Women of the World

© Peggy Goetz: Village Midwife, Mountains of Honduras

Today Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads is featuring the photography of the very talented Peggy Goetz, who has traveled this world widely, and who brings us her beautiful poems and photographs at her site, On a Day Like Today.

© Peggy Goetz: Three Mayan Women, Guatemala

I was struck by the signs of struggle and sorrow, strength and endurance, in the faces of the older women in her photos.........something we share world-wide is the wisdom that surviving on the planet into our later years brings us.


Do click over to Real Toads, to see what the other poets post. We'll be posting all weekend.

                   © Peggy Goetz: Three Women and Baby, Yi Village ,China

It doesn't matter whether

you are in Honduras,

the remote villages of China,

the sidewalks of New York,

or the mountains of Tibet.

You will see on 

 old womens' faces

that same look:

weathered skin,

sadness, sorrow, endurance

and  a capacity for pain.

Their faces light up

for a baby's smile

but, in repose,

when they think

you are not looking,

all they have lived through,

all they have lost,

all of the getting up

from their beds of sorrow

to begin again,

and what that cost them:

these are the stories

their careworn faces

try, without success, to hide.

Happy Mother's Day to 
every single mother out there:

those who are happily raising small children, 
with great love,

those who have, with great pain, 
laid their children in the ground,

those who live far from their busy children

and rarely see them,

those who live on the streets

and have been abandoned,

those who have struggled 
with mental illness,

those who have lost their children 
to the system.

To every woman whose heart 
has been expanded

and whose lives have been raised high  
or laid low by giving birth:

tell yourself those words you rarely hear:

that you have done something important 

on this earth,

by gifting it with your children,

and that you have

done well.