How to Fight Like a Girl

There are times in life you need to fight like a girl. No, scratch that. You need to fight like a woman. Fight for the things you believe in-home, kids, your struggles, and live with the consequences.

Life at work

Years ago, I was the Customer Service Representative for an international company that dealt in glucometers. The company’s head office was on a different continent from where I lived so I had the opportunity to travel to other countries. I loved my work and I put in so much to make clients who visited the center comfortable and get results. My immediate boss was happy with my work.

I cried in secret

However, I was struggling in my marriage and also with childbirth. It had been 17 years after my only child. I wanted more children but it was not happening. I had many miscarriages and it was difficult dealing with them. Full-term babies were lost. I became fed up with everything at a point and gave up on ever having a child again.

A perfect gift

Then I had a baby. I was overjoyed. It was a miracle. Just when I had thrown in the towel.

My greatest achievement

That year we had our customer service training abroad. I was breastfeeding but I had to go. My sister came to look after my baby while I was away.

During the training, a day was set aside for assessments. Each representative was called to talk about their greatest achievement in life. Not about the work we were paid to do but about life. I had my presentation all planned out. It was about the greatest achievement in my life. A gift I was given when I least expected it. Something I had longed for, wept for, prayed for.  It was about having a baby after many miscarriages, and all the trauma that came with it. It was about how I was healing. How happy I was.

The stage was set

When it was my turn, the coordinator called me forward and said, tell us about your greatest achievement but don’t tell us about your baby.

WHAT…!

Having a baby is not an achievement? This man deflated me completely.

There I was in pain, because my breasts were engorged with milk, giving me a fever. Yet this man was making little of my achievement of finally having a baby after many failed attempts?

I got up, went to the stage, muttered a few words, and sat down.

My colleagues stared at me. You could read the shock on their faces. They seemed to say, ‘poor you, whatever happened to you?’ My roommate who had seen my sleepless nights due to the pain in my breasts somehow understood and comforted me.

Fight like a girl

During the coffee break I saw the coordinator going to the washroom. I caught up with him.

‘Have you ever drunk concoctions, bathed in anointing oil, and fasted because you wanted to have a baby badly? Have you ever lost pregnancies and babies and then finally got pregnant, gone through it fully and then had a healthy baby?’

He looked at me smiling and I looked at him sternly, my eyes piercing through his. He realised it was not a joke. I muttered with clenched teeth some unprintable words at him.

He heard me.

My boss later called me to the office to show me the results – I was last but one, scoring higher than only someone who could not speak a word of English and was disadvantaged by having to use an interpreter.

I wasn’t bothered. I was satisfied that I had served some well-deserved barb to a man who had no regard for the miracle of having a baby, a human that I had brought into the world.

Work, but fight like a girl, for the things that matter

I recall this incident now with so much laughter. Dear woman, if you choose to have a baby, that is an achievement and let nobody tell you or make you think otherwise. If you are dealing with infertility, whether primary or secondary, be encouraged that hope is not lost; for the darkest moment of the day is just before dawn. And don’t forget that work should not be the most important thing in life. As J.J. Abrams said, your work isn’t any more important than anything else in your family.

Written by Mawukoenya Yawa Gomashie, mom, businesswoman