50,000 people.

This is the number of people executed across Europe for witchcraft. At least 80% were women. The witch hunts were a clash of power structures, legal developments, and religious fear, spurred on by a popular text in 1486 Malleus Maleficarum, translated as Hammer of Witches, which detailed how to identify those who practice sorcery, and provided a legal blueprint for identifying, torturing, and prosecuting those who consort actively with the devil. The text states clearly that witches were more often women than men. They are more easily tempted by the devil, you see.

During the Early Modern period, they republished the Malleus 26 times, used heavily as a theological and legal handbook.1

Hysteria spreads easily once you put the fear of devilry in people’s minds and give power to one pissed-off magistrate who acts as an entire legal system, with the power to prosecute, “defend,” and judge one’s crime of witchcraft. Men using their power to subjugate women (and anyone who didn’t obey). A tale as old as time.

But most of these 50,000 people weren’t practicing magic at all. Some were healers. Most were elders, single, educated. Too poor, too wealthy, too loud. Women were blamed for crop failures and disease. Many were independently wealthy women, and we can’t have that!

Which brings us to a fascinating story about the first person charged with witchcraft in Ireland:

Dame Alice de Kyteler

About fifteen years ago, we took a family trip to the UK. In Kilkenny, Ireland, we stumbled upon a pub, and I instantly felt the history when I walked inside. Heavy stone carved into a dark, cavern-like cellar with wooden beams and roaring fireplaces. A multi-level structure straight from the Middle Ages. And it is exactly that. This pub has been there since 1324. I was not interested in the beer, and spent the night reading about the pub’s original owner, Alice Kyteler.

She was born in Kyteler House in around 1263, to wealthy Norman parents. She established the inn, running a successful business. Strike one. Then, she married four times, with all men dying unexpectedly. Strike two. The fourth husband changed his will to leave his possessions to Alice and her son from the first marriage, William. His family, enraged, became convinced she had put a spell on him, bewitching the poor man and forcing him to change his will. Strike three.

The family brought charges of witchcraft upon Alice. They claimed she headed a coven of witches and had sex with a demon named Artissen. Oddly specific, if you ask me, but I suppose details do make the case. Accusations included claims of animal sacrifice and magical charms. 2

Her biggest crime? She was an independently wealthy woman involved in money lending. There is no evidence she poisoned her husbands, though that was what her stepchildren and local authorities accused her of.

Local Bishop Richard de Lederede led the charge against Alice, trying to get authorities to arrest and charge Alice, her son William, and all her associates. Lederede led by vendettas and Christian fanaticism, making enemies around town. In contrast, Alice had many friends who came to her defense. The Bishop added them to his list.

The Bishop was imprisoned for a short time, most likely instigated by Alice’s brother-in-law. He gained his freedom through power in the religious community, but now he was big mad—and coming for Alice. He demanded she appear before him, but she refused, fleeing to England for a year. She returned to Dublin, requesting the Archbishop condemn Bishop Lederede. Now she had gone and made him look bad in front of his superiors. He did not take kindly to that.

Upon her return, he had her arrested and held in the dungeons of Kilkenny Castle. Her trial became a town spectacle, with witnesses testifying to heresy, sorcery, and murder. The belief of the time was that heresy was an illness that could be cured upon repenting. She was not given the option for reform. Alice and her associates were to be whipped in the streets, tied at the back of a horse and cart, after which Alice, as chief priestess, would be burned at the stake.3

All for this angry man’s vendetta.

But Alice had powerful friends in town, and they were ready for a fight.

Four husbands dying natural, and yet mysterious deaths certainly doesn’t bode well for her, but it’s interesting that many of her late husband’s families remained close with her throughout this ordeal.

Under cover of darkness, two powerful men: her brother-in-law and Chancellor of Ireland, and Sir Arnold le Poer, the seneschal of Kilkenny, helped her escape her cell. They beat her guards, and she disappeared in the tunnels and medieval slips. Alice was never heard from again.

She most likely fled to England, leaving her inn and the life she’d built.

