Happy International Women’s Day 2026!
This is my first IWD in over a decade outside of public accounting. I spent those years working alongside my female colleagues who inspired my tenacity and supported my ambition all along the way.
For my accounting friends: while I may not be crushing through trust and personal income tax returns this March, I’m still cheering you on with all the other tax season spouses holding down the fort until May. And then July. 🙂
Why is this significant today? I still see accounting as a historically male-dominated industry. (My IWD 2025 post illustrates why that is.) To be fair, we’ve been working alongside our male counterparts in this industry for quite some time, but accountants are also notoriously slow to adapt, so whether or not women had truly broken through the glass ceiling depended on where you looked.
My entire public accounting career was spent at one firm, which was about 90 people strong when I joined and 130 when I left. It shaped me greatly, having grown both within it and alongside it.
I was there when they welcomed their first-ever female partner into the fold. And then the second, and the third. There were five when I left, and I’m certain there are several more to come.
The women in charge have never taken their role in leadership lightly. They continue to honour, support, and advocate for women in the profession year-round. I was mentored, supported, and influenced by them greatly, thanks to their innate desire and ability to give back.
Want to reflect on IWD themes from previous years? Here are the first two I wrote:
- Happy International Women’s Day 2025! This Year, We Accelerate Action – examining what equality really looks like and how to get there
- Happy International Women’s Day 2024! This Year, We Inspire Inclusion – inclusion in action with a reflection from childhood
This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Give To Gain”.
“Give To Gain emphasizes the power of reciprocity and support. When people, organizations, and communities give generously, opportunities and support for women increase.” (IWD 2026)
An eyebrow raises occasionally at women’s events in the workplace, and I understand. Why not host men’s events? Well, not too long ago all events were men’s events, but that’s not the point. Hosting women’s events and mentorship programs has never been about exclusion or polarization.
It’s about witnessing our unique and collective experiences, understanding our common struggles, and supporting one another in defining our visions for success. Then we build on this by taking positive steps toward true gender equality, which is more nuanced than it sounds.
Giving is not a subtraction, it’s intentional multiplication. When women thrive, we all rise.
IWD 2026
Giving takes many forms, including mentorship, advocacy, training and education, and donations to organizations which amplify and expand our efforts in working toward gender equality on a global scale.
I like to give through words.
This year specifically, I’d like to spin the topic on its head just a little bit, because the women in my life are strong and brilliant and pour endlessly into those around them.
But when do they pour into themselves?
To truly give to gain, women must learn to give to themselves first.
As always, it’s important to me that this is an inclusive space. At the heart of this discussion is respect and appreciation for the humanity in each and every one of us, regardless of how we identify.
When women thrive, we all rise. When you thrive, we all rise with you.
It makes logical sense, but do you believe it? Can you feel it in your bones?
IWD 2026 reminds us of the power of reciprocity. Giving and receiving is a cycle, and one without the other isn’t sustainable. It’s only physics that dictates you can’t pour from an empty cup.
But oh, the ways we’ve found to stretch a thimble of water.
We push through relentless corporate burnout while giving dutifully to our friends and families — the trouble is, we don’t know when to say when. We wait for a breaking point or a permission slip to tell us.
We’ve been raised to be giving and generous. They teach us how, and it feels like the natural order of things. And while I think the world is veering more towards gender equality in these teachings, many of us have still internalized our ability to be giving and generous as a permission slip to take up just a little space in the world, not too much.
Generosity is of course an important, vital teaching for community-based wonders like us humans to thrive, but it’s only one half of the cycle.
They forgot to teach us how to receive.
How, after all of our heartfelt giving, do we replenish our cups? Conventional wisdom says self-care activities and proper rest, but there’s more to it than that.
Receiving involves asking for what we need when we need it — and that’s hard to do when you’ve overtrained on the giving end, because what even is a need, anyways? Is a break only needed when you fall to the floor in exhaustion?
Surely the line is well before then — but convince our nervous systems of that.
Receiving also involves allowing. That means undertaking a self-care activity and allowing it to be restful, not guilt-ridden or “productive”. It also means graciously accepting a hand offered, without embarrassment or self-judgement.
You deserve the rest, and the support. The key is to believe it — to feel that in your bones.
I’m not writing from a pedestal — I struggle with these things as well. I know what it’s like to feel stretched thin, and although I’m freelancing now, I’m still prone to feel a bit like butter scraped over too much bread if I’m not careful (and if I may borrow Tolkien’s imagery, too perfect to resist).
If self-care and rest are too simple an answer, here’s a more complicated one: healthy boundaries.
The most loving people have the strongest boundaries.
I’m paraphrasing this concept (which I believe is most strongly attributed to Brené Brown) because this was the way it was introduced to me, and that’s how I’ve internalized it.
It’s an idea that’s simple on the surface, but surprisingly challenging to embody. I haven’t read into it in great depth, but I’ve found my own ways to relate to it.
I’ve also seen how nebulous this idea is to my overachieving friends and colleagues.
How do boundaries help? Isn’t being loving about giving without needing to receive?
Well yes, in a sense… But this is an oversimplification. I think you can be loving in this way, as long as you’re pouring from a full cup — as this is when you have plenty to give, and you can give freely.
The boundaries are what keep your cup full.
We need to unlearn that being loving, or giving, is about how far you can stretch that thimble of water.
Can you be loving while actively ignoring your own needs? (Again, what even are “needs”? A challenging subject indeed.)
Or put another way: Can you be both loving and resentful at the same time? I think you can act lovingly, but it’s sure tough to embody when also cultivating resentment from your needs, whether you’re conscious of them or not, going unmet.
We also need to disconnect the concepts of “boundaries” and “selfishness” — these are not the same thing. You can have strong boundaries because it’s important to you to give, if you can make that connection. This is not selfish.
I see “boundaries” and “self-care” as more closely related. Ensuring that you have boundaries in place to keep your cup full enough so that you can continue to pour into others — preferably to the extent that makes your heart happy — is the name of the game.
To do that, in addition to accepting that boundaries are loving and not selfish, you need to know what your boundaries are, and when and how to implement them.
You can experiment on your own, or ask your friendly neighbourhood mental healthcare professional how you might approach that.
For me, it’s an ongoing and ever-evolving process, and one way I embody it is through this idea of creative reclamation that is the premise of this blog. But the process can be reduced even more universally:
- Recovering from self-abandonment (reclaiming your energy)
- Finding what actually fills your cup (reconnecting with yourself)
- Creating boundaries within which you can refill (make space to create)
- Engaging in ongoing maintenance (the creative practice)
So yes, this year, give to gain. Give your support, your mentorship, your time, your donations.
But first, give yourself some grace, and some space. Fill your cup.
Drink deeply.
Thank you for reading!
Donations in the spirit of International Women’s Day can be made here: International Women’s Day Giving
If you’re learning to fill your own cup first, you might enjoy exploring the rest of the blog — this is a good place to start.
I also write monthly letters where I share my own creative process, pull in a journal prompt, and round up the latest from the blog. It’s one small place to refill, and a great way to stay connected — to each other, and to your own creativity. If that is of interest, you can join me here.
