Happy International Women's Day! 🌹

A while ago, I came across the story of America's first self-made female millionaire, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

Her name was Sarah Breedlove.

Orphaned at age 7. Sarah never set foot in a classroom. She was so desperate to escape the abuse of her sister's husband that she married at 14 just to get out. By 18, she had her first child. By 20, she was a widow, completely alone, with a baby to feed.

So she did what she had to do. She scrubbed floors for a living.

Then, as if life hadn't already handed her enough, she developed a painful scalp condition. Dry, itchy, severe hair breakage and loss. It turns out this was something thousands of Black women were silently dealing with at the time, a problem the beauty industry had never bothered to address.

So Sarah decided to address it herself.

With just $1.50, she formulated a product to solve it. That product quietly grew into an empire. And Sarah Breedlove became known to the world as Madam C.J. Walker, America's first self-made female millionaire, at a time when racial inequality was not just social, it was written into law.

But the part of her story that really got me was this.

She didn't just build a business for herself. She turned around and hired the women the world had written off. Single mothers. Maids. Farmers' wives. She trained over 40,000 of them as sales agents, giving them financial independence at a time when women couldn't even vote.

She wasn't just selling hair oil. She was selling dignity, community, and freedom.

"Don't sit down and wait for opportunities. Get up and make them." — Madam C.J. Walker

Just thought I'd share this today of all days. The world may throw everything it has at them, but women are built differently. They carry pain quietly, turn it into purpose, and keep going when most would stop.

Happy International Women's Day to every incredible woman here.

4 comments