Gathering Our Pieces: The Women Who Rose

This is your Women's Stories podcast.

Welcome to Women’s Stories, the podcast where resilience isn’t an abstract idea, it’s a lived experience. Today, I want to share a tapestry of themes that will shape our future episodes, each one rooted in real women’s lives and the power they found on the other side of struggle.

One theme is surviving the unimaginable and choosing to rebuild. Think of Australian athlete and speaker Turia Pitt, who was caught in a bushfire and endured burns to most of her body. She turned years of recovery into a platform for advocacy, endurance racing, and coaching. Her story shows how we can talk about body image, identity, and ambition after life-altering trauma, and how listeners can reclaim a future that looks nothing like the past they expected.

Another theme is quiet, lifelong resilience. LHH has shared the story of Lorene VanLeeuwen, a woman who grew up in the Great Depression, worked as a teacher and postmaster when women were often pushed to stay home, and then learned computers at eighty-nine. At over one hundred, she was still on her iPad, still learning. That’s a perfect doorway into episodes about reinvention at every age, ageism, and why it is never too late to start over.

We will explore resistance in the face of violence and oppression. Malala Yousafzai’s insistence on girls’ education in Pakistan, even after being shot by the Taliban, opens a theme of standing up to extremism, claiming the right to learn, and using your voice even when it shakes. Connected to that is the journey of women rebuilding after war and conflict, like the voices highlighted by Women for Women International, who navigate displacement, loss, and recovery while holding families and communities together.

We will also honor resilience born from poverty and trauma. Oprah Winfrey’s journey from abuse and hardship to global media leader invites conversations about healing childhood wounds, transforming shame into purpose, and using success as a tool to lift others. Stories like Oprah’s, or those of Maya Angelou and Tina Turner as documented by many biographers and advocates, help us build themes around healing, creativity, and financial independence.

Another powerful thread is challenging expectations in everyday life. Liz Brunner has written about women like Mary Chacko Russell, a social worker navigating racism and sexism while serving families, and Dr. Dorothy Dunning Chacko, one of the early female medical residents at New York’s Metropolitan Hospital. Their paths help us frame episodes about being “the first,” facing bias at work, and turning professional barriers into stepping stones.

We will lift up community-based resilience too. Global Fund for Women has highlighted leaders like Cynthia Muhonja in Kenya and Gloria Marina Icu Puluc in Guatemala, who fight for education, health, and rights in their own communities. Their work inspires themes of grassroots leadership, sisterhood, and how local action can change global narratives.

Every theme in Women’s Stories will circle back to one core truth: resilience is not about never breaking; it is about how we gather our pieces and who we become as we rise.

Thank you for tuning in, listeners. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode of Women’s Stories. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI