I was in a public space when two women started talking loudly near me.
They were laughing — the kind of laughter people use when they think they’re being funny,
but the joke is cutting someone else deeply.
One of them said,
“Ha! How do you give birth by C-section?
You’re not woman enough.
A real woman pushes.”
And the table erupted in laughter.
I sat there quietly, but my spirit refused to be quiet.
Because this is the kind of casual cruelty we’ve normalised.
This is the kind of uneducated confidence people walk around with.
This is the kind of pain that gets masked as “women’s talk”
yet it destroys someone’s dignity quietly.
Girl child, let me say this with my whole chest:
Giving birth does not make you a woman.
The METHOD of giving birth does not make you a woman.
Your strength is not measured in centimetres of dilation.
Your worth is not determined by how your child entered this world.
Some pushed.
Some were cut.
Some almost died.
Some had complications.
Some had emergency surgery.
Some had planned surgery.
Some healed fast.
Some healed slowly.
Some survived miracles medical science cannot even explain.
But all of them are mothers.
And all of them are women.
The idea that one woman can look at another and use childbirth as a hierarchy of femininity…
It breaks my heart.
Because truth is:
No one chooses how labour goes.
Not even the strongest woman in the room.
Doctors do.
Situations do.
Medical emergencies do.
God’s intervention does.
Women who deliver through C-section are not weak.
Some of them had to be cut open to save their OWN lives.
Some had to be cut open to save their BABIES.
Some went through pain and recovery that people who pushed will never understand.
I hope as women we heal from the need to belittle each other.
From the urge to act as gatekeepers of “real womanhood.”
From the false pride that places one woman’s experience above another’s.
Motherhood is not a competition.
Womanhood is not a checklist.
Birth is not an exam with pass and fail categories.
A woman is a woman —
whether she pushed,
was cut,
or held her baby through adoption.
Let’s talk with compassion.
Let’s speak with education.
Let’s heal from the need to shame others to feel superior.
Let’s honour every story — not mock it.
Because the laughter I heard yesterday told me one thing:
We still have healing to do as women.
#WomenSupportingWomen #StopBirthShaming #WomanhoodIsNotPain #NicoleRuvimboMarara