of freedom, and the choices that no woman before me had.

Privilege is a great responsibility. Anything that we’re given in life is a responsibility, and not a right. We are the caretakers of our inheritances, and it’s up to us to pass it forward.

I want to take care to weave the fine thread into the future. I am a continuum of something bigger than me. When one woman honours her spirit, then she honours the essence of life itself.

This is the kind of inner strength that our ancestors want us to remember. Many hands work for the freedom of their daughters, and there is more work to do.