Happy International Women’s Day! Here’s to the heroes, leaders, inspirations, and trailblazers. Here’s to all the women who navigate the complexities of an intersectional life. Here’s to the trans* women living proudly and refusing to prove their gender to anyone. Here’s to the women breaking glass ceilings and sports records and stereotypes and boundaries. Here’s to the women having it all, and acting as role models for their children. Here’s to the women making scientific breakthroughs, creating brilliant works of art, writing groundbreaking laws. Here’s to the women running the shops, working the factory floor, farming the fields, cooking the food, cleaning the offices, answering the phones. Here’s to the women working tirelessly every day in hospitals, schools, care homes, youth centers, job centers, hospices, and nurseries to improve the lives of others. Here’s to the women who consciously bring love and joy to everything they do.

And perhaps most importantly and most rarely commented on in these types of things — here’s to all of us when we’re not being heroes, when we’ve had a shit day and eat ice cream for dinner, when we lose our temper with our significant other or make a mistake at work that can’t be fixed, when we stay in our comfort zone and don’t try the hard thing, when we cry and rage and refuse to work the second shift. Here’s to us remembering that we don’t have to be super strong or super caring or super giving or super smart to deserve the admiration of others.

Here’s to us being fully human, and to the feminist and womanist movements that work to create a world that sees us as such, respects us as such, and structurally supports us as such. Here’s to us knowing that we are worthwhile just by being, and to creating a world that honors that.