In honor of International Women’s Month, we invited local entrepreneur Emily Sexton, owner The Flourish Market downtown, to speak about the impact and resilience of women in our community. Here’s what she had to say.

One year ago today — almost to this exact date — I stood in my shop alone at 10 a.m. during our normal opening time. While members of my team and customers would normally be bustling around me, the door was locked, and I stood all alone in the front of what we call our “Wall of Women.”

The door was locked because there was a global pandemic brewing outside. And for the first time in my five-and-a-half years in business, I feared I would lose my life’s work.

The Flourish Market’s Wall of Women | Photo provided by Emily Sexton

The wall comprises 25 faces of women who make our products, shop with us, and make up our team — all are women who have overcome extreme obstacles.

I looked into the eyes of...

the woman in Ethiopia who makes our leather bags, and is crushing the stigma against HIVpositive women in her community.
the woman in Nashville who makes our jewelry, and is re-writing the narrative of her life after escaping abuse.
the woman down the street, who beat stage 4 breast cancer at the age of 32.
the woman in Nepal who makes our clothing, and is mentoring fellow sex trafficking survivors and helping them begin new lives of freedom.

I looked at their portraits and their words of wisdom hand written on the frames. Almost thinking they would respond back, I asked out loud, “How did you do it?”

I felt my worry and fear lose it’s tight grip as I started to acknowledge their witness that even on the darkest days, we can find our footing to fight.

It’s been quite the year for all of us, hasn’t it? As we’ve been able to re-open our shop doors, I

hear almost daily from women who list out for us all the ways they have “failed” in different areas of their life over the past year.

Failed? In a global pandemic? I always respond, “We really need to flip that narrative, friend!”

Sometimes when we’re in the thick of the tough parts of our story, it’s hard to see that we aren’t failing, we are actually actively fighting forward.

I hope that as women [in Raleigh] we can look back on this past year and release the feeling of shame of not doing enough or being enough, and instead acknowledge the strength of what it took to make it through.

May we do for each other what the courageous women on our shop wall did for me that gloomy

March day: mirror back the same strong and resilient woman who exists in each of us — the woman who has done hard things.