I watched “Miss Potter” with my husband the other night and I cried.

“Why on earth are you crying?” he asked me perplexed as I burst into tears when her first book “The Tale of Peter Rabbit ” got published.

“I am just so happy for her!”

If you haven’t seen the show, you should. Forget the “twee” bits and listen to the story of a woman at the turn of the 18-1900s battling for the right to have a purpose in life as an unmarried adult woman. In those days Beatrix’s mother was baffled at the idea that she was a published author and could not understand why every suitor she bought home for her was rejected. Then, at the ripe old age of 32, when she was already a wealthy woman from her own work, she met a man she did want to marry: her publisher. Her parents would not give their permission and insisted on a Summer away to see if the couple’s ardour cooled. I won’t spoil the ending in case you have not seen it, but it was tragic.

Beatrix wanted more for herself. And what she wanted was what we as women take for granted today:  The right to have a career, earn our own money and to not be defined by or marriage status or our fertility.

The truth is that I can relate to her. I kissed many frogs until I happily married my husband at the age of 40. As for children, despite what many have assumed I was not a hardnosed “career woman” who left it too long to try. I couldn’t have my own children for medical reasons. Luckily, I do have two (now grown up) stepsons, five godchildren and four dogs….I have travelled the world unchaperoned. I dive (with sharks), I ski, I play tennis (in very short skirts); I garden. I can even, cuss like a sailor when called to do so, which is why my friends answer my phone calls during the school run with “Alex you are on speakerphone”.

But imagine if I was born in the late 1800s- 1900s. I may not have had the fulfilling career I now have and the freedom to do all of those things. Imagine having your natural talents belittled or suppressed!  I too might have wondered what it meant to be an unmarried, childless adult woman. I may have had my self-confidence so wrapped up in who I was married to and how many children I had produced that I may have felt like no one at all.

Although I would have liked children of my own, I refused to allow my life to be “ruined” by this. I feel like a beautiful, powerful talented woman and my maternal instinct is channeled into my care for my patients and my family. I am so grateful to have had the fabulous life I have now, in this century and country where my identity as a woman is defined by who I am as a person as opposed to my spouse and my children. Unfortunately, there are still women in many countries who are denied an education, the freedom to marry whom they want or indeed to not marry at all. They are even denied agency over whether they wish to have children or not.

I am also grateful to the Miss Potter’s of the world who forged a path for the rest of us.

Happy International Women’ Day to all Women, straight, gay, bisexual, married, unmarried, mothers or childless you are all wonderful and beautiful.