There are an estimated 3.6 billion women on the earth. I hope to learn from all of them.

To the African women who carry water for miles to provide relief for their families, I hope to learn how to harbor your determination through love. To the Muslim women who face discrimination and persecution about the way you choose to dress (either from non-Muslims or from the Muslim community itself), I hope to learn your self-confidence. To the single or young mothers, I hope to learn how you muster the power to continue every day. To the mothers who gave up their children, I hope to learn how to know my own weaknesses that well. To LGBT+ women, I hope to learn how to value my self-worth over other people’s comfort. To women of color, I hope to learn from you how to love myself despite society telling me not to.

We all have so much to learn from each other, and we all have so much to teach each other. Women carry empathy on our backs, but we are taught to keep a distance to avoid getting hurt. Only women know the harassment and the barriers we face daily, but instead of talking about it, we often shut each other down.

Judgment on dress and skin color and hair style and social class happens before a word is spoken. Dialect and accent and the usage of curse words or lack of profanity come into play during conversation, and before you know it, we all despise each other for petty reasons.

Women often support everyone except for each other, and I don’t understand why that is. Can’t more than one of us make a difference at once? The great women of history were not competing to be better than one another, they were competing to be their best selves. Building up our peers is so much easier than tearing them down.