25 Mar 2026
This month, Ruth considers a constellation of women: the mothers, mentors and unexpected guides who shape our lives.
When people talk about the woman who raised them, they usually mean one person.
But a life is rarely built by a single pair of hands.
Mine was assembled by a busy parliament of women. A constellation of them, really.
Women connected to me by blood, proximity, timing or sometimes simply fate. All appearing at exactly the moment they were needed and staying long enough to leave something important behind.
My mother sits at the centre of that constellation, of course. But my grandmother is there too, a woman who loved fiercely and without hesitation, whose presence seemed to fill any room she entered. As a child I understood her strength instinctively, long before I had the language to describe it. Even now I can recognise pieces of her in myself – in moments of stubbornness, in loyalty to the people I love, in the quiet certainty that some things in life are simply not negotiable.
Around them were other women whose influence settled into my life in quieter ways.
I grew up watching women who seemed wonderfully certain of themselves; women who had lived enough life to move through the world with a kind of relaxed confidence. As a girl I was fascinated by them, studying the way they spoke, the way they carried themselves, the ease with which they seemed to know who they were.
Some of that confidence must have seeped in over the years, gradually becoming part of me.
At the time it never occurred to me that this was how a life was built.
It simply felt like the natural order of things: women appearing when they were needed and, without ceremony, nudging you back toward the right path.
Only later do you begin to notice how deeply those influences settle. A familiar phrase escapes your mouth. A particular steadiness in the face of difficulty reveals its origin. Every now and then I hear myself speak and recognise the echo of a woman who shaped me long ago.
And then, somewhere along the way, something shifts.
One day, you realise younger women turning to you with questions you remember asking others not so long ago.
Conversations that begin casually somehow drift toward the larger uncertainties of life: work, ambition, the strange pressure of choosing the right path when it feels like every decision might change everything.
When did this happen, I sometimes wonder. When did I cross the invisible line from the woman seeking advice to the woman being asked for it?
The truth is it probably happened slowly enough that I barely noticed. Wisdom passes through women almost the way stories do, moving quietly from one person to another until it settles into you and begins to feel like something you always knew.
I am not a mother. But as I approach forty, I have come to understand that mothering exists far beyond motherhood itself. It lives in the quiet ways women steady one another through uncertainty, offering encouragement when someone falters or reminding someone of their strength when they momentarily forget it.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. What no one tells you is that the village does not disappear when you grow up. It simply changes shape as we grow into it.
The women who once guided you become the companions you rely on when life becomes complicated. Over time their voices become part of the way you think, the quiet counsel you carry with you.
And sometimes those women gather in the most ordinary places. In my case, a few mornings each week in a St Albans Pilates studio, where a small group of us come together to stretch, talk and occasionally overshare the details of our lives. It is an easy, judgement-free kind of camaraderie; the sort that forms when women show up for one another often enough that honesty becomes second nature.
And then, without quite realising it, you notice that someone younger is looking toward you with the same trust you once placed in others.
When I have a problem now, I know instinctively where to turn. The women who have shaped my life are still there, sometimes in conversation and sometimes simply in memory, their influence woven into the way I see the world.
And it makes me smile to realise that somewhere along the way I have become one of those women for someone else.
Just another small star in the constellation.
