International Women’s Day – Lucy’s Thoughts

On International Women’s Day, I celebrate the strength, resilience, and voices of all the women who inspire me—the mothers, the grandmothers, the daughters, the granddaughters, the aunties, the cousins, the friends. To the refugee women rebuilding their lives, the neurodivergent and SEN women challenging misconceptions, the deaf women finding expression beyond words, the blind women moving with unseen strength, the older women proving that movement and memory has no hold over them, and the young women and girls shaping the future with courage and self-belief. 

But today, I also hold space for one woman in particular, my grandmother. She has dementia and is bed-bound, and through caring for her for over a decade I’ve learned how important it is to move through struggles together. Movement isn’t just about the body, it’s about the emotional connection, the release, about finding moments of joy, about remembering who we are.

I witnessed the power of both movement and music when me and my granny would sing old Irish songs together to see the energy in how she would dance and move along, her energy lifting, her spirit reconnecting to herself in a way I hadn’t witnessed before. In those moments, she wasn’t just a disabled woman living with dementia, she was herself again, Dolores. I intertwined yoga and breathwork to support not only her dementia but also her arthritis, which is the reason she is now bed-bound. Movement and music heal. We need them in our lives. That is how Grow With the Flow was born, not just as a practice, but as a philosophy. It’s about self-care and care for others, about connection, about community and resilience.

As a neurodivergent woman with dyslexia and ADHD and going through my own traumas, I have had to reclaim my own narrative, learning to see my differences not as limitations but as strengths. I know what it means to be unheard, to battle self-doubt, and to fight for space in a world that isn’t always built for difference. Movement became my way of reclaiming that space, and now I hold it open for others, for those facing physical and mental health challenges, for trauma survivors, for young women in schools and youth centres, colleges, universities, and for those whose voices are too often silenced by society.

And today, my thoughts are with the women around the world who are not allowed to dance, to sing, to study, to move freely. The women forced into silence, the victims of violence, the ones who have had their autonomy stripped away by oppression and fear. Movement is a form of resistance, a way to reclaim our bodies, our stories, and our power.

My work with asylum-seeking and refugee women has shown me how vital it is to support their ability to move through life, to rediscover themselves in spaces where they can feel free. I stand in solidarity with these women, knowing that the very act of moving—of dancing, of breathing—can be a powerful step toward healing and reclaiming their lives.

To every woman, your story, your strength, and your existence matter. Today and every day, may we continue to lift each other up, celebrate every voice, and flow forward together.