Latest news with #strongwomen
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
The View's Joy Behar sparks war with MAGA women over her bold claims about the 'ladies Trump likes'
The View host Joy Behar boldly claimed that Donald Trump hates 'strong women,' despite the president placing several in key cabinet positions. The 82-year-old comedienne made the comment on Wednesday's show while discussing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 's recent response to Trump slamming her as 'one of the dumbest people in Congress.' 'Mr. President, don't take your anger out on me - I'm just a silly girl,' Ocasio-Cortez, 35, said in a self-filmed video. Behar dove into the feud on Wednesday, offering her own take on the president's preferences. 'So, you know, my experience with him, and my observation of him, is he really doesn't really like strong women. He likes beautiful, obedient women who compliment him,' she stated. 'So, he's not going to like [AOC],' Behar added later. 'Somehow, this type of woman really gets in his kishkas.' Co-host Sunny Hostin, 56, would also get in on the action. 'Well, he projects too also, right?' the former federal prosecutor chimed in. 'He's calling her dumb and unqualified. Come on.' The hosts didn't mention any of the women Trump appointed to high-profile roles in his administration, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Defense Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, among others. Behar relayed her own experiences with Trump to try to make her point. 'Even back in the day when I used to do jokes about his hair, you know - but every male every male comedian did jokes about his hair, but he went after me in particular,' she said. Behar did ask Hostin if she believed young Democrats like AOC had any success connecting with people. 'I think absolutely,' Hostin said, before pointing to New York's mayoral primary, where voters picked Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani over former Governor Andrew Cuomo. 'I think you need to be an opposition party at this point in this country,' she added. 'And so, I think Democrats are finding their way with these younger voices.' Behar's remarks came a couple weeks after she awkwardly paused the show's conversation about riots in Los Angeles to talk up Governor Gavin Newsom's good looks. 'Gavin Newsom brings me back to really handsome presidents,' she said, also mentioning 'JFK and Obama.' 'Wouldn't it be nice to have an articulate gorgeous president like that again?' The View hosts didn't mention any of the women Trump appointed to high-profile roles in his administration, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Defense Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Pictured, the Truth Social post that stated the tiff, where Trump took aim at the rising Democrat Last month, top brass at ABC News and its parent company Disney were said have asked the ladies to dial back their complaining about Trump. The talk show has been filled with criticisms of the commander-in-chief and his policies, with mostly kind words for Democrats. The show's usual moderator, Whoopi Goldberg, came under fire last week for comparing life as a black American to living under Iran's authoritarian regime.
Geek Girl Authority
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Girl Authority
Geek Girl Authority Crush of the Week: The Pitt's DANA EVANS
Welcome to this week's installment of Geek Girl Authority Crush of the Week, wherein we spotlight strong women and non-binary folks who inspire us. These characters are prime examples of empowerment and how crucial it is for youth to have said examples to follow. DISCLAIMER: The following contains spoilers for Max's The Pitt , particularly Dana Evans's arc. Dana Evans Fast Facts While we've only known Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) for one season, she is among the most loved characters on The Pitt . Her can-do attitude and the way she keeps the ER (and the doctors) running have made her stand out in a short amount of time. As charge nurse, she knows everything that's going on in the ER, how the doctors and nurses work, and how to keep things under control as much as possible in such a chaotic environment. She is everyone's go-to person. RELATED: Nautilus Sets Out With Humility in a Double-Decker Sneak Peek of Its Premiere Dana has been at the same hospital for several decades, familiar with its ins and outs. This makes her reliable, but also highlights why she might be tired of dealing with the chaos and stress associated with it. It is also she who gets attacked by an angry patient, pushing her to second-guess whether she wants to continue doing her job or not. At the end of the season, her future remains unknown as we watch her take down her photos from her station and walk out. The Real Deal Dana Evans is the one everyone turns to. For Robby (Noah Wyle), she is the biggest support system. Because she knows what that date means to him, she makes sure to check in on him as often as possible. Dana keeps him as sane as she can. RELATED: Outlander: Blood of My Blood Gets Season 2 Renewal at STARZ For new doctors, she's a reassuring voice. She encourages them in the work they are doing and helps them navigate chaos. For Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez), she is even a confessional on her crush on Mateo (Jalen Thomas Brooks). Why She Matters Without Dana, The Pitt wouldn't be the same. Everyone would be lost without her, and that includes the audience. She is a grounding force who made a mark in one short season. RELATED: On Location: The Vancouver Public Library Central Location on Fox's Fringe So be like Dana Evans. Do your job to the best of your ability. Check in on your friends when they need it. Work with as many Utahs as possible. Go for that smoke if you need it. And always be ready for the unexpected. The Pitt is available to stream on MAX. 5 Must-Watch MAX Documentaries By day, Lara Rosales (she/her) is a solo mom by choice and a bilingual writer with a BA in Latin-American Literature who works in PR. By night, she is a TV enjoyer who used to host a podcast (Cats, Milfs & Lesbian Things). You can find her work published on Tell-Tale TV, Eulalie Magazine, Collider, USA Wire, Mentors Collective, Instelite, Noodle, Dear Movies, Nicki Swift, and Flip Screened.
Telegraph
14-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
‘My dad walked out of my life when I was 10 – then I did the same to him four decades later'
To date, I've enjoyed 19 Father's Days. So far so good, I hope. I get nice cards from my daughters and the hugs seem sincere. Now that both of them are on the brink of adulthood (my youngest is 17), I can increasingly allow myself the conviction that I did okay in the role. The relief is enormous. I always feared I'd fail at fatherhood, largely because I thought my own father had. He was never much around, rarely home, and left for good by the time I was 10. In his stead came no strong male presence, my mother never remarrying, so how on earth would I make a good father myself without that formative role model? Family strife I didn't see my dad again until I turned 40, by which time I was a father myself. I'd previously been adamant that I'd never have children, convinced that, as in the films of Mike Leigh, families only led to strife. I didn't want any more strife. I'd remained very close to my mother until her death from cancer 25 years ago, at the age of 55, and she'd been a lovely, if complicated person: strong, independent, staunchly feminist, a vegetarian big into alternative health; also chronically depressed, with periods of bulimia and anorexia we were never allowed to discuss. In the absence of a husband, she promoted me to co-parent of my younger brother, and to suggest that my brother didn't much appreciate this is an understatement: it drove a wedge between us that exists to this day. To me, growing up felt like living in a perpetual minefield: at any time, one of them could blow, both, it seemed, reliant upon me to maintain an even-ish keel. Why me? When I moved out at 19, the sense of escape was vertiginous. Free at last! When would I settle down? Hopefully never. Fatherhood did eventually find me, as it does to so many of us. But because this was no longer the Seventies, I entered into it willingly and with self-awareness. Nevertheless, I still panicked throughout the pregnancy, then again during the first few months of parenthood (oh boy, did I), then, steered by my wife's surprising patience and wise counsel, I came to realise that history need not repeat itself. So, yes: big relief. Back in contact I found myself contacting my father a few months before we had our second child. I'd barely thought of him in the previous 30 years, and the few remaining memories I held were not particularly encouraging ones: a pint perpetually on the go, brooding bad moods, a fondness for Dad's Army. But I was curious now. Who was he? Why did he leave? Were there regrets? I found his address online. He lived just three miles from the family home he'd left all those years previously. He responded to my letter immediately, sounding happy, surprised, eager. 'Lunch? I'll pay, the least I can do.' We met at a train station, and I wouldn't have recognised him, this whiskery 65-year-old in an overcoat and flat cap. An hour later, I'd realised I was very much my mother's son. We had nothing in common, few shared interests, held differing world views. No missing piece of the jigsaw fell pleasingly into place. That said, he was unfailingly polite, and, I sensed, afraid in any way to offend. There was diplomacy at work here. During the meal, I became increasingly aware that while he diligently answered all the questions I posed, he asked none of his own. The second time we met, this time for coffee, we ran out of conversational steam alarmingly quickly – and I can talk to anyone. An absence of 30 years, and he'd nothing to say. While I was planning my exit, he suddenly suggested that our families meet, perhaps in pursuit of mitigating our mutual awkwardness with the presence of his wife who, he relayed fondly, 'can talk a lot'. I could meet his adult daughter, and he could meet my girls. A tepid meeting In truth, I wasn't keen. The dramatist in me thought that this might be an occasion for recrimination and revelation (Mike Leigh again), but I agreed largely because I didn't want to offend. Also, my wife, by now, was intrigued. She comes from a large, sprawling family, and could never understand my lack of interest in mine. In the event, there was no drama at all, just a lamb roast, two veg and room-temperature wine at their small terraced house. His wife really was very chatty indeed, and perfectly pleasant. She made small talk last for an awfully long time, and gave us some leftover dessert in a Tupperware dish 'for the drive back'. Early the next morning, he emailed to suggest another date 'soon', and so, over the next few years, we submitted to occasional Sunday lunches, just like normal people. At first, these occurred every few months, but then, at my delay, with much longer gaps in between. Consistently, I turned down their Christmas invitations until the hint was taken. It's not that I had any (or, perhaps more accurately, much) lingering anger towards him – I knew that their marriage had been a difficult one, and that both were responsible for the way it ended – but my mother had stayed, while he, irrespective of the reason, had fled. If I'd ever needed a father, it was back then. Now, I had no idea what to do with him. Walking out of his life My daughters were similarly mystified. Because I'd only ever called him by his name, and never 'Dad', they did likewise. Over the years, they wondered why these particular friends of ours were 'so old'. When I explained the bloodline, and its significance – something I had to do more than once in their young lives – their eyes widened. 