By Tabitha Bozeman
Well, that’s a wrap on March, 2026 — Women’s History Month. March offered an opportunity to look back at women who contributed in the past to the world we live in now, and to consider the women in our own lives who have made an impact on us. But now we are looking forward, and spring is in full force. This week, spiderwort, irises, wild violets, fleabane, azaleas, and more have absolutely burst into bloom in my yard, reminding me that looking back is necessary and important, but history isn’t only in the past. We are living and witnessing women making a difference, creating history, in the present, as it unfolds in our homes, schools, workplaces, and communities. Often, the everyday moments we take for granted are shaping the history of those around us.
This Sunday is Easter, a time many reflect on historical and biblical events, and I remember as a child always being fascinated with the women in the Easter stories because they showed up when others avoided, they knew and expected grief and the discomfort of loss, and they were willing to bear witness to suffering. They showed up to work, to care, to help close one chapter and write the beginning of the next. They became the story-tellers, the meaning-makers. Where it looked like their narrative was ending, they found continuity and an opportunity to create a future.
This spring has been full of new chapters for me. This Easter, I will be holding my new granddaughter. My first child has become a parent. My first daughter is driving. My second daughter is about to start her last year in middle school. My youngest daughter is finishing elementary school. I am moving into the next phase of life, and I expected it to be full of loss and grief and discomfort, but each day I find new opportunities to shape my story, to make new meaning, and to explore how my own children are moving into their futures. Each generation inherits limitations and possibilities — supporting them as they explore these is much more of an adventure than I’d ever expected.
Most of the time, we don’t recognize the moments in our lives as we move from one chapter into the next — we are just busy with the everydayness of showing up and getting things done. But I took some time this week to pay attention to my everydayness, the and what it says about where I am in life. This week, I bore witness to my children moving into their futures. I watched my son and his fiancee care for their newborn with the utmost attention and love. I let my 16-year-old drive herself to work in my car (it was simultaneously a proud and terrifying experience). I have observed my middle schooler craft and care for new friendships. I have both comforted and celebrated my youngest as she navigates difficult social situations. I have sat with each of them in the discomfort of change, borne witness to their growth, and championed their futures. I have also considered my own narrative and lived experiences, examined how I internally frame them, and have made adjustments. Spring isn’t only about looking back and celebrating history, it’s also about looking forward to growth and change.
Throughout literature, women are often the time-keepers, the story-tellers, and the meaning-makers. Some of my favorite writers, Ursula K LeGuin, Lois Lowery, Margaret Atwood, and Madeleine L’Engle, crafted women who are not only in stories, but who actively shape the stories’ meaning. In LeGuin’s The Tombs of Atuan, the narrator develops from a young child with no agency over her life, to the keeper of stories, to the creator of new narratives. In Lois Lowry’s Gathering Blue, the main character is trained to trace and track the stories and history of the community through her art, preserving what needs to be remembered, realizing as she does so that details are being left out, and eventually choosing to create new narratives for the future. Margaret Atwood continuously gives us women who survive, record, and shape history and narratives. In Handmaid’s Tale, the main character uses story-telling as both survival and resistance, preserving the past and narrating for a future reader. The Blind Assassin, the main character is a woman who tells stories to help restore meaning after a long silence. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, three women function much like the women at the tomb in the Easter story: they bear witness, share the knowledge of the past, and help make sense of the events as they unfold. Over and over again in history and in literature, women function as time-keepers, story-tellers, and meaning-makers.
This spring, as I watch my son parent my new granddaughter, and witness my daughters moving forward in their lives, I remember that women not only inherit the stories of the past, we also create the narratives of the future. Because of this, the narratives we tell ourselves about our lives and timelines and relationships matter — words have power, stories create reality, and the future is created one moment of showing up after another. What we might first see as discomfort, grief, or ending often offers opportunity to imagine possibility and craft new narratives, reminding ourselves as Kira does in Gathering Blue, that we can “fill the future with something better.”
