Amy BoughnerSometimes you hear something, and it goes with a story and it just means something. It resonates.
“She was warned, she was given and explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”
In all the crap I’ve waded through over the 36 years I’ve been alive – much of which I have brought on myself – I have, sometimes better than others, persisted.
Most women, in fact, have been forced to persist in the face of rules and warnings that were made to silence them.
I bought the kid a book about female scientists and while we read each page there is usually a line about how this scientist had to fight to do her work because she wasn’t allowed to go to university, or this woman had to flee because she was Jewish in Germany, or this scientist didn’t have her achievements recognized until after she was dead because she was a woman.
Women throughout history have persisted.
My lord have they persisted, and they still are in the face of all the abuse thrown at them – both in actions and words. Do white men out there realize how hard it is to persist? I know white women have only the faintest inkling of what it is like to be black woman or a Muslim. (And that many white women don’t acknowledge the extra weight of those extra identities – for that I can only be apologetic).
Women continue to persist, and the best thing I can do is be by their side, holding them up, speaking out when I can, listening and hearing, persisting myself.
And now I have a permanent reminder of the weight that I carry, the weight that my daughter will carry, for as long as we need to.