After her escape, the Bishop continued his witch trial. He sentenced Alice’s brother in law, Roger Outlawe, to labor, alms to the poor, and three-times daily mass attendance. Unfortunately, Alice’s maidservant wouldn’t get off so lightly. They wanted a witch, and they wouldn’t stop until they found one.

Petronilla de Meath confessed under extreme duress during torture that she was an accomplice to Alice’s witchcraft. This poor woman was whipped and burned alive in November 1324, becoming the first person in Europe executed for the crime of heresy and witchcraft. 4

Alice stood her ground against a powerful and angry religious zealot. She thrived as a powerful woman in medieval Ireland, collecting allegiances and building wealth under her own name. When the frenzy over witchcraft closed in, she called on her connections to help her escape. Once she entered those castle tunnels, she disappeared from the historical record. She was a survivor, and smart enough to know what she was up against.

Petronilla didn’t have the resources Alice did.

Both prove how far ordinary people would go to hurt women who dared to thrive. And how easy it is for a society to find a scapegoat for all its misfortune.

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Most resistance fighters and revolutionaries have roots in oppression. Subjugation and cruelty form their view of the world, leading to a fire that transcends standard human wants. They need their childhood to mean something bigger. Their pain to be seen, and for good to win, even against a Goliath too arrogant to believe the poor would rise.

More rare among the fighters are people of privilege. People of wealth and status who benefit from Goliath’s power. Those people fascinate me.

A privileged debutante who presented at court to Queen Victoria and discussed poetry with W. B. Yeats, Constance Gore-Booth was everything a good Anglo-Irish woman should be. She split her time between London and the family’s estate in County Sligo, dreaming of art school.

A girl growing up in this environment learns early how to hold perfectly rigid posture and carry herself with grace. How to write correspondence and quiet her voice. Opinions and resistance were treated like diseases.

But Constance wasn’t your average aristocrat.

She would become a revolutionary leader, progressive politician, labor activist, and founder of the Irish Citizens Army.

Constance watched rural poverty in Sligo as the Irish people struggled to recover after the Great Famine. When she was ten, another agricultural crisis hit farms, and Constance watched her father donate food to starving families. She understood from a young age how Irish workers faced devastation at the hands of English rule. How basic human needs teetered on devastation because the system abused them.

As a young woman, Constance enrolled in London’s Slade School of Art, where she first became politically active with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. While traveling in Paris, she met a Polish aristocrat, Casimir. When they married, Constance became Countess Constance Markievicz. Although her new husband came from nobility, there was no title of “count” in the Polish gentry, and he self-appointed the title to impress European circles.

Her new title and move to Dublin put her in the center of the city’s thriving art scene. Intellectuals and artists mingled with revolutionaries and Irish nationalists, introducing Constance to an ideology that turned her childhood sympathies for the poor into a simmering hunger for resistance.

Her marriage didn’t last. They split amicably at the outset of WWI. Casimir went to fight for the Russian Army and settled in his native Poland, while Constance traveled deeper into the subversive fight for Irish independence. Her politics and ideology morphed into militant nationalism.

Longstanding oppression of the Irish people and their culture led to a militant uprising. Decades of colonial cruelty forced them to fight. Colonial forces dissolved the Irish Parliament in 1801. With English rule, penal laws stripped Catholics of legal and property rights. The Great Famine of 1845-1852 killed one million, and forced up to two million to flee the country. English rulers and landowners engineered this “famine” through evictions and stolen crops to send to Great Britain. When blight hit the potato crop—many families sole nutrition source—mass starvation spread across the country.

Constance radicalized, not just in ideology, but in methods.

She helped build and train resistance groups: Cumann na mBan (The Irish Woman’s Council), the Irish Citizen Army, and Fianna Éireann (the Soldiers of Ireland).1

Constance took an active role in the resistance, and they had their eyes set on urban warfare.

The Easter Rising took place on April 24, 1916. Over one thousand insurgents strategically overtook key locations in Dublin, which English forces were unprepared for. They were busy fighting in WWI and never expected a group of nationalists to mount a legitimate fight. The insurgents overtook the Post Office, claiming the space as their headquarters. This group was small. They were a gritty group of schoolteachers, artists, and laborers. But they were organized and fierce.

