When Benita started her new job on Monday, August 8, the post had been shared 150 times. By Tuesday, it was national news. It can take weeks or even months before everyone at work meets a new hire. Not Benita in Network Development!

“When I told my boss what was happening, she was totally cool,” Benita says. “The post showed how excited I was about the new job.” The appropriate higher-ups were informed about the post, but Benita didn’t tell the rest of her co-workers. The mainstream media took care of that. By the end of the week, she’d been featured on Good Morning America, ABC News, CNN, Buzzfeed, Forbes.com, On Air with Ryan Seacrest, and more. On her fourth or fifth day on the job, someone printed Benita’s oceanside engagement photo and playfully hung it outside her cubicle. The ice was officially broken.

Benita’s tale of triumph after unemployment resonated with strangers of all demographics, ages, and races. Women from across the U.S. and then around the world began sharing their own stories and thanking her for the encouragement. A few even said the engagement announcement rivaled their own.

“Sometimes you feel alone in what you’re going through or the way you think,” Benita says. “But this experience made me realize that I have a voice and people can relate.” It was easy to laugh off the few haters, mostly men, who poked fun at her weight or ethnicity and the idiots offering dick pics and some time with a real man.

As a 37-year-old Indian-American woman, Benita’s been asked when she’s going to get married and have children by concerned family members for oh, decades. Co-opting the traditional engagement announcement to celebrate a career milestone was undeniably feminist. Then there was #notjustforbabiesmarriagesandbirthdays, a call to unabashedly celebrate other big life moments.