Sitting in a Pretoria, South Africa, courtroom every single day, just feet from the man who murdered her beautiful and smart 29-year-old daughter, Reeva, June Steenkamp is hoping to learn the real circumstances of the death.

“I look at Oscar [Pistorius] the whole time, to see how he is coping, how he is behaving. I’m obsessed with looking at him. It’s just instinctive. I can’t explain it,” said 67-year-old June.

She doesn’t have to explain a thing. Any mother understands what is motivating June. Losing a daughter is the most horrific thing that can happen to a woman. “I think he has to see me, the mother, the person who gave birth to her, that he’s taken that away,” June said. “That’s what I want to see, that’s why I want to look in his face and he must look in mine. He must see now that I am there for justice for Reeva, no matter what happened, and the truth, obviously, which we don’t know we’ll ever get. But I hope for that.”

June has seen countless photos of the bloody crime scene and her daughter’s catastrophic head wound. She’s watched Oscar’s hysterical crying and retching. Through it all, one question haunts her, she says. Is he acting? Did he indeed think an intruder was in his bathroom, as he’s repeatedly claimed, or did he know it was Reeva, go into a rage and kill her?

June says Reeva told her she and Oscar were arguing frequently in the weeks before her death, and that she was afraid of being with him. We’ve read e-mail exchanges confirming this. We’ve heard Oscar was a jealous, hot-tempered man and once even berated Reeva for talking to another man for too long. If I were June, I couldn’t help but think he was guilty.

June is a special woman. “I’ve lost everything that’s important to me,” she said, “but, still, I can forgive. I’m being strong for Reeva. I have to be there. It’s hard for me to do it, but I’m representing my child. I’m there for her, as much as it’s hell for me, I know that I have to be there. I’m not a person who wants to punish him. I want my daughter back, but it’s never going to happen.”

Since their daughter’s murder, the Steenkamp’s have moved to a quiet village, where June opened a pub and her husband, Barry, is training horses.

For her fortitude, June Steenkamp is FOF Woman of the Week. We hope she finds the peace she deserves.

The church hasn’t always looked kindly at Sister Judy, a 68-year-old feminist nun, whose activism has ruffled more than a few feathers, and on more than one occasion. But even if the rules of the Catholic Church sometimes restricted her, the Sister’s commitment to God remained true and she recently celebrated her 50th anniversary as a Catholic nun.

Sister Judy’s Catholic upbringing in Los Angeles left her with three career choices when she graduated high school: Become a nurse or a teacher, or join the convent. She chose the third, making her vows months after graduating from St. Mary’s Academy High in the early 60s, at the height of the civil rights marches, antiwar protests, and emerging second wave of feminism.

Sister Judy joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and graduated from Mount St. Mary’s college in 1968 with a major in sociology and a minor in psychology, before she earned her master’s degree in sociology from San Diego State University and doctorate in social ethics from the University of Chicago. Grasping the momentous social and political movements around her, Sister Judy began to challenge the church, declaring that abortion could be a moral choice. After she became the director of House of Ruth, a homeless shelter for women in East L.A., the L.A. Archdiocese was so upset by her defiance it forbid Catholic social workers from referring women to her and House of Ruth.

For the last 18 years, Sister Judy has been running Alexandria House in L.A., a transitional center for homeless women and children, which she considers her most important project.

She continues her work as a nun and as an activist and is raising her adopted daughter, now a teenager. Her commitment to her beliefs and her years of helping women make her the FOF Woman of the Week.