My Five Women of Wonder: International Women's Day Bonus Post

IWD- Daisy Chain Flower Crown

Happy International Women’s Day! I had not heard of the holiday until I traveled to Vietnam, I was surprised how big a deal it was. Women were receiving flowers and gifts, some husbands were taking over household chores for the day. We don’t do much, if anything, to celebrate here in the US. However,

Claire Venus

,

Lauren Barber

and others suggested some fun writing prompts, so I thought I’d join in. The five women I would want to sit in circle with/eat dinner with/hang out with were definitely heavily influenced by some amazing historical fiction, so I’ll share those works as well. 

Without further ado…

My Five Women of Wonder: 

1. St. Hildegard von Bingen: As the patron saint of women physicians, this may seem like an obvious choice, but there is so much more that makes Hildegard amazing. She was a Catholic mystic who started having visions at the age of 3, an herbalist whose work still influences German herbalism today, and a songwriter. Hildegard was also a major badass who challenged an emperor who supported three antipopes, and even challenged the church itself. She allowed a boy who had been excommunicated to be buried at her convent and because of that her convent was placed under interdict (a ban on receiving sacraments). Hildegard had to wait nearly a millennium to come back into the church’s good graces, becoming a saint in 2012. 

   

2. Susan B. Anthony: At one point, Twitter managed to convince me that Susan B. Anthony was a “problematic white feminist”. In my very first divination, I learned that she was someone from whom I had a great deal to learn (so far mainly about when and how to use my voice and challenge the status quo). As a young woman, she became a teacher, but over the course of ten years of professional life, she felt compelled to speak out for justice. Her family was friends with Frederick Douglass and she became a powerful speaker both for abolition and women’s rights. Her friendship with Douglass was strained because he favored the incremental change of pushing for the right of black men to vote, while excluding voting rights for black and white women, which Anthony favored holding out until they could achieve voting rights for all. I can certainly see both sides to that argument. She made economic and political rights for women a lifelong quest, intentionally forgoing married life for her work. 

   

   Boudica: So, admittedly, I first learned about Boudica when I was looking for names to tell my mom that I was going to name my daughter. I thought the name was both unusual in modern times and leant itself to some unfortunate nicknames, so it seemed like a good place to start scandalizing her. After that, though I learned that she was a warrior par excellence who led Celtic tribes against the Roman army, organizing an army estimated to be 120,000 people, and conquering Londinium and two other major settlements before facing defeat at the hands of the Roman army. This speech was attributed to Boudica by Cassius Dio: 

Have we not been robbed entirely of most of our possessions, and those the greatest, while for those that remain we pay taxes? Besides pasturing and tilling for them all our other possessions, do we not pay a yearly tribute for our very bodies? How much better it would be to have been sold to masters once for all than, possessing empty titles of freedom, to have to ransom ourselves every year! How much better to have been slain and to have perished than to go about with a tax on our heads!... Among the rest of mankind death frees even those who are in slavery to others; only in the case of the Romans do the very dead remain alive for their profit. Why is it that, though none of us has any money (how, indeed, could we, or where would we get it?), we are stripped and despoiled like a murderer's victims? And why should the Romans be expected to display moderation as time goes on, when they have behaved toward us in this fashion at the very outset, when all men show consideration even for the beasts they have newly captured?

4. Grandma McDermott: My great-great grandmother was the daughter of parents who immigrated during the potato famine. She was a homesteader in Iowa and a renowned horsewoman who had her own herd of 17 horses. She was divorced in a time where that was “not done”. She was known to her grandchildren as a big personality, a storyteller, and a card player. I’d like to sit down with her because I view her as the bridge between my ancestors who have been lost in the memories of the living and my relations who are alive today. I would also like to meet her because she was an adventurer, a great storyteller, and because I like to see a bit of myself in her. 

My great-great-grandmother Mary McDermott, with my grandparents and my uncle

5. Robin Wall Kimmerer: My favorite author (who I wish would write more books), Kimmerer is a mother, professor of botany, and member of the Potawatomi nation. She combines the scientific and spiritual aspects of plants to create even more awe than you could using only one of those methods. Her poetic writing about plants and motherhood in Braiding Sweetgrass was the best parenting book I read and it’s not even supposed to be about parents. 

Honorable Mention: Brigid of Kildare, Mary Magdalene, Louise Erdrich, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Pat McCabe, Beyonce, Languoreth (she is believed to be the sister of historical Merlin and a Scottish queen in her own right)

• Who would you invite to your circle? 

• Are you celebrating International Women’s Day? If so, how?