Sadly, civilians were caught in the crossfire. Around five hundred people died—one as young as 22 months. The fighting lasted for six days. 2

The rising was a complicated fight. Many Irish loathed the English’s presence in their country, but others leaned in to their new role and collaborated with colonial leaders. Those businesses thrived. Everyday Irish were caught between wanting their culture and freedom, but not having enough power or ability to fight. This uprising didn’t have full support. Yet.

Constance was second in command during the siege. When they arrested her, she defiantly kissed her revolver.3 The English response was decisive. They held those for trial who seemed to help organize the insurrection: 190 men and 1 woman—Countess Markievicz. She remained unapologetic during her trial, where authorities sentenced her to death. In May 1916, British authorities executed 16 men for their involvement in the uprising (some accounts say 15).

This execution increased sympathy for the rebellion. The public memorialized them and celebrated their lives. The public viewed the British response as unnecessarily harsh. Public opinion on resistance was shifting. By 1918, the moderate Irish party was ousted by nationalist party Sinn Féin. 4

When it came to Constance, authorities feared the optics of executing a woman. She was given mercy and released from custody after one year.

She spent her subsequent years in and out of prison for seditious speeches and political agitation. In 1918, she became the first woman elected to the British Parliament, but as was her party’s stance, she never took her seat. They formed an Irish Parliament who met in secret, as their existence was illegal.5 She served as Minister of Labour from 1919 to 1921, making her Europe’s first female cabinet minister.

She bitterly opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. While 26 counties became a self-governing dominion, Northern Ireland remained under British rule, and citizens were required to swear loyalty to the Crown. Though independence didn’t come how she wanted, everything she’d built led to this moment.

Through letters to her sister while in prison, it’s obvious Constance regretted nothing. She believed she was put here to live just as she had. Fighting for Irish Independence, siding with workers, and giving away all her wealth. She died at 59, poor but proud of a life well lived. Hundreds of thousands lined the streets for her funeral, the woman who ran soup kitchens and sold jewels to feed starving families.

Some revolutionaries aren’t born into the cause. Some choose to let go of wealth and status in favor of something deeper.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack and all thoughts are human-powered, written without AI. If you’d like to support my work, click the button below for options, or buy my book, which helps me bring you more stories of badass women in history.

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Studying women’s history isn’t just about the incredible stories—the big hits that make sensational headlines and hook algorithms—it’s about the small moments. The very human side of a woman’s life that makes someone in modern times feel seen.

This week, one of those small moments hooked me. It paralleled my life. A woman from history gave me perspective on something every author must learn to embrace: the necessity of the pivot.

I could go on for days about Virginia Hall.

Her bravery as a WWII spy is the stuff of legends. She organized entire spy networks of thousands of people, rescued downed airmen, organized supply drops, gathered intel necessary for D-Day, and became one of the Gestapo’s most wanted. She hiked fifty miles over the Pyrenees Mountains in a blizzard with a wooden leg to escape Nazi capture.

To fully appreciate the beauty of Virginia’s life, you first need to understand her greatest aspiration. The goal she worked toward for decades. Young Virginia dreamed of becoming a diplomat. At the time, out of fifteen-hundred foreign service officers, six were women. And none were ambassadors. She knew she was up against a male-dominated system, but she wanted adventure. She was going to be the exception.

She applied to the State Department and bounced around various embassy jobs, but all she could get was secretarial work. Over the years, she took the Diplomatic Corps entrance exam multiple times but never passed. They denied her repeatedly, claiming this wasn’t women’s work. At twenty-seven, during a hunting expedition, she sustained a gunshot to her foot, which resulted in gangrene and an amputation. Undeterred, she rehabilitated with her cumbersome eight-pound prosthetic, determined to finally pass the diplomat exam.

She learned about an obscure State Department rule that excluded anyone with an amputation from serving as a diplomat. Her dream of twenty years went up in flames. When the war broke out, her offers to volunteer received multiple refusals. No one wanted a disabled woman.

