Her eyes are heavy. Her face, tear-stained. She looks up, fixes her gaze at the familiar reflection, and then looks away quickly as though the image in the mirror is too much to bear. A concoction of pain, anger, and doubt bubbles up to the surface and threatens to suffocate her hopes, dreams…all that she is.
With tense shoulders and the weight of a heavy heart, she inhales deeply – mustering up all the courage she can find, and looks straight ahead before exhaling slowly as another tear drop escapes from the corner of her right eye, kidnapping a speck of mascara and creating a dark streak as that one tear drop rolls down the side of her face and splashes rudely onto the surface below.
Though she may manage to force a smile through her pressed lips, her eyes will never lie. Behind every gaze is a story. When the words in her well-formed and extensive vocabulary fail to express the fragile state of her being, her eyes gather up all the hurt and pain in her heart and condense it into a teardrop.
She is simple, yet complex; strong, yet vulnerable; for she is a woman who struggles with a burden, but somehow she manages.
Who is this woman? Maybe you know her. Maybe she lives down the street; maybe you work with her or see her at the grocery store every week. Perhaps she’s closer to you – a friend, sister, mother or daughter. Even closer…maybe she’s you.
My name is Vimbai E. Chikomo. The Weight She Carries is a site dedicated to touching the lives of women like the one described above who, for whatever reason, are trying to pick up the broken pieces of their lives and trying to inch forward through pain, disappointment, abuse or rejection – not always at the hands of others; sometimes the abuser and the abused share the same identity. This is the place where women can read articles that aim to provide strength, encouragement and inspiration. Welcome to The Weight She Carries.