Thank You Thursdays: Feminist Legacies

We’re going to be taking the day off next week at this time, for one big serious Thank You Thursday (i.e. Thanksgiving), so I wanted to take this time to reflect on my own feminist legacy that I am so deeply grateful for. Feel free to write your own…
Thank you for the centuries of women who have listened to their own deep wisdom, even when society in various sexist forms tried to drown out their innate knowing.
Thank you for my grandmothers, Maryanne (pictured on the right) and Joan. Thank you for giving me the chance to live out some of Maryanne’s unlived dreams and for the special time I had with Joan, her opening and softening and joyful nature.
Thank you for my mother, who is a fierce and rare mix of nurturing and fearless, brilliant and emotional, invested in both radical honesty and wise serenity. Thank you for the gifts she’s given the world, including The Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival and my feminist brother.
Thank you for Lesline, her certainty and resilience in every situation, her capacity to raise four amazing children with less support than she deserved, her laughter and her accent, and her tender, tender care for my partner.
Thank you for all of my amazing mentors–both older and younger. Thank you for the opportunity to mentor others.
Thank you for the opportunity to write and speak with an authentic voice. Thank you to the women who created institutions and structures (women’s studies programs, feminist nonprofits, alternative media) by which I could be a professional feminist and still pay my rent.
Thank you for my amazing friends who help people every day–the social workers, the teachers and tutors, the comedians, the writers, the artists, the doctors, the nurses, the community organizers, the activists.
And last but not least, thank you for feministing, my community of hilarious, real, smart, dedicated feminist friends, the platform it gives all of us to change the world, end suffering, build community, and its indistinguishable capacity to inspire.