Today's prompt -- or rather, yesterday's prompt that I'm doing today due to sickness, is "strength." I'll need to slog this coming Sunday to make up the shortfall.

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Monday was International Women's Day and over and over again, we're rocked by stories of women disappearing, being assaulted, being scared of being in public spaces due to the ill-treatment by their male counterparts, women being disbelieved in clinics and hospitals only to have their diagnoses confirmed when it is too late, women facing racism, gender-based hatred, and classism.

Women being deprived of awards and chances by organisations that are old boys' clubs in practice.

While these have been reduced, these still go on and we can never say that they're things of the past if they still go on.

But I want to highlight the strength of the women who, having fled persecution in the lands of their birth, travel from one end of the world to another, not knowing what they will face.

They have talents and gifts and so much strength to give to their host countries, but instead they are branded "leeches" and "lazy" people who will also, paradoxically, "take away (the) jobs (of the people of the host country)."

They spend years being prevented from working and advancing, while their counterparts, who have always known freedom, get to advance. When they are assaulted, suffer traumatic attacks from torture, or fall sick, they are nearly never believed.

Age catches up with the asylum seeker women, and before long, they are treated as used goods because of their age.

One knows not where we find the strength to live.

The title, "the undying crown," is very poignant to me, and doubtless will be a poignant reminder for many of these women, because we don't have anyone who will celebrate our talents and our infinite potential. On the off chance that we are emancipated, we won't have songs written about us, stories written about us, awards given to us for the boundaries we broke with our craft. Nothing. We fled having nothing, and unless some stroke of luck happens, we will have nothing. The only thing we can hope for is the crown of the afterlife, the crown that will never, ever die.

And that is all I have left to hope for.

Please don't wish me a happy International Women's Day. Ever. Instead, start acting to change things for the better, especially for the women in your lives. If they're living good lives, look outward, and help the women out there who still continue to suffer. Turn your worry, your concern, your sadness, your pity, your compassion, your anger, into unstoppable power. That is the least you could do on that day.