Proud to support Women for Women International

 

This International Women’s Day we are very proud to partner with Women for Women International.

For one week, until 14th March, £5 from the sale of every Pink Toast Soul Sisters 1/2 Pint Mug and Purple Toast Strong Women 1/2 Pint Mug will be donated to Women for Women International to help women survivors of war rebuild their lives.

Order your Soul Sister Mug here and Strong Women Mug here

 

Some words from Emma on International Women’s Day

I feel I have always known myself to be surrounded, protected and inspired by powerful women, and I absolutely know that my core of inner strength comes from all I learned from those women as a child; moreover, that knowledge only deepens with time. 

The word sister is so huge! I'm lucky, I have four gorgeous sisters of my own, and without them life is unthinkable. But sister is also a great big stretchy word- I have 3 amazing daughters, fully paid up members of the greater Sisterhood- they inspire and illuminate my life.   And I have friends with the status of sisters, from my childhood, from my own schooldays, and more recently from the school gates; from work, from my wider family and from all over the world.

All in all, I have so many more than four sisters in my life, both much older and much younger as well as women from my own cohort: the sisterhood is wide and wonderful, big, kind, funny, inspiring, supportive and growing!

My mother and her younger sister Theresa demonstrated the invincible power and the huge fun of the primal relationship between sisters, and as a direct result, I've always regarded my own sisters as my best and closest friends, and I've found that many women beyond my blood family also qualify as sisters- it's one of the strongest and happiest bonds in my life; Mum and Tee simply adored each other, and being around them was to feel you were in the best place, with the best company, swept frequently by gales of unstoppable laughter - they were always  having more fun than anyone else, treating every day as an adventure, full of possibilities.

Growing up in Oxford in the 1970s I may have basked in an especially sunny phase of feminism: from early on I knew utterly that right-thinking older women looked out for younger women.  Always.  And I was strong in adolescence because of it: Mum's friends were loving influencesa in my life as she was in the lives of their daughters.

This aspect of the sisterhood was I think strained by what happened next, which was that seismic social change when almost all women switched from being mostly at home, to going out to work. Let's remind ourselves of the network of love and support that we can be for each other.

The EB mugs Soul Sisters, and The Association of Strong Women are both inspired by the knowledge that we women love each other, oh yes!  But we also need each other.  

And in the hurly-burly we can sometimes forget to remember each other!! So send these mugs to your sisters and friends - and all the great women in your life-  with love, respect, gratitude and laughter, because life is so much bigger, better, stronger and happier  when we love our sisters and we stick together.