The system she tried so hard to win over rejected her once again. Locked doors everywhere.

Virginia found her calling in the unbelievably dangerous world of espionage. A place outside the system, where they were desperate for anyone smart and brave who could handle the stress of an experimental program with little oversight.

Virginia thrived outside the system she had always fought for.

After years of daring escapes and clever disguises (once selling cheese to German officers while on their most wanted list), the end of the war brought a new challenge. The wilds of wartime vanished. The world ran on systems again. She helped establish the CIA—a time she called the saddest of her life. She was trapped in a rigid architecture that still didn’t want women. They didn’t see her for the war hero who won the Distinguished Service Cross. They saw a nag who hadn’t spent prep school with them or graduated Harvard.

The system had excluded her once again.

Studying Virginia Hall for an upcoming writing project coincided with my own moment of awakening. I’m facing letting go of the dream I’ve held for over a decade. When I began seriously writing, I dreamed of landing a literary agent. Sure, getting the big publishing contract was in there, but I wanted the agent. The one email that said, I love what you’ve done and I want to be a part of it.

Ten years ago, that was the answer to writing success, and approval from an industry insider felt like the only thing that mattered.

I’ve spent most of my forties publishing with a small press, hustling, devoting seven days a week to storytelling. I’ve won multiple awards and been a bestseller. My latest book was featured in People magazine, and my work has been shared by famous names like Rosie O’Donnell, Queen Latifah, and George Takei. I go viral on the regular, and have built a platform of hundreds of thousands of engaged followers.

Still, I wanted the agent. Misguided as it may have been, it was my only bar for success.

After my 400th rejection across six manuscripts (yes, I’m getting real with you all), I cried at midnight in a Northern Idaho hotel room, accepting my crash-out was about more than one rejection. I had hit the reality that it may be time to give up the dream I always believed I could accomplish. If I just worked hard enough, remained tenacious enough (it’s kinda my superpower), I would beat the odds. I would force the system to see me.

It began to feel like approaching the cool kids’ table day after day while they shooed me away. At some point, don’t we need to stop walking up to the table? Accept the closed doors and stop expecting whatever is on the other side to make us relevant?

Virginia Hall didn’t find her moment to shine in the conventional world. She found it outside the walls. In the dark. On her own, following her instincts.

All these years I’ve felt like a failure as dozens of requests flooded in, and the inevitable responses always followed: they never know how to sell my work. Meanwhile, I’m doing the work. Selling thousands of books, building a platform, getting messages from readers who love my stories.

I came across a substack this week from a literary agent who said: if you have a publish-ready project and a strong hook, you won’t have any trouble finding an agent.

Ouch.

In eight years, I have had several “almosts.” One said she was heartbroken to pass, but she couldn’t sell it. Another set up a call then ghosted me. Twice. And still, I never had that moment, the one that unlocked the doors I’d knocked on for years.

Maybe I’m not meant for the system.

And maybe, that’s okay.

I will write forever. I know that. But somewhere in reading about Virginia Hall and examining my own idea of success, I realized chasing something that wasn’t working felt comfortable. Letting go of approval and loving where I am? That feels far scarier. Building a life where I don’t need that unlocked door is downright terrifying.

I don’t know who I am without the chase. Reaching for a goal, fighting for my place—something about it feels like my birthright. Nothing is supposed to be easy, and isn’t acceptance settling?

No one knew about Virginia Hall. Even her closest friends were clueless about her accomplishments. It wasn’t until her records were declassified around 2008 that the archives exposed how badass she really was. Her greatest purpose was never accolades. It was in herself.

The box she wanted inside would have stifled her. She would have never found her greatness without those rejections. Her life held bravery beyond our comprehension—bravery that only existed in the face of decades of denials and heartbreak.

I will never give up on my love of storytelling, but how I get to my destination isn’t always up to me. Perhaps, I’m already living the dream, and that has to be enough. I’d like to believe the rejections have directed me to a better place, where I learn to be enough through my words my stories, and my message, regardless of what doors remain locked.

