Women's Libbers

I have an amazing new friend - she's both an artist and a writer - and every night of the week she's off at a book club or writer's group or yoga class. Often she lets me tag along.

Tonight it was a lecture by a local historian who wrote a book on the women's rights movement. Not just Susan B. Anthony about whom I did a middle school project, complete with period dress and dramatic monologue. But also Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Moss. (Remember the suffragettes in Mary Poppins? How Mrs. Banks had the ladies over to make banners and march around the kitchen? Until tonight, this was the bulk of my knowledge re: the women's suffrage.)

I was fascinated to learn it was their strong opposition to slavery that actually brought the leaders of the suffrage movement together. It took them many years to realize they, too, were enslaved.

How glad I am that I didn't make my headache an excuse to skip the lecture! It made me think of all the strong women in my life who make tough decisions, take lonely stands and make me proud to be a girl.