As I write this column, today (March 8) is International Women’s Day.

This day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender equality.

International Women’s Day has occurred for well over a century, with the first March 8 International Women’s Day gathering support by over a million people in countries like Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Now, almost every single nation in the world celebrates it.

So, here’s to you, girls, ladies, women.

Thank you to the Suffragettes, like Susan B. Anthony, who organized in great numbers to prove that women could vote in our elections.

Thank you, Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, who appealed to her presidential husband to protect the rights of women. Her famous line being, “remember the ladies.”

Thank you, Clara Barton, a nurse and humanitarian who started the American Red Cross.

Thank you, Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to New York Congress and later made a bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1972 presidential campaign.

Thank you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for being on the supreme court and sticking up for what you believe to be right and just. And Sandra Day O’Connor for leading the way as the first woman supreme court justice.

Thank you, Helen Keller and Malala Yousafzai, two women who overcame their obstacles to educate other women around the world.

Thank you, Rosa Parks, for refusing to give up your seat on a bus in order to show that equality is absolutely necessary for a progressive world.

Thank you, Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman who worked for birth control and better working conditions for women, as well as a civil rights activist.

Thank you Sally Ride, for being the first (and youngest) woman in space in June of 1983.

Thank you Harriet Beecher Stowe, a writer, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist, who both shed light on the abolitionists’ cause and progressed the rights of women and men freed from slavery.

Thank you, Elizabeth Blackwell, for being the first American woman to receive a medical doctor degree and opening a hospital for women and children. She also co-founded the Women’s Medical College in 1868.

Thank you, Marie Curie, the physicist and first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Thank you, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Nicks, Diana Ross, Cher, Etta James, and so many other female musicians for sharing their talents and lighting the way for new female singers.

Thank you to Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, Mary Cassatt, Elaine Sturtevant for showing us your visual art.

Thank you Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Emily Bronte, Lucille Clifton, Sappho, Margaret Atwood, Mary Oliver and so many other authors for sharing your vulnerability through your words and stories.

Thank you to the women of our historic past. Women like Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Mother Theresa, Catherine the Great, and Anne Frank for shaping who we are.

And thank you to the women of our current world, women like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres, J.K.?Rowling, Queen Elizabeth. Women who show strength in the face of defiance.

Thank you to all of these women, and so, so many more, for showing our daughters that we are capable of doing anything.

I’d also like to personally thank every single woman in my life who has shown me that women are unstoppable. From my mom and my godmother, to my educators, mentors, and bosses, and my amazing friends who are now mothers themselves you have shown me how to succeed.

Women have come a long way. We used to not be able to vote, not be able to have a job, not be able to drive a car, not be able to have a credit card, not be able to even wear dresses that showed our legs!

But we are here. We are strong, and we are more united than we have ever been.

It is important, as women, to empower each other. To lift one another up, and to move forward together.

We still have such a long way to go.?There is still a wage gap, there is still a great imbalance of men and women in our political system, there is still a number of women’s healthcare issues that need to be addressed, there is still a need for progress in the realm of science and technology. And we have proven that we can take on this task.

All while raising a family, keeping a job, and looking cute while doing it.

We’re amazing. Every single one of us. Don’t forget that.