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I have a particular fascination with women erased from the arts. It feels like the most egregious of acts to steal, erase, or misattribute someone’s creation.

The literary world is full of these examples.

Perhaps one of the most depressing examples is Zelda Fitzgerald.

Zelda usually gets the unfair label of “troubled” before her name and always seems to have the “F. Scott’s wife” descriptor attached. But Zelda was complicated, talented, dark, and sensitive. A socialite, a ballerina, a writer.

Like other women in history, her name gets minimized to a caricature. The most scandalous headlines become her identity. Troubled wife of famous novelist and first flapper Zelda Fitzgerald hospitalized for schizophrenia dies in a hospital fire.

It’s fucking tragic.

It’s also a convenient way to erase the layered brilliance of her. She was wildly ambitious—a trait we love to hate in women. She was the heroine in all her husband’s novels who fought for independence and free thinking in a world that wanted her compliant.

She published a novel in 1932. Save Me the Waltz made her husband big mad. She drew on material he had in mind for Tender is the Night, and he claimed she stole his plot idea. He forced her to do massive revisions. 1

Her diary went missing, and to no one’s surprise, excerpts showed up in her husband’s writings. He took from her liberally, without credit. 2

They clashed in ambitious intentions in writing and art, and her multiple hospitalizations for mental health treatment strained their marriage. F. Scott once blamed his writing struggles on her treatments. She never published another novel, though worked hard to find her own voice in ballet, art, and writing.

Ernest Hemingway published A Moveable Feast, where a fictionalized Zelda ruined her husband’s career. While F. Scott descended into alcoholism, Zelda slipped in and out of hospitals, treated with insulin shock therapy, where doctors injected enough insulin to induce a coma that resulted in a seizure. 3 She sadly died in a fire in Highland Hospital in Ashville, NC while she lay sedated in a locked room.

Another literary great used a woman’s work to craft his wildly successful novel. John Steinbeck used Sanora Babb’s meticulous notes to write The Grapes of Wrath. The problem was, Sanora didn’t know about or consent to it, and she intended to use them to write her own novel about Dust Bowl migrants.

Sanora bounced around as a child. She graduated high school in Oklahoma (as valedictorian) and went in search of her journalism dreams. The stock market crash derailed that, and she lived homeless for a while. She secured a job with the Farm Security Administration, a federal program as part of the New Deal. She traveled California’s Central Valley with her boss, Tom Collins, keeping detailed notes on the migrant workers.

Little did Sanora know that Tom Collins was handing her notes off to a friend of his, John Steinbeck. He used her notes to write The Grapes of Wrath. 4 Though she was under contract with Random House, they pulled out because Steinbeck was already a huge hit.

Steinbeck dedicated the book to Tom Collins.

Sanora led quite a life outside this literary snub. Once she moved to California, she befriended Ray Bradbury and Ralph Ellison. She had an illegal marriage to Chinese Academy Award-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe. Her leftist views and writing led to her being blacklisted by the House Un-American Committee, and they went into exile in Mexico City for a short time. 5 She published a novel and a memoir. Her Dust Bowl novel Whose Names are Unknown finally published in 2004, a year before her death.

Eileen Maud O’Shaughnessy met George Orwell while studying for her M.A. in Educational Psychology at University College London. Early in their marriage they lived in a rundown cottage where George would work by lamplight and Eileen, a typewriter by candlelight. He believed he should live the life of the poor, and their health suffered. 6

She was intimately involved in his writing. While working on Animal Farm, Eileen provided notes, including the suggestion to turn the story into an allegory, prompted by her studies in psychology. According to the Orwell Society, it is clear Eileen collaborated on this manuscript. 7

In 1934, Eileen wrote a poem for a school’s magazine about a dystopian society titled Century’s End, 1984. Eileen had an interest in the rise of European Fascism. George wrote 1984 a year after Eileen’s untimely death. He never acknowledged her contributions, but did write (in third person) about “a wife” who bothered him with the need for sex and didn’t clean as often as he felt she should. 8

