The Balanced Fight: How Women's History Fuels the Way Forward

Happy Women's History Month!

This is a time many of us pause to reflect on the women who came before us — women who paved the way to make our present lives fuller, freer, and more possible. Women who broke the glass ceiling. Women who built empires from nothing. Women who marched, protested, and refused to sit down until the world changed around them.

Think about Mary Barra, who became the first female CEO of a major global automaker, leading General Motors to become the highest-ranked Fortune 500 company helmed by a woman. Or Thasunda Brown Duckett, one of only two Black female CEOs in the Fortune 500, using her platform at TIAA to champion economic equity and financial inclusion. Lisa Su took AMD from the brink of bankruptcy and built it into a semiconductor powerhouse. Jane Fraser sits at the helm of Citigroup, one of the world's most powerful financial institutions.

And then there are the builders. Madam C.J. Walker — often cited as America's first self-made female millionaire — built a hair care empire in the early 1900s, at a time when Black women had virtually no economic access or protection. Sara Blakely started Spanx with $5,000 in savings and became the youngest self-made female billionaire in U.S. history. Rihanna built Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty into a multi-billion-dollar empire that centered inclusivity from day one — because representation isn't a trend, it's a standard.

And the fighters. Shirley Chisholm — the first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress — ran for President in 1972 under the banner "Unbought and Unbossed." Dolores Huerta co-founded what became the United Farm Workers union and spent decades on the front lines for labor rights, immigrant rights, and women's rights. At 94, she is still at it. Malala Yousafzai survived an assassination attempt for daring to say that girls deserve an education — and went on to become the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in history.

Knowing that these women and so many more fought the fight for our liberties gives me the strength and courage to make the most out of every single day. Yes, there are tough days, and there is still plenty of fight left to do — but that doesn't take away how far we've come.

What I admire most about these women is that they refused to accept the world as it was. They stayed disciplined and focused on the things they could control. They didn't let outside factors deter or scare them. They were confident in what they brought to the table. They showed up as a tribe, paid it forward, demanded change, and stepped up when and where it was needed.

I've seen so many conversations on social media lately — women discussing how the system is set up for us to fail. How it forces us to choose between being a present mother, a thriving career woman, and a good partner. How it refuses to account for the invisible 36 hours of labor women carry outside of their 40+ hour corporate weeks. And they're not wrong. The system is not set up to protect us from burnout, or from being pushed out of leadership entirely.

This is the fight we're up against today.

And yes — we shouldn't have to be the ones to fix it. But just like the women before us, sometimes we have to take matters into our own hands. We cannot give up and continue to be pushed out of leadership because we're running on empty. The more we stand up and have each other's backs, the more change we will start to see. But we are not going to get there on fumes and guilt.

Living a balanced life is often dismissed as a cliché. But I've found that the people who say balance isn't possible are usually the ones not living it. I believe — deeply — that we can achieve our goals. A successful career. An entrepreneurial dream. Motherhood. Partnership. We can continue the work that the women in our past started. Life will never be perfectly 50/50, and we move through different seasons — some longer and harder than others. But no matter the season, carving out time for your well-being is what will allow you to thrive — in your career season, your motherhood season, your partnership season, all of it.

This past month, I've been deep in my motherhood season. I'll be honest — the first few weeks were hard. My mind kept drifting to my career, to perception, to what others might be thinking. That mental noise was making me stressed, making me feel lost in my own identity, and most painfully, making me less present with my newborn.

So I made a choice. I started prioritizing myself.

A daily skincare routine. Walks outside. Journaling my thoughts and feelings. Moments of quiet self-care that reminded me: my career is not my whole identity. And because I did those things, I came back to myself — energized, clear-minded, and grounded in who I am and who I want to become.

Life may not be 50/50, but life is all about balance. Without it, we risk something far more painful than exhaustion — we risk resentment. Resenting our careers for the time they take from our families. Resenting our families for the guilt they place on our ambitions. That is not the life we were meant to live, and it is certainly not the life these women fought so hard for us to have.

The women in our past worked too damn hard for us to live a life of resentment.

So, let's continue the fight — but let's keep it balanced.

Happy Women's History Month.

Live You. Love You.

— Maria LyVonne