Beforeword: The “glass ceiling”, was coined by Management consultant Marilyn Loden in 1978. It symbolizes the invisible barriers that hinder women and marginalized groups from advancing in their careers. 

The thing about “glass ceiling” when smashed
is that the shards don’t vanish—
they fall
Sharp, jagged, relentless,
raining down like a warning,
like a punishment for daring to rise

Falling glass cuts deep—
Patriarchy, splintered but still clawing
Violence, turning freedom into something fragile
Laws, binding instead of breaking chains
Norms, polished smooth but when harmful they wound
Root causes slicing through progress
turning triumphs into scars
Rights into relics
Hard won gains into loss
Reproductive rights overturned—
choices stripped, voices silenced,
autonomy reduced to a battlefield
where laws are weapons,
and women’s bodies contested spaces

But how does the ceiling hold?
It’s not chains you can see,
not walls you can touch—
It’s an unspoken limit, the silent “no”
It’s underrepresentation dressed as “not the right fit”
It’s the weight of pay gaps
The care work not paid
The lock on leadership doors
The promotions that never come
no matter how qualified or how high women climb

They say, “You’ve come so far”
But they don’t mention the cracks beneath our feet
The unequal shifting ground
The backlash waiting at every turn
Every step forward risks another wound, another push back, another war to fight—again

The thing about glass—
It was never meant to be a cage
Meant for clarity, yet it distorts,
letting light in but keeping power out

The thing about ceiling—
It was never meant to hold in
Meant to shelter, yet it confines,
holding dreams beneath its weight

So, like Maya Angelou, women—we rise!
Not just breaking, but building
Not just shattering, but shaping
Hands wrapped in armor, feet steady on the dust
Helmets on, hearts fierce, forging new foundations
Until the sky stretches wide,
and the only thing above us—
is rights, equality, justice

About Women’s History Month:

In the USA, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8th 1980 as National Women’s History Week. March was later designated as “Women’s History Month” in 1987.

About International Women’s Day (March 8th)

IWD is a worldwide day of activism, celebrating achievements while continuing the fight for women’s rights.

IWD began in the early 1900s as a movement for women’s labor rights, better working conditions, and suffrage. But the first milestone in US was much earlier – in 1848. Indignant over women being barred from speaking at an anti-slavery convention, Americans Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott started the US first women’s rights convention in New York. Inspired by protests in New York, socialist activist Clara Zetkin proposed an annual Women’s Day in 1910, leading to the first official IWD on March 19, 1911, in several European countries. The 8 March date was chosen after Russian women demanded “bread and peace” during a war-time strike in 1917. 

The United Nations recognized IWD in 1975, expanding its focus to broader gender equality issues. This year the UN theme is “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls”

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In creative solidarity, Dee

We are whole—
Strong. Unshaken.
Shaped by history’s hands, fired in the kiln of time.
But when the weight of patriarchy pressed too hard—
Cracks appeared.

What does the world do with women it tries to break?
It tries to—

Dismiss them.
Silence them.
Bury them.

They say once something fractures,
it can never be the same again.
That the scars will always tell a story
of loss, of defeat,
of what can never be reclaimed.

But they are wrong.

Because struggle is not the end.
The fight is part of the becoming.

Kintsugi—golden repair—
Not to erase the cracks,
Not to hide our place in HIS-story,
but to illuminate our legacy—
our resistance, our resilience, our power.
To honor our voices.
To make them art.

So let us treat our pain that way.
Let every crack of injustice,
every fracture of oppression,
every attempt to silence us
be transformed—not hidden, but held.

What if…
our wounds weren’t wounds at all,
but spaces waiting to be filled with something precious?

What if…
our struggle wasn’t our ruin,
but our revolution?

What if we take this pain,
these centuries of resistance,
this history soaked in defiance,
and forge something new?

What if like seeds, we grow
Piercing through, defying the -isms of oppression

What if we melt down discrimination into gold,
pour it into the cracks,
and let it bind us together—
not in spite of our struggle, but because of it?

We do not bow.
We do not break.
We rise.

We are not just survivors.
We are warriors.
We are visionaries.
We are unstoppable.

Let the world see us.
Let the world know—

We are golden.

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Like what you see? To never miss a post click HERE👈 to subscribe & follow the blog. There’s more HERE👈 and on Spillwords, the Writers Club & Facebook.

In creative solidarity, Dee

To the woman that you were—
I see you.
Standing in storms that tried to break you,
yet you bent like the willow,
never snapping, never folding.
You held your ground,
turned pain into power,
turned silence into voice,
turned fear into fuel.
I admire your resilience,
your unshaken resolve,
your quiet strength when the world tried to tell you to hush.

To the woman you are—
Your journey is not complete.
But oh, how far you’ve come!
You walk now with wisdom earned in fire,
scars that no longer bleed but blaze—
reminders that you lived, that you learned,
that you are still here.
You hold space for growth and grace,
shed doubt like autumn leaves,
rooted deep in lessons you once feared.
You are the bridge between who you were
and the promise of who you will be.

To the woman you’re becoming—
You are a whisper of dreams realized,
a vision not yet fully seen,
but I know you’re there, waiting.
A phoenix rising, a story still unfolding,
a force stepping boldly into her becoming.
You carry all that was,
but you are free to be.
No chains, no fear, no limits—
only the boundless sky ahead.

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Like what you see? To never miss a post click HERE👈 to subscribe & follow the blog. There’s more HERE👈 and on Spillwords, the Writers Club & Facebook.

In creative solidarity, Dee