Vivien Eliot was a complicated figure. She suffered significant mental health struggles and underwent extensive treatment, which worsened her husband, T.S. Eliot’s own anxieties. He once wrote that Vivien “has had to do so much thinking for me,” noting her additions/suggestions to his writing. 9

In the 1920’s, she contributed multiple short stories to T.S.’s literary magazine under pseudonyms. It appears he supported his wife’s writing ambitions, but their marriage turned toxic, with both sides affected by mental health. The Waste Land’s original manuscript shows commentary by Vivien.10 She died in a psychiatric hospital, distraught over her failed marriage. Her brother committed her against her will, and T.S. never visited her.

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Legacy is preserved by those who deem the story important.

Even incredible, powerful stories decay when neglected.

In 2018, a historian discovered a damaged, discolored painting in a storeroom at Hampton Court Palace. A rendering of the biblical story Susanna and the Elders, this painting was attributed to a male artist over two-hundred years ago, and then thought to be “French School,” a general term used by art historians to refer to a French style where precise attribution is not possible.1

Having been heavily painted over and covered with grime, this painting had been tossed in an old storage room, forgotten with time.

If this isn’t a metaphor for women’s history, I don’t know what is.

This painting was an Artemisia Gentileschi. One of the most important artists of the Renaissance, she was one of the few successful women artists who worked with the highest courts in Europe.

Her powerful work screams feminine rage, emotions that still resonate nearly four hundred years later. She completed Susanna and the Elders in 1610. A year later, she survived a rape by her father’s acquaintance.2 This resulted in a brutal trial where the court subjected her to torture through thumb screws, used as a vicious lie detector to verify her testimony.3 Though he was convicted and banished from Rome for five years, the man never paid his sentence—shocker.

Her paintings reveal the pain of this experience, but from a place of power. Art teachers will tell you how Artemisia’s story lands harder for the women in their classes. They suddenly feel closer to art, knowing someone like Artemisia left her mark. We’ve been told that only male artists have been talented enough to be celebrated, but then we see Judith Beheading Holofernes:

The woman is powerful. Resolute. Body leaned in, blood splattering her dress, she makes no apologies for the beheading. A different depiction than Caravaggio’s version, where Judith leans back, timid and hesitant in a pristine white blouse. She painted Judith as the main character, not an afterthought.

In Gentileschi’s version, we feel her rage.

Yet her painting was once misattributed to Caravaggio. Several of her works were attributed to her father or his students. History buried this incredibly talented artist. Historians washed away her art and handed to the credit of men in her life. They scrubbed her name from celebrations of inspirational Baroque artists.

Neglect erased her and damaged her art. Literally.

The rape and trial often overtake her narrative, but Artemisia’s art reflected the full story of womanhood. Powerful, resilient. She was the first woman admitted to Florence’s Academy of the Arts of Drawing in 1616.4 She built a successful workshop all on her own.

In a letter to a patron she wrote, “You will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman.”

This is how many women feel. Burning inside with ambition and power, yet holding the truth that the male-dominated world expects us to soften. That society discourages achievement or wealth. Ultimately, they teach us that autonomy is a failure. “The soul of a woman” to me suggests that we are multitudes. Soft and gentle, loving and kind, but also ruthless and commanding. History has never afforded us layers. Society never allows us to be complicated. They were too focused on making us compliant.

Artemisia’s story is about so much more than her trauma. It is one of creative genius, triumph, and love. Her art contains all of the emotions, and we feel them when we look at her work.

By erasing her, we erase the story of womanhood.

Modern historians continue to bring her work into the spotlight. Her paintings now sit at the Uffizi, the National Gallery in London, the Getty, and the National Gallery of Art.

People often ask me why I care so much about women’s history. That is a question I’ve never fully been able to answer, but Artemisia’s legacy says it all. When powerful men erase a woman’s voice, leave it to rot in the darkness, only kept relevant and vibrant when it’s attributed to a man, her brilliance becomes a discovered gem. A rarity. I argue brilliance was everywhere in women’s history. Sure, Artemisia’s art is special. Her work important. But how many other women made beautiful contributions to the world, and we will never know?

