The Mother-Lode: Memory During Women’s History Month
On March 7, our family joined with women and a few good men to celebrate International Women’s Day in Harrisonburg.
Image credit: International Women’s Day Harrisonburg
Image credit: International Women’s Day Harrisonburg
The Rocktown Raging Grannies. Image credit: International Women’s Day Harrisonburg
It was one of the most hopeful things I’ve experienced in years— gathering to celebrate women, hear stories from a diverse group with years of resilience and wisdom, listen to songs, poems, essays and prayers, and hear cries for justice in an intergenerational space. I will never forget the Rocktown Raging Grannies leading us to sing (to the tune of Battlefield of the Republic): “We refuse to raise our children to be fodder for men’s wars, for women’s time has come.”
The most special thing about the event was that Elisa and I were invited to write an intergenerational, collaborative poem and perform it together.
Image credit: Sherry Tyger
Image credit: Maya Sable
The theme of this year’s event was “Give to gain,” and we had passed the laptop back and forth responding to each other’s wishes about what we wanted for one another and together:
Blackberries Sin Brambles: A Dream for International Women’s Day in Two Voices
Last night, I dreamed a feast for you:
baklava, flan, mangoes peeled by soft brown
hands that got to grow old, sticky rice with coconut,
caldo steaming for whatever might ail you.
When you were small, my blood bloomed into rumors
of these platters passed around. Now, I clear a place
for you to reach into the middle, brush arms with tias, hermanas, and me.
Last night, I dreamed a protest with you:
signs and posters of hearts poured out,
saying, “No one is illegal on this stolen land,” and,
“We can be the change,”
arm linked in arm, hand held in hand,
as we marched together for what was unfair.
and we had a voice
because it was many voices
forming a movement.
Movement is what I dream for you. Steady feet, dancing hips,
Your friends in a field with blackberries sin brambles.
I want you to gather where there is no barbed wire
to cackle like jaybirds. I want you to forget about men vs bears,
tears in the fabric of our city. I want you to make passion plays
instead of posters,
signs and posters of hearts poured out.
I want to rest with you: relax
after protests
and parties—
maintain a connection even as I grow—
nail salons and coffee shops,
picnics and walking through parks—
boardwalks and Broadway,
even a sunny afternoon in the garden:
the small things that bring us together.
You are the best thing I give to this weary
world. I’d be terrified except for the women—
women who’ll hold you, who’ll hold your eyes
and hands and hopes, who will pass you plates
and broken bread and broken hearts
made into stained glass windows.
Generation after generation,
we keep the cycle going
of soft hands that got to grow old
and steady feet and dancing hips
but hopefully,
as this weary world goes on
the cycle changes
but never breaks.
I wrote, “I’d be terrified except for the women,” and I mean every word.
For Women’s History Month, I want to name and remember the women who shaped my faith journey, who give me a measure of comfort and hope that regular women can walk with a young woman like my thirteen-year-old I’m sending out into a war-torn world.
My abuela Maria Sergia had a third-grade education and ten children. She raised all of them to adulthood, gifting them with the names of the saints of the days on which they were born. She gave my father the name Andres, Andrew, the first called disciple of Jesus.
My tia Gledy has prayed for our family for years, took me to Argentina as a teenager where I walked on the same stones as the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo.
My grandmother Bonnie’s parents didn’t attend her own wedding because she was a Methodist marrying a Catholic. She has a quick wit, tremendous grit (played softball until she was 83), and has always reminded me that faith doesn’t have to be frilly or high-brow to matter.
My mom Debbie baptized me as a baby in the bathtub at 6 weeks old. She had left behind the damaging Catholicism of her childhood and teen years, but still wanted me to have a religious heritage. She gifted me thousands of books, curiosity and compassion, an openness to the world, and a healthy skepticism about the US government :)
My best friend Marissa’s mom Mary Beth took me to church with them from the time I was nine-year’s old. She led our Student Venture Bible studies, took us to youth group and youth conferences, and cheered for all of our extracurriculars. We are currently estranged because of Christian nationalism and Zionism, and it grieves me. This women’s history month, I want to lay claim to the goodness she began in me.
Miss Netta was my Sunday school teacher. She prepared me for my baptism, taught me Bible stories, and was the first woman outside my family to teach me about Jesus.
Tara was our high school youth leader. She had lost her own best friend to an asthma attack as a high schooler. She taught us to make paper stars in honor of that friend, taught us how to read Scripture, and how to pray.
Shannon was our pastor’s wife at our tiny church plant that met at a movie theater during my high school and college years. She was never just a pastor’s wife, and was the first example I saw of vibrant co-leadership, community building, and parenting young children while ministering to others.
In college, Christine was our campus pastor. She was the first female pastor I saw leading large groups of people, and she preached at our university chapels. She once preached about hope and handed every single student in attendance a green helium balloon to tie to our backpacks. The campus was filled with dozens of green balloons bobbing all day.
Laurie was my favorite education professor. She was funny, smart and a passionate leader. She taught me to love teaching, to manage a classroom, and to plan with creativity and excellence.
Kellie runs Sabaoth Ministries and Basecamp in Grand Rapids where I did my work-study for several years in college. She was a single woman who parented hundreds of inner-city kids at the afterschool program she ran, and she was my first and best model of neighborhood ministry that provided for spiritual, physical, and educational needs while training up young people.
As I began the phase of my life where I was teaching, beginning our family, and raising small children, women still held and herded me.
Kristen prayed for me at work and told me her hope as a language arts teacher was that kids could read Scripture on their own and be able to write a love letter to someone they cared about. She was honest about the cost of ministry on their family. Carol was a spiritual mother and taught me about discipleship, multiplication, and mission. Bethany, Renee, Karmen, Julie, Kathleen— they all provided accountability, space to wrestle with questions about faith, and enduring friendship.
Sanaa was the Iraqi mom of one of my former students who fed me and Elisa when I stopped working and was desperately lonely. She made me cups of hot sweet tea, put on Arabic Idol music competition for our entertainment, and always answered the door. Tsebelmariam spoke little English and introduced our family to the whole Eritrean community in our neighborhood. When I struggled with postpartum depression, she told me to have faith and trust God, and it didn’t annoy me, because she had lived many lives before saying those words.
Ashley is the single mama of four who struggles with life’s ups and downs and yet brought our kids little gifts during the pandemic when even church friends were absent. Rachael and Janelle let me sit on their couches when I was afraid to be alone at home with my debilitating anxiety for months. Holly sat with me and played worship music over me while I sobbed in a psychiatric ER room begging them for something to help me sleep.
I would miss someone if I started to name all of the women from our church, our community, my family, and my friends who inspire me, steady me, listen to me, laugh with me, challenge me, and commiserate with me as we work and love in a world being destroyed by small men with big pockets. I have been gifted an embarrassment of feminine riches— a mother-lode, if you will.
This doesn’t even include the living women of color who have been my teachers from afar: Sandra VanOpstal, Kat Armas, Latasha Morrison, Cole Riley, Austin Channing Brown, Camille Dungy, Priya Parker, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kaitlin Curtice… What. A. Time. to be alive to learn.
This women’s history month, I invite you to trace the lines of women who have sketched your faith into what it is today. And, I invite us all to think about what we want to give to our young women who are sitting in our services, our classrooms, and our kitchens. What treasures can we offer them, even if our hands tremble?
As a bonus March recommendation, I can’t say enough about the book Feminist Prayers for My Daughter: Powerful Petitions for Every Stage of Her Life by Shannon K. Evans. My dear friend Tessa gifted this to me, and even the table of contents makes me cry. I’d recommend it to anyone loving and leading girls and women.
