Taking a Deeper Breath

Women's History Month 2021 ends today. As with Black History Month, I pray that someday soon we won't need a special month to call attention to the  contributions made by people other than White males; I hope that we will see them as part of our history, period. And that we will read about them in our history books and celebrate them all year long.  In the meantime, where even to begin? There are so many great women to recognize. So many who have been profiled this month. Here are a few great women -- some famous, some not so well known -- who have been uppermost in my mind lately. 

It has been a year now since the United States began to lock down, and almost exactly a year since I began the daily "pandemic uplift" e-mails that later became this blog.  It has been a catastrophic year by any measure. No community has been left untouched by COVID-19. Many, including BIPOC communities, immigrants and refugees, and essential workers -- among whom there may be substantial overlap -- have been especially hard hit. Here in the U.S., over 530,000 of our siblings have died, and the death toll continues to climb. This is a solemn anniversary, indeed.  It has been more than a year, as well, since the brutal murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Tomorrow will also mark one year since Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by Louisville police after they forced entry into her apartment. So much pain and grief was unleashed by these senseless killings, and magnified by the killing of George Floyd, the paralyzing of Jacob Blake, and so many other assaults upon Black bodies.  We continu