The Woman who held you a journaling reflection

Behind every woman who has simply survived this year is another woman who picked up the phone.

Not the woman on the glossy motivational poster. Not the woman with the massive platform, the book deal and the podcast about resilience. The real one.

The one who showed up at your door with food she honestly did not have the energy to cook. The one who sent a voice note that was seven minutes long because some things are just too heavy to be typed. The one who said absolutely nothing at all who just sat beside you in the car in a Cape Town parking lot while you cried engine running heater on with nowhere to go.

No woman is brave entirely alone. And this week, we name the women who made our bravery possible.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labour: if either of them falls down, one can help the other up.” — Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Your Journaling Prompt: The Holding Page

Open your journal. Write down the actual names of the women who held you this year. Not the women you admire from a distance. The ones who showed up. The specific ones.

For each name, write just one sentence about exactly what she did: “[Name] held me when she…”

Let me share a few of mine with you.

• A colleague held me when she anticipated the overwhelming crush of our month-end deadlines and quietly stepped in to carry the weight without me even having to ask.
• My daughter held me when she called all the way from Stadskanaal just to sit in silence on the other end of the line for four minutes for a quiet chat and then said, “I’m still here.”

Write your own. Be fiercely specific. Names matter. Details matter. “She was there for me” is true, but it is distant. “She drove across town with a lasagne” is close. And close is exactly what this page is for.

Your Women’s Day Action

Write to one of those women today. Not a generic “Happy Women’s Day” message paired with a stock image of flowers. Send a specific, honest, three-sentence message that tells her exactly what her presence meant to your survival this year.

Three sentences. That is all.

“I want you to know that when you [specific thing], it meant more than I could possibly say at the time. I do not think I would have made it through that season without you. Thank you for being the kind of woman who shows up.”

Send it. By text by voice note by a handwritten letter by whatever method fits the rhythm of your friendship. The exact word she needs to hear today might just be the word you need to write.

The Woman You Were for Someone Else

I have one more thing for you to do. After you have written about the women who held you, flip the page.

Write about the woman you were for someone else.

Because you held someone, too. You showed up. You made the hard call. You sent the meal the flowers. You sat in the uncomfortable silence. You were the safety net that caught someone who was falling and you probably did not even recognise it as bravery because you were just too tired to call it anything other than “just what you do.”

It was not just what you do. It was extraordinary.

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

Write it down. One simple sentence. “I held [name] when I…”

You are sitting quietly on a shelf in someone else’s invisible trophy case and that is deeply worth knowing.

With so much grace,

Debbera