When we raise our children to see women thriving, they will know it is not just possible, but normal. We learn to see women’s voices as necessary. Statements about womanhood, whether through art or text or even silence, still provoke hate. Fear. Dismissal. Of course they do. Art like this was too powerful for the world to celebrate, so we slathered it in layers of acceptable paint and rewrote the story of the artist to better fit our narrative.

This leaves a black hole for men of history to fill in with what suits them. What promotes their place at the top of the food chain, where they can relegate women like her to obscurity.

Artemisia’s life and work must outshine her trauma.

It’s why I write the stories I do. Our trauma is a piece of our puzzle. It’s often glamorized and sensationalized because rage gets hits. But I want to celebrate the quiet power of choosing yourself. Of triumph. Allow the world to hate you, because you know what you were put here to do. I highlight the women who loved themselves so fiercely they let everyone’s expectations fall like dead leaves at their feet. We can’t stop the world from throwing fruit, but we can wipe away the mess and keep walking forward.

Maybe our story gets buried in a dusty storeroom. Or maybe a historian discovers us someday and sees what we did and the bravery it took. Either way, we must do it for ourselves. For the women who remain buried and silenced. For our daughters. For a world that may not be ready for us yet.

When they erase us, they get to craft our narrative. It’s why our experience is so unique. We’ve lived under the great sense that our courage and power brew deep below the surface, but we can never really extinguish it to fit the mold society expects.

Words, art, and representation carry enough weight for powerful men to panic at their existence. Be the power they’ve tried for centuries to eliminate. Be louder. Write your own damn narrative. Never let the hate stop you or the resistance fade your brilliance.

You’ve got a story to tell.

Thank you for reading. If you want more women erased from art history, please buy my book, The Secret Courtesan, inspired by Artemisia’s story and fueled by all the artists still forgotten in storerooms all over the world.

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We live in a world of listicles and viral reels. Algorithms decide which stories get told based on a three-second watch time. How can we “hook” the reader and get clicks and sell products?

I fear we have lost a piece of humanity.

The messy piece.

And that’s the good stuff.

My logo is catchy. My Instagram content usually goes viral. I rework titles to consider how to get the most open rates. I’ve made consumable content about women’s history. But we need more. More nuance, more layers—more humanity. It’s why I am so grateful for Substack, a place for exploration and deep dives. One cannot find bravery without pain. For every win there is great loss. Under every highlight reel is a woman with flaws and failures.

We cannot erase that side of the story.

I first came to women’s history as a kid listening to my father’s U.S. history lectures. For me, it started with a question. “Where were all the women?” We were omitted. Erased. Buried. But I think it’s important to look at the moment I first felt inspired by a historical woman.

Many of you know this is an Eleanor Roosevelt fan page. What you don’t know is that I was a teen when I first lit up with the idea of who she was, and it wasn’t her incredible accomplishments and activism that hooked me to her story. It was one sentence:

Her mother called her Granny.

That was it. That was the moment her story became my biggest inspiration in life. Her mother was an athletic and beautiful socialite, and she honestly disliked her serious daughter. She taunted her, calling her boring, homely, and awkward. Eleanor was orphaned by age ten. Her mother died first of diphtheria, leaving her to grow closer to her father, but two years later, he jumped out a window in a suicide attempt. He died later from complications after that fall. Her childhood was painfully lonely, which created an empathy that gave way to lifelong activism.

That’s why I adore her. I saw myself in her struggles. It was the small moment amidst all the highlights that inspired me.

My primary goal with my platform is to inspire women. In telling these stories, I desperately want us to leave room for the quiet details, for those are the parts that make these women relatable. Most of us won’t become a spy in a world war, or earn a Nobel. But maybe we read about The Ravensbrück Nine who formed a sisterhood, hiding in a pile of corpses on a death march, and hold our friendships closer. Maybe an article about Maria Anna Mozart nudges us to encourage our own daughters in the name of a genius virtually erased from history.

