After listening to so many different stories on International Women’s Day, I can’t help but wonder if more and more women feel they’re not part of it.

I say that with the understanding this is not a club membership we need to seek, but rather one granted through the genetic quirk of getting an x chromosome instead of a y.

Increasingly though, I’m feeling like a lot of women aren’t necessarily on the front line of what is needed or, rather, expected, today.

I’m talking about the thousands of women who still don’t have the time, space or privilege to sit back and have the same conversations year on year.

Of course, days like IWD are important to drive change, but I wonder if International Women’s Day almost becomes an overload of inspiration.

There’s the fierceness of Grace Tame, the advocacy of the female politicians, the provocations from thought leaders and business tycoons.

We’re taken into breakfasts and lunches, where speeches are made, clapping is done and rousing women rightly stand and stake their claim on their hard-fought ground.

We hear the facts (still gobsmacking) that it will take an estimated 135.6 years to close the worldwide gender gap and that improving paternity policies and representation of women with help.

We are told (again) that women represent only 26% of parliamentary seats worldwide and in over half of the countries reported on by the World Economic Forum, there has never been a woman head of state.

And, yes, all of this is important to know: it needs to be spoken about.

 I wonder if you felt any guilt like we are expected to feel now and I really hope you didn’t. 

I guess what I recognised this year is that I don’t necessarily see what International Women’s Day means to the average non-celebrated woman.

On these days, what I don’t see, are people like my mum.

So, indulge me if you will, as I use my voice to do that now, not in the realm of self-indulgence, but more in the hope of recognising others who might not have been introduced onto a stage on Tuesday.

Mum I wish you had a better life. A life with more laughter, more rest and less work. 

A softer life, one of pampering, one where you knew to take care of and treat yourself, a life surrounded by friends and family.  

But, from the moment you walked away from my birth father with me as a toddler in your arms because he apparently liked a drink, you got me here.

It’s only now I realise how hard that must have been … the only daughter of loving, but unaffectionate parents. 

The only sister of two, high performing, ‘perfect’ brothers.

 I can only imagine your fear and embarrassment, turning up on my grandparents’ doorstep asking to stay, suddenly a single parent in a time when the expectation was for women to just put up and shut up.

So you did what you could, which was work hard. 

I grew up in childcare from 8 in the morning until 6 at night as you dedicated yourself to the public service.

 I wonder if you felt any guilt like we are expected to feel now and I really hope you didn’t. 

It was something you had to do to pay the bills, but more importantly, I hope you can feel Ok if you wanted to do it, so you could build up your confidence and life again.

You married the boss – probably something that would be frowned upon today – and along came my brother Nic. 

Now you’re mum to someone with an intellectual disability, again at a time when the way society dealt with that, was to ignore him and leave him to you.

Family members said to put him in a home, friends dropped away and you and dad had to work through how to give me a life away from the awesome blessings, but tiring challenges, he can bring. 

You have always lived your life for us kids. 

Everything you do has been for us, and now for your grandchildren. 

I just wish you’d sometimes stop to take breath.

One of my most cherished moments was taking you away for your fiftieth birthday to a retreat and watching you get massages, sit by the pool and nearly fall over trying yoga for the first time ever.

You finally retired from the phones at Centrelink at the age of 72 and together with dad are full-time carers. 

I know now that work was an important release from the day in day out of medication, sunscreen, dressing, showering, feeding and medical appointments.

I just wish that release had been wine in the sun, feet in the sand or sleep-ins.   

International Women’s Day so often focuses on the recognised inspirational: those who go above and beyond in sport, politics, community service or whatever.

Mum, I sometimes think though, we should take a moment to look around at those who quietly exist, who without complaint nor fear, just get on with the life they have.

Those people who, whilst doing that, set the standard and become an important figure in even one person’s life. 

Because mum … you are all of that to me. 

I’d say happy International Women’s Day but to you, and so many others, it’s just another and I’m so proud of you for that.

Ali Clarke presents the breakfast show on Mix 102.3. She will be a regular columnist for InDaily this year.