A love letter to women

Kia ora friends, I’ve been in hospital all week with my child. He’s had surgery and is doing well but I’ve been struggling a bit with the work slash life never finding balance thing. I was crying about it to my friend Helen and arguing about paying her for writing me something so I could just focus on my boy. She was trying to give her koha and she was trying to give me koha and we were fighting each other haha. Activists are the worst at accepting support when they need it. Anyway, she sent me this and it made me cry and she asked me to publish it so I’m publishing it. Thank you for the support. It means the world. And thank you to every nurse, doctor, specialist, cleaner, care assistant and staff member at Te Wao Nui - or any hospital anywhere. You’re amazing. And to all of my friends for the dog walks and dropped off coffee and love - I’m so lucky to have you.

x Emily x

For Emily - This is a small koha, not just of words but of love for you and your child, in this hard moment.

We argued about whether I could buy you a coffee and I told you: think of your children (they will find so many wonderful ways to spend their parents' money).
This is my not-so-subtle way of insisting.

There have been so many open letters to Jacinda Ardern lately, I thought I’d write one for women in general. One that might also upset a few men.

This is a love letter to women.

- Helen Gilby

Some of the Most Beautiful People I Know

There’s a kind of beauty that doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It doesn't come in perfect timing or perfect form.
It turns up in the middle of hard things. Sometimes messy. Sometimes sideways. Sometimes exactly when you didn’t know you needed it.

This is a love letter to women.
To our friendships, our mothering, our chaotic kindness, and our quiet endurance.

I’ve had some strange and painful chapters in my life. Some full of grief. Others just full of absurdity. A few still make me laugh because if I didn’t, I’d scream.

But in the midst of all of it, always, there were women.

Women who showed up.
Women who sent a message at the exact right time.
Women who made food, shared memes, sat on the floor next to me.
Women who had nothing left themselves, but somehow found a way to be kind anyway.

Lately, I’ve been watching my daughter stand on the verge of teenagerhood.
I can see her starting to build the kinds of friendships that hold you up when things get complicated.

She and her friends are already learning how to comfort each other, how to stay close even when one of them is hurting.
It’s beautiful and a little wild to watch.

Mothers and daughters don’t always have it easy. But sometimes, a good friend can hold a space between us, translate the grief, soften the edges, remind us both of what matters.

There’s a kind of deep soul memory we carry.
Of looking after each other in the in-between places.
When a child is unwell.
When your heart is aching.
When you're holding everything together with stale coffee and a prayer.

And it’s not performative. It’s not curated.
It’s not a brand of resilience or a product line of self-care.
It’s just us.
Doing what we’ve always done.

I think about my own life, all the strange roads I’ve walked down, and I can trace it back to these shining little constellations.
Women whose names may never be known by the world, but who changed mine.

You don’t need to be poetic to be powerful.
You just need to keep showing up.

And haven’t we all shown up for each other in the most extraordinary ways?

So if this week is hard, if you're tired, or worried, or feeling stretched too thin, I want you to know:

I see you.
We see each other.
We are quietly magnificent.

Helen Gilby is a writer and a solo mum. She is fluent in grief, class warfare, and bureaucratic nonsense. Her writing appears in The Spinoff and Rere Takitahi: Flying Solo, where she trades footnotes for feelings.

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