It feels like just a moment ago it was last March and I was reflecting on International Women’s Day.

Fast forward and the world feels to be in a much different place than it was a year ago.

This year I was very fortunate to attend an event hosted by our local Halton Women’s Place shelter. They had a wonderful and inspiring keynote speaker, Dr Samra Zafar, who has determinedly created a life for herself in which she could be free from a lifetime of abuse with her daughters. I queued up to purchase her books and get them signed by this warm and engaging woman.

One of the questions posed to her was in response to her sharing that her young adult daughter had questioned her about the erosion of women’s gains and wanting to know what her response had been. I felt that many of us are holding that tension between risk and progress.

There are many parallels being drawn currently with historical events and now is the best time to look at and learn from the choices and behaviours that preceded history’s worse times. Complacency, focus on immediate self-interest, and a lack of acknowledgement of our mutual interdependence are characteristics that have been repeatedly used as tools against the larger good to devastating effect.

When we mark this day, there is a sense that we hold onto a celebratory note for all of the gains, progress, courage and resiliency that exists and inspires us daily. Many around me acknowledged that there feels to be a shadow cast over these gains, a very real feeling of threat. In our agency counselling program for Intimate Partner Violence, we encourage women to pay very close attention to that feeling, as it has frequently been predictive of real threats to their safety.

I think this month that we should all be hearing and heeding this advice as we note that feeling of threat. As a social worker and a therapist, my inclinations are always to try and re-frame things in the most positive and motivating light. However, positivity should not require a denial of things as they exist. We need to take an honest look, acknowledge our fears and then find the courage to put one foot in front of the other as we continue to seek a better, safer more equitable world for all of us.

…Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Pastor Martin Niemöller