'Does this mean we'll get presents?' About a decade after that initial contact, I ended things. I was polite but firm. That early awkwardness between us had never eased; I still had no idea what to say to him whenever we met, and he never seemed to say very much to me, either. I couldn't quite work out where he fitted into my busy life, or, indeed, why he should. His wife was furious, and wrote to tell me. No, she confirmed, she did not see things from my perspective. When he died last year, she emailed my wife, not me. There was no invite to the funeral. I was sorry, genuinely, for her loss, but I cannot say I regretted my decision. The deeper into fatherhood I got, the more I found it impossible to comprehend how someone might walk out on his children quite so emphatically. I couldn't imagine doing that myself, and found it increasingly discomfiting to be around someone who did. But I'm glad I'd sought him out, and happy that he found familial happiness the second time around. His absence in my life has made me a much more conscientious father, and, for that, I'm grateful.
New York Times
26-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Jan Todd May Be the Reason You're Lifting Weights
On a foggy day in the summer of 1979, Jan Todd pulled on a navy tracksuit and combed her long blond hair, letting it hang loose down her back. She had flown to Scotland to attempt to lift a massive set of boulders known as the Dinnie Stones, each outfitted with an iron ring. In the 120 years since a Scottish strongman famously hoisted the stones, thousands had tried and failed the test of strength. Of the 11 who had succeeded, all were men. She was 5-foot-7 and 195 pounds; the stones together weighed 733 pounds. As she approached the boulders outside a 240-year-old inn, a crowd gathered. Finding the right stance was challenging, but eventually she straddled the rocks, adjusted her hand straps for a better grip, clasped the rings and pulled. One creaked off the ground but the other held firm. She felt her face flush. Then she reminded herself why she wanted to lift them: to show herself, and the world, that a woman could. She bent her knees, took a deep breath and yanked one boulder off the ground, then the other. The feat wouldn't be replicated by another woman until 2018. In the ensuing decades, Jan Todd went on to shatter powerlifting records, earn a Ph.D. devoted to the history of strength and exercise, create a doctoral program, launch an academic journal and open the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center, a sprawling museum, library and archive dedicated to the pursuit of physical potential. Collectively, through relentless force of will, she helped to transform strength training from a fringe activity into the cornerstone of healthy living that it is today, particularly among women. 'I do think that I have helped make it possible for more women to understand that it is actually OK to be strong, it's OK to have muscles,' Dr. Todd, now 73, said while giving me a tour of her museum on the fifth floor of the University of Texas at Austin football stadium. She had greeted me in the museum's lobby alongside a 10-and-a-half-foot replica of the ancient statue of Farnese Hercules, with its rippled abs and huge quadriceps. Wearing a billowy floral blouse and large hexagonal glasses, Dr. Todd walked with a pronounced limp and gave the impression of a proud den mother. She guided me through the museum's galleries and backrooms, all shrines to strength. The rooms were filled with artifacts of strongmen and strongwomen throughout history, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Josephine Blatt, a turn-of-the-century weight lifter known as Minerva. The center holds more than 40,000 books, and in a back corner there's a chunky early 20th-century dumbbell ('almost unliftable,' Dr. Todd said) next to a Shake Weight. 'I need to save them,' she said of the artifacts around her. If not, she added, 'maybe nobody else will.' Once a sideshow oddity, weight lifting has seen a surge in popularity since the late 1980s, with strength training now more popular than cardio, according to some reports. Everyone today, from pregnant women to older adults with arthritic knees, is encouraged to build muscle, thanks in part to people like Dr. Todd and her students. 'Jan Todd is a legend in the world of strength,' wrote Mr. Schwarzenegger, who has known and collaborated with her for decades, in an email. 'She's a pioneer who led the way for strongwomen all over the world. She's studied it more than anyone I know, and she's also lived it.' Once known as 'the world's strongest woman,' Dr. Todd once bent bottle caps with her fingers, lifted her Ford Fiesta for fun and drove nails through wooden boards with her palms. But greater feats were still to come. Learning to flex Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, Dr. Todd, then Janice Suffolk, wasn't encouraged to flex her muscles, physically or intellectually. Her family was poor, without an indoor bathroom for a while, and her father, a steel mill worker, didn't see the point in educating women. And neither was he a fan of girls playing sports. Janice was always bigger than her friends, wider and sturdier, 'like a larger species of the same animal,' she told me. More like a 'Clydesdale than a thoroughbred,' she said. After her parents divorced, her mother encouraged Janice to join the high school swim team, but she felt ashamed when she couldn't fit into the required swimsuit. 'I didn't have any appreciation yet that the bigness of my body,' she said, would 'make it possible for me to be who I became.' As a college student at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., she met Terry Todd, a 6-foot-2 national powerlifting champion and a professor there. Terry fell in love with Jan when he saw her flip a massive log at a barbecue. 'She was a natural force. Mount Rushmore,' he told Sports Illustrated in 1977. 'There was something about the way she stepped up to that log and lifted it,' he later told People. 'No giggling, no false modesty.' According to family lore, when he told his grandmother about Jan, he opened with: 'You know, she is perfectly leveraged for the squat.' They married and Terry encouraged her to start weight lifting and then powerlifting. She was a natural. One day at the grocery store, she picked up a giant watermelon and was surprised to discover that it felt light. She began to see her strength, even her size, as an asset. 'If the watermelon is not heavy, the dog food bag is not heavy and your grocery bags aren't heavy,' she said, 'you begin to realize that so many things in your life are easier.' Still, she had few role models for what a physically strong woman could look like. After all, even Wonder Woman's muscles were relatively small. Around this time, Terry told her about a storied early-20th-century strongwoman, Katie Sandwina, also known as Lady Hercules. A star of the Barnum and Bailey circus, she was nearly six feet tall, more than 200 pounds and billed as the world's strongest and most beautiful woman. Jan was captivated. It was a whole new model of womanhood. She began looking into the histories of other strongwomen, with names like Vulcana, Athleta, and 'Pudgy.' She found that understanding the people who came before helped her embrace her own power. 'It was reassuring to me,' she said. In the mid-1970s, the couple moved to a farm in Nova Scotia, where Jan taught high school English by day and trained by night. She kept a set of barbells in the back of her classroom. Throughout this time, Dr. Todd set more than 60 national and world records and was profiled by Sports Illustrated in 1977. Coaches around the country began tearing out the article and posting it in girls' locker rooms as inspiration. Johnny Carson invited her onto 'The Tonight Show,' where she deadlifted 415 pounds for an audience of 14 million viewers. The pursuit of power In the early 1980s, Jan and Terry moved to Austin, and Jan got a job at the University of Texas teaching weight lifting and coaching the school's powerlifting teams. She realized that few people studied the history of sports, let alone strength training, and that most exercise physiologists focused on aerobic activities, like running and cycling. So she started a Ph.D. in American studies, crafting her coursework around the history of muscle and exercise, particularly among women, and became an outspoken promoter of strength. It wasn't easy. Around the department, she often felt eyes on her biceps. It seemed you could be a meathead or an egghead, but you couldn't be both. Her degree was delayed more than a year when the department chair decided that, despite her excellent grades, her work in the women's studies wasn't serious enough. 'I don't think I could ever be anybody for him other than the weight lifting lady,' she said. She kept pushing. She co-wrote the first scientific guidelines on strength training for women, helping to dispel fears about its potential danger to women's bodies. She and Terry created the first academic journal dedicated to the history of strength sports and exercise — Iron Game History — in 1990. It gave strength scholars a place to publish, and Dr. Todd still edits the journal today. In it, she has documented dozens of strongwomen lost to history — women who hoisted cannons, twirled their husbands like a rifle or lifted two men with one arm. Longtime colleagues say Dr. Todd is unrelenting, building up the people around her and lifting her field and students — many who have become leading exercise scientists, health researchers and historians. 'Jan is a really good — I won't call it a pusher, I'll call it a masher,' said Kyle Martin, a longtime colleague and curator of her museum. She is constantly mashing together people, sources and ideas, he said. Pumping the iron game Not long after they moved to Texas, Jan and Terry started trying to have children. Getting pregnant was taking longer than Dr. Todd had hoped, and in her darker moments, she wondered if the fearmongers who said lifting could wreck a woman's fertility were right. Then at 36, not long after learning that her degree would be delayed, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was told she had less than a 25 percent chance of survival. Driving back from a doctor's appointment, Terry turned to her and asked: 'When have you not been in the top 25 percent of anything?' What followed was surgery and treatments and moments when she struggled to get out of bed (though she kept lifting). Throughout the ordeal, she called on the same drive she used as an athlete. She eventually beat the cancer, but she would never be able to have children. So she got back to work. For years, Jan and Terry had filled rooms of their home with strength memorabilia and artifacts they had collected, convinced that they might someday be of interest to scholars. The Todds knew that researchers depend on historical objects, photographs and texts. The couple threw their energy into creating a museum. 'I'm not going to have children,' she remembers thinking at the time. 'If there is a legacy for me or for Terry, for both of us hopefully, it's going to be this place.' In 2008, after decades of petitioning, lobbying and fund-raising, they opened the Stark Center in a 27,500-square-foot space inside the stadium. There are posters of Katie Sandwina, the circus strongwoman, photos of the Muscle Beach star Pudgy Stockton (one of Dr. Todd's mentors) and of Mr. Schwarzenegger posing on the cover of Iron Man magazine. There's also the four decade backlist of Shape magazine, the first dedicated to women's fitness. 'I remember clearly seeing the very first volume,' she said while thumbing though a copy. The cover featured Miss Universe in a purple catsuit promising to help readers 'bodysculpt.' 'That was a big thing.' Strong like Jan In 2018, Terry died. Then, five years ago, on her 68th birthday, Dr. Todd went for an evening drive with friends in their off-road vehicle. Suddenly, a couple wild boars darted in front of them. Her friend slammed the brakes and the vehicle skidded into a ditch, then flipped. Dr. Todd, a woman who had lifted countless cars, was trapped under one for more than an hour. The accident shattered her ribs, wrist, ankle bones and a hip but didn't damage any organs. Doctors told her that her muscles might have protected her from more serious injury, even saving her life. She moves differently since the accident — 'like a drunken penguin,' she told me, as she sipped a Diet Coke from a large tumbler with the words 'DON'T WEAKEN.' We sat in lounge chairs on her back patio, as her two 150-pound bull mastiffs played by her feet. Nowadays she lifts less, likes to garden and travels to Scotland most summers to watch others try to lift the Dinnie Stones. Dr. Todd is also finally getting wider attention for her academic work, which is featured in two new books about the science and history of weight lifting. In them she is portrayed as an almost mythic figure. 'Nobody has integrated the greatest powers of muscle and the greatest powers of mind in athletics and academics as seamlessly as she has,' said Michael Joseph Gross, author of 'Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives.' Near the end of our interviews, Dr. Todd brought me into her garage, which is bursting with overflow from the Stark Center; shelves of artifacts and keepsakes from her own life and the history of strength training. She opened boxes at random to show me medals, log books, posters, hundreds of photos and an archive documenting decades of Dinnie Stone lifts. We eventually arrived at her rack of weights, unceremoniously squeezed into a back corner. She hasn't used them much since her accident, she said. She greeted them quietly, like a relic from her own history. But she seemed OK with this. 'Even as broken down as I am,' she said, 'I can still pick up the 50-pound bag of dog food and pour it in the bowl and not have to worry too much about that. And I can carry in my firewood.' And she can still bend bottle caps with her bare hands.
Mail & Guardian
09-05-2025
- Business
- Mail & Guardian
NTHABISENG MATSHEKGA: ‘I'm not afraid to talk about money anymore'
Financial discipline: Nthabiseng Matshekga. Nthabiseng's story is one that many South Africans will recognise. It's a story shaped by strong women, financial lessons learned early and a quiet determination to do better with each generation. As a mother of three, and the executive head of integrated marketing and experience at Nedbank, Nthabiseng is someone who has taken the time to understand her relationship with money. In her interview, Nthabiseng proves that financial growth isn't just about numbers — it's about values, habits and the willingness to keep learning. The mother of three teenagers, she's someone who has been on a real journey with money, starting from what she saw in her childhood home to how she now teaches her own children. 'I learned from my grandmother,' she says. 'She had this ability to stretch her salary. She knew how to make her salary feed a whole family by being a great bargain shopper. She was really disciplined, always saving, always delaying gratification until it was worth it.' One memory stands out. 'When I was at university, she bought me my first cellphone. I hadn't asked for it, she had just quietly saved up for it and surprised me. That taught me that a little, saved consistently, can go a long way.' But there were also harder lessons. Her family was known for being generous, and while that came from a good place, it wasn't always met with the same energy. 'We gave a lot, to relatives and even strangers. Over time, I saw how that generosity could be taken advantage of.' That early mix of discipline and excessive generosity left its mark. As an adult, Nthabiseng found herself repeating some of those patterns. 'I used to give a lot, sometimes more than I could afford. I didn't say 'no' enough. And it would put me in tough financial situations.' Things started to shift when she joined Nedbank and took a money archetype survey. It helped her see herself clearly — as a 'carer' personality type, who likes to help others, sometimes to her own detriment. 'Just having language for that made a difference. I learned I can still be generous, but with boundaries.' She now has what she calls a 'giving budget', and being more intentional about money has brought her calm. 'I'm less stressed now. I understand my financial position better, and I'm not afraid to talk about money anymore.' That openness is something she passes on to her kids. 'We talk about money all the time. I want them to understand it early, to know about saving, investing, spending wisely—and giving too, in a way that makes sense.' She teaches them to break it down into four parts: spend, save, invest, and give, adding that 'Money isn't just about today. It's about the future, too.' Her approach to motherhood is just as thoughtful. 'For me, motherhood means raising myself so I can raise them. I want them to know they're loved for who they are — not for what they achieve. And I try to learn from them too. They're teaching me all the time.' Nthabiseng doesn't believe in the idea of having it all—at least, not in a one-size-fits-all way. 'I don't think there's a universal definition of what 'all' even means. Every mom is different. We all have our own paths, and our own version of a full life.' In her career, she's seen many strong female leaders, especially in marketing, which she says has generally welcomed women at all levels. 'I've always had women around me in this field. Some of my best mentors and bosses were women. And I've had great support from female colleagues across industries.' Still, she knows that society often sees mothers in a narrow light. 'Moms are usually seen as reliable, nurturing, but also stretched,' she laughs. 'And there's truth to that. We are doing a lot. But I also think we need to be seen as full people, not just caretakers.' Her own mother was a teen mom and a single parent. 'She had a lot on her plate, but she raised me with love, a sense of belonging, and safety, alongside my grandparents and her sisters. She was a bit strict during my teen years, and I feel I built a closer relationship with her when I became a mom. She is also a great cheerleader and supporter.' Nthabiseng has a quiet message for other working moms. 'Stay in tune with yourself. Don't lose the things that put fire in your belly. And talk to your kids — they can give you honest, surprising feedback. Also, don't forget to take time for yourself.' Her story isn't about dramatic success or perfect solutions. It's about paying attention to the small things, making gradual changes, and being honest about where you are. It's a reminder that financial health, like parenting, is a process. 'Learning how to look after my money better has helped bring me stability that reduces stress. The personal agency to learn to grow that money is a source of pride and confidence. Money helps take care of one's family. Additionally, it compounds access to opportunities.' Nthabiseng is one of the country's female guardians, and one of the women doing the work, asking the right questions, and helping shape a more balanced future for the next generation, one honest conversation at a time.
