Stitched Together

March always feels a little different.

Maybe it’s the early hints of spring, the way the light starts staying a little longer in the evening. Or maybe it’s the quiet reminder that this month is about the women who shaped the world before we ever stepped into it.

Women’s History Month isn’t just about the famous names in textbooks. It’s about the women who shaped us in smaller, quieter ways.

a stack of patchwork quilts

The ones who showed us what strength looks like in everyday life.

For me, the women who shaped my story weren’t standing behind podiums or giving speeches. They were in kitchens, living rooms, church pews, and front porches. They were women who knew how to carry both grace and grit.

They believed in showing up.

They believed in speaking their mind when it mattered.

And they believed that even when life didn’t go the way you planned, you still kept going.

Those women taught me something powerful without ever turning it into a lecture.

They taught me that strength doesn’t always look loud.

Sometimes it looks like patience.

Sometimes it looks like resilience.

Sometimes it looks like a woman quietly deciding that other people’s expectations will not define her life.

Leslie is presenting at a conference

One of my favorite examples of that has always been quilts.

Every quilt block is its own little piece of history. A scrap from an old dress. A piece of a shirt someone wore every Sunday. Something that once lived in another moment, another season of life.

By itself, each block is small.

But when you stitch those blocks together, something bigger begins to take shape.

And when I think about the women who shaped my life, that’s exactly what it feels like. Each woman is her own block in the quilt of my story. Each one carries something different: wisdom, courage, humor, faith, and stubborn determination.

Hollyn, Leslie, and Dana are laughing while on a panel

And when you step back and look at the whole quilt, you realize none of those blocks stand alone.

They connect.

As someone who now speaks about supported decision-making, I think about those lessons often. The women in my life believed deeply in having a voice, even when the world didn’t always make space for it.

They believed that a woman’s life should be her own.

That belief shaped me long before I ever had the language for advocacy.

Now, when I stand in front of a room or write a story for Sassy Frass with Class, I know that my voice didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was built piece by piece by the women who came before me.

Women who were strong.

Women who were stubborn when they needed to be.

Women who believed that dignity and choice mattered.

And now, when I walk into advocacy spaces, I see that same spirit alive in the women standing beside me.

Elisha and Hollyn are presenting on a panel

Women who speak at conferences, organize communities, mentor young advocates, and push conversations forward that didn’t exist a generation ago.

Women who show up in rooms where decisions are made and remind the world that choice and voice matter.

In disability advocacy spaces, you notice something pretty quickly.

Many of the strongest voices belong to women.

Women who keep speaking even when the systems around them weren’t built to hear them.

Women who challenge policies that limit people’s ability to shape their own lives.

Women who mentor the next generation and say, “Your voice belongs here.”

Women who keep pushing forward, even when change comes slowly.

Those moments may never make the history books.

But they are shaping the future.

Dana and Grace are presenting

So this Women’s History Month, I’m not just thinking about the famous names.

I’m thinking about the women whose history lives quietly inside the rest of us.

The ones who raised us.

The ones who encouraged us.

The ones who now sit beside us in advocacy spaces, continuing the work.

And maybe that’s the real beauty of it.

When you step back and look at the whole picture, you realize something important.

Every woman’s story is its own block.

But when those stories are stitched together across generations, across communities, across advocacy spaces, they become something bigger than any one life.

Dana, Katie, leslie, and Elisha are practicing before our presentation

They become the quilt of women’s history itself.

And if there’s one thing those women taught me, it’s this:

A woman’s voice matters.

And once she finds it, the world gets a little harder to ignore.

Because when women step into that voice, history doesn’t just remember them.

It changes because of them.