Borders were drawn by men. But bridges are being built by women. And every time we choose to reach across what divided us, we invite a future worth staying alive for.

We were never meant to lead alone. We just learned how to survive that way.

Across continents, faiths, and histories, women are beginning to reach for each other in ways that feel ancient and brand new. Across borders drawn by empire. Across ideologies seeded by war. Across shame and silence and survival. Not to agree on everything, but to remember something larger.

That we belong to each other.

The table we speak of isn’t one of polite debate or institutional power. It’s older than that. It is the gathering place. The fire circle. The healing bench. The altar. The field. The kitchen. The shared breath between women who have carried too much for too long and are finally turning toward each other, not just in grief but in vision.

This isn’t easy. There is hurt between us. Real history. Tensions formed by colorism, colonialism, class, and proximity to power. But the tide is shifting. Slowly. Quietly. Profoundly. We are choosing to meet each other in complexity, not perfection. And that is where everything begins to change.

What happens when women who were taught to compete choose to collaborate instead?

What happens when we speak the unspeakable, witness each other fully, and build without asking permission?

What happens when women from the so-called margins realize we were the architects all along?

The answer is not a marketing strategy. It is not a conference panel. It is a pulse. A remembering. A promise that we will not go back to sleep.

We are seeing it everywhere. Indigenous women reclaiming land and law. Black women building legacy and literacy. Immigrant mothers raising warriors in languages colonization tried to steal. Women holding space in rooms designed to erase them. Survivors creating economies from what was meant to destroy them. Women of faith praying beside women of doubt. Women once labeled enemies sitting beside one another, sharing story instead of silence.

This is what it looks like when we reach.

But to fully understand what reaching means, we also have to name what has kept us apart.

The truth is, some of the deepest fractures among women were not born from difference alone, but from how power was distributed and protected. White supremacy, colonial hierarchies, and generational proximity to systems of dominance have long shaped how some women have aligned their survival—not with each other, but with the structures that harm us all.

This is not about blame. It is about recognition. In moments of great consequence, like the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we saw once again how many women—especially white women, and some Latinas—chose to protect what felt familiar over what was just. Even when their votes compromised their own bodily autonomy, their daughters’ futures, and their communities, the pull of comfort won. That decision did not happen in a vacuum. It is the inheritance of a system that taught many women to seek safety in proximity to male and racial power, rather than to build power in community.

And yet, if we are ever going to build something truly transformative, we have to face this fracture. Not to reopen wounds, but to clean them. To allow them to heal honestly. To make room for the kind of future that cannot be built on quiet complicity.

There are white women doing the work. Quietly, consistently, without needing to be congratulated. They are confronting what they were taught. They are raising children differently. They are divesting from institutions of harm. And still, we need more than the personal. We need the collective. We need courage that shows up in how we vote, how we share power, and how we allow ourselves to be changed by what we learn.

We do not need perfection. We need participation.

The table we are building cannot be one where some of us are fed while others are starved. It cannot hold if the legs beneath it are built on silence. Real unity is not a photo-op. It is a practice. It requires listening that doesn’t center fragility. It requires self-inquiry. And it requires white women, and others who benefit from proximity to dominance, to stop waiting until it’s safe to show up.

To those who are still on the edge, unsure of how to engage without getting it wrong: come anyway. Show up anyway. Reach anyway. Not with defensiveness, but with openness. Not to lead, but to learn. Not to be centered, but to contribute.

We are not asking for shame. We are asking for wholeness. And wholeness cannot be achieved without all of us doing the work to close the distance between us.

This is what reaching looks like, too. And with every hand extended, we refuse the world as it has been. We make space for the world as it could be.

This kind of power does not ask to be televised. It grows like roots. It nourishes what is buried. It refuses to perform for patriarchy. It outlasts whatever is trending. It is not flashy. It is faithful.

I started Simply Edyn & Co. because I needed a place to breathe. A place that felt like home for the kind of care I didn’t see enough of in the world. I wanted to build something that centered H.E.R.—health, education, and rights—but also the earth. A space where women, and anyone who understands the weight and beauty of responsibility, could gather around the idea that our small choices matter. I wanted to believe that picking a tote or a mug or a tee made with intention could be more than just a purchase. That it could be a start. A small shift. A quiet knowing that won’t fold. A ripple that grows when more of us decide we want to live like our choices mean something. Simply Edyn & Co. isn’t just a brand. It’s a promise to live more consciously, more beautifully, more aligned with what matters. And I guess I just wanted to be part of something that reminds people they still have that power. That it’s always been theirs.

At Simply Edyn & Co., that vision lives in every piece we create. The SOOTHE Collection isn’t just a product line. It’s a way of being. A way of remembering. Every item is a quiet affirmation, a reminder that we don’t have to earn our place. We are the place. The center. The ground. The table. We are what the world has been trying to return to.

The We Are the Table design is not fashion. It is a reminder. Printed on fabric that holds you the way we are learning to hold each other. Softly, boldly, without apology. Worn by women who are done shrinking. Carried by those who believe healing can be worn, spoken, and embodied. Not as aesthetic, but as declaration.

This offering is for the woman building new worlds from within her own body. For the one mothering nations without recognition. For the one lighting candles over grief and still finding ways to laugh. For the ones who do not need to be told they matter. They just need space to be.

When we wear it, we remember. When we sip from it, we slow down. When we carry it, we carry more than objects. We carry lineage. We carry intention. We carry each other.

Because healing doesn’t live in theory. It lives in the everyday. In the way we greet each other. In the way we share resources. In the way we forgive, not to forget, but to move. In the way we dare to imagine something better and keep showing up even when we’re tired.

Across the table is not just a phrase. It is a strategy. It is survival. It is sacred.

So let them keep shouting about scarcity. Let the old world crumble on its throne of isolation. We are already building something else. We are already gathering. And what we are making cannot be undone.

We are the table. And now, we are reaching.

And that might just be the beginning of everything.

 

Written by: Tasha Monroe

Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.

Editor & Writer, The Commons Dispatch

This piece is part of The Commons Dispatch.

Twice a month, we sit with the hard stuff that require reflection, resistance, and viewing the world as it actually is. It’s not perfect, but it’s honest. From Simply Edyn & Co., for whoever’s still listening. 

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