We must look at the things that made these women human. The heartache, the insecurities, the mundane facts that take them from hero status and tie them to Earth with the rest of us.

Only showing the hook that ignites an algorithm erases the shades of her story that make her relatable, but it also feeds into the notion that the only women worth celebrating are perfect. Our society already has a problem seeing women as wholly human. We are often caricatures, meant to have one body type, skin that doesn’t age, lips that pucker, and eyes that glisten. We shouldn’t have upsetting opinions or laugh too loud.

I want to share the ugly parts, the failures, the mistakes, and still celebrate her. In this social media world we seem to have great difficulty holding two truths.

Yes, Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president and the first female stockbroker on Wall Street, from a childhood as a medium. But she also supported eugenics.1 Erasing that piece of her washes out the truth. It turns her into a ten-second snapshot that is great for clicks, but denies the ugly truth that all of us fall prey to identities that hurt others.

The suffrage movement was rife with racism. Leaders argued who deserved the vote more: Black men or educated white women. Black women were pushed out in favor of white women’s egos. White supremacy rippled through a movement that should have been about solidarity with all facets of American women. Suffragettes starved themselves, risked their lives, and endured police brutality to secure the right to vote. The movement was important, flawed, ugly, and exclusionary. All the things at once.

When you scroll, keep in mind that the hot hit only gives a piece of the story. There is an entire universe of details and nuance left unsaid.

Frida Kahlo was a brilliant artist. She was so physically tortured by life and emotionally isolated by loneliness that her art became otherworldly. You can’t tease out her troubles because they ARE her art. She suffered polio as a child and a devastating bus accident as a teen.2 Her pain and Mexican heritage was the fabric of her expression—it’s impossible to boil her down to a simplified explanation. Her life and art were incredibly complex.

I’ve always admired Lucille Ball. Sure, she was the first woman to own a major Hollywood studio and singlehandedly saved Star Trek. But she was a white woman who married a Cuban man in the public eye in 1940. Unheard of. They were initially turned down by studios because of fear around showing an intercultural marriage.3 Her success came from knowing herself deep down to the core, and telling society to stay the hell out of her business. She loved herself enough to ignore the rules. That’s the part that gets left out of the sizzle reel.

Harriet Tubman is one of my favorite figures from our history books. What often gets boiled down to “conductor of the Underground Railroad” was a life story so full of devotion to freedom that I can’t begin to detail it all in one paragraph. But the center of her struggle was being a disabled woman. This rarely gets discussed. A slave owner smashed a two-pound weight into her head as a girl. This head injury led to lifelong seizures, migraines, and narcolepsy. She experienced profound visions of freedom during her seizures. She described angels singing and messages from God.4 She survived thirteen trips back into slave territory, including the Combahee River siege, where she saved 750 people in one night. Her incredible life isn’t just impressive stats. It was part mystical and part survival from horrific circumstances.

This page is a combination of historical highlights and comparing history to today’s society. It is my firm belief that writing about history must be about more than facts. It is about celebrating the complicated experience of womanhood and finding inspiration in the rich narratives of women who came before us. I want to celebrate their stories, not as heroes or idols, but as fully human and fallible.

The moment we expect heroics, we lose the beauty of a fully lived life.

Our inspiration doesn’t lie in theatrics. Badass women in history means we keep going, doing our best at every turn, and learning from our unavoidable mistakes. I never want us to look at history as a portrait of unattainable expectations.

Because history is now. It isn’t a static thing in a stuffy old book. It is a living, breathing thing we are crafting at this very moment. How will you write your chapter?

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack, but please buy my book The Secret Courtesan about a female sculptor erased from history, and the fight to bring her truth to light. For more ways to support me, click the link below.

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Society has strict rules for women, and they are much more pervasive than most of us realize. They are also, a big fat fucking lie.

Writing about women’s history keeps me fully aware of the insanity we live in. Something I hadn’t expected when I set out to do this work: everyone has rules over who I may celebrate. Let me give you a list of offenses that rule out certain ( ahem… most/