Strong Women

This article was originally published on LinkedIn

In Against the Grain, I tell the story of Birdie Brown, a woman who migrated from Missouri to Montana, established a homestead, and later made moonshine during Prohibition. She ran her own operation, served customers at her rural home and created a place where people could gather and gamble.

She was an entrepreneur at a time when the opportunities available to women were considerably different than they are today.

More of Birdie’s story is shared on my blog, but I wanted to write about another strong woman. This one has nothing to do with moonshine.

My mom.

Strength Can Look Pretty Ordinary

Mom grew up taking care of people.

As a girl, she helped care for her brothers and sister. As her mother grew older and needed help, Mom was there. When her sister, who had an intellectual disability, needed someone to assume more responsibility for her care, Mom did that too. Along the way, she raised three kids.

Later, as Dad’s health declined, she became his caregiver. Anyone who has cared for an aging spouse knows what that entails. Doctor appointments, medications, meals, mobility issues, and countless other things become part of everyday life. The responsibilities gradually increase until caregiving becomes a significant part of the caregiver’s own life.

Mom did what she had always done. She took care of the person who needed her.

I’ve spent much of my career around people we commonly describe as strong leaders. CEOs. Entrepreneurs. Executives responsible for large organizations and hundreds of employees. We tend to associate strength with authority, decisiveness, and the ability to perform under pressure. Mom’s version has always been quieter.

She shows up.

Then She Became the One Who Needed Care

Three years ago, Mom was involved in a freak accident at home.

Her own vehicle backed over her. The injuries were extensive, and no one expected her to live. She suffered several broken bones, including most of the ribs on both sides of her body. We were all hopeful, but I think we all planned to say “Goodbye.” I know I did.

But Mom had other plans.

As they prepared her for a surgery that offered her only shot at survival, I asked her if she wanted to fight, because if she didn’t, that was OK. She’d already given and fought so much.

Through the haze, she adamantly said, “I want to fight.”

Mom doesn’t remember that moment, but it is ingrained in my memory forever. And fight she did. She survived, recovered faster than expected, and worked her way back to the life she had before the accident.

And then she went back to taking care of Dad.

For the final two years of his life, she continued caring for him as his health declined further and further. After spending most of her life being the person everyone else could count on, she had endured an accident that nearly killed her and then returned to doing what she had always done.

Taking care of somebody else.

We Have a Narrow Definition of Strength

Business has its own vocabulary for strong people.

We talk about resilience. Grit. Leadership. Accountability. Commitment. Adaptability. We write books about these qualities, teach them in leadership programs, and discuss them in conference rooms. I’ve spent more than thirty years in business and have seen all of them demonstrated in impressive ways.

I’ve also seen every one of them demonstrated by my mom.

There was no title attached to it. No promotion. No quarterly objective. Most of the work happened where very few people could see it. That doesn’t make the lesson any less relevant to leadership.

Strength often comes down to doing what needs to be done, especially when doing it is difficult. Resilience is the ability to get back up and continue. Responsibility means understanding that someone is counting on you and acting accordingly. Leadership frequently begins with putting someone else’s needs alongside your own.

Those lessons work just as well in a family as they do in a business.

The Strong Women Around Us

Birdie Brown’s story deserves to be remembered because she did something extraordinary for a woman living in rural Montana during Prohibition. Her story also fits naturally into Against the Grain because she found her own way to survive and make a living.

My mom’s story is very different.

She didn’t homestead in Montana or run a moonshine operation. Her life has been built around family, responsibility, and an extraordinary capacity to care for other people.

Both stories make me think about the many ways women demonstrate strength.

Some build companies. Some build careers. Some build families. Many do several of those things at once. Some lead organizations with hundreds of employees while others become the person an entire family relies upon.

The common thread is rarely a job title. It’s responsibility. It’s resilience. It’s showing up.

Dad has appeared in quite a few of my stories over the years. He was colorful, entrepreneurial, and usually good for a quote. That makes him pretty easy to write about.

Mom has always been quieter.

She’s also one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.

And it was time I wrote about her.