MY RESISTANT WOMEN

 

Women of silence, of care, of light.

They live in the French countryside, far from the spotlight, far from the noise. They make no demands. They embody. They are mothers, shepherds, healers, educators, gardeners of the soul. They hold firm, in a world that sometimes forgets what keeps it standing.

This is a crossing. A slow walk through hedgerows, valleys, and hamlets. Each portrait is an encounter. A rooted life. A gentle resistance.

Because in the folds of rural France, there are women who bless the world in silence.

 

 THE HAUT-LIMOUSIN

Land of silence and memory

Élisabeth lives in the Haut-Limousin, in the north of Haute-Vienne, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It is a land of hedgerows, clear springs, deep forests, and gentle hills. Here, stones carry legends, paths smell of moss, and villages seem suspended in time.

The Haut-Limousin is also:

  • The Monts de Blond, where morning mist wraps around beeches and oaks

  • Meadows with robust, peaceful Limousin cows

  • Characterful villages like Le Dorat and Bellac, with Romanesque churches and ancient markets

  • Sensory hiking trails, where one walks to listen, to feel, to slow down

  • A land of water, crossed by the Gartempe and bordered by secret ponds

It is a sparsely populated region (fewer than 30,000 inhabitants across 1,500 km²), where rural life is not nostalgia it is a way of living. The people are discreet, but loyal. The nature is harsh, but generous.

 

 ÉLISABETH

A life rooted in the Haut-Limousin (1963–2025)

Élisabeth was born in 1963 on a farm near Saint-Sornin-Leulac. Her childhood was shaped by the seasons, calving, Sunday mass, and evening silences. She learned to read in a village school heated by a wood stove. She learned to pray by watching her mother pick beans.

In the 1980s, she settled with her husband on a remote farm between Blond and Châteauponsac. A stone house, a slate roof, poor but living soil. She had three children. Then, in 1998, she found herself alone.

 

 The Farm as Sanctuary

It was there, in the soil of the Haut-Limousin, that Élisabeth turned her farm into a refuge. She welcomed bruised children, troubled teenagers, educators searching for meaning. She never put up a sign. But those who needed to come… found the way.

Animals became mediators. Simple gestures—feeding, stroking, waiting—became acts of care. And the land, with its silences and scents, became a space for healing.

 

 A Rooted Faith

In this region where granite crosses line the paths, Élisabeth lives her faith like breathing. She doesn’t speak of religion. She speaks of light. She blesses her animals. She prays for those who suffer. She thanks the rain, even when it ruins the hay.

 

 A Gentle Resistance

In the Haut-Limousin, there is no noise. There is endurance. Élisabeth resisted rejection, regulations, judgment. She kept going. She persisted.

Today, in 2025, she is 62. She passes on. She blesses. She sometimes writes, in a notebook she keeps by her bed.