Tell the Story
Her 225th birthday was last week, February 23. Until yesterday, I had never heard of her. In 1821, Emma Hart Willard founded the first women’s school for higher education in the United States. I face a computer screen, surrounded by books accumulated over my lifetime, and I risk forgetting that women like Emma Hart […]
read moreAccording to the National Women’s History Project, the theme for 2012’s Women’s History Month is Women’s Education–Women’s Empowerment. We learn through formal education and books. Quilting circles and whispered details. Mothers running beside our bicycles in the alley behind the house and parallel parking twenty times in the street. Friends making sourdough bread and wrapping […]
read moreI picked at my scrambled eggs and cantaloupe this morning as I watched her sitting at a nearby table, tapping on her phone. Last fall we’d met at another fundraiser. We were both team leaders, and she and her team were the top money-raisers. Then, as today, she looked beautiful, strong, and self-assured. She stood to […]
read moreAt night my mother opened a chest and took out her white silk wedding slippers. Then she daubed them a long time with ink. Early in the morning she went in those slippers to the street to line up for bread. It was ten degrees, […]
read moreI couldn’t believe it. Even the Violence Against Women Act is facing opposition? Seeking comfort, I opened a book, only to find Thomas Merton asking, “Will there never be any peace on earth in our lifetime? Will they never do anything but kill, and then kill some more? Apparently they are caught in that impasse: the […]
read more
For years I kept secrets in silence. Then, once upon a time, I spoke and wrote them to a handful of people and began to blog anonymously. Today I tell my stories face-to-face, online, and in a memoir coming soon. Telling our stories leads to freedom, empowerment, and growth, for both the teller and the told. Is today your once upon a time, your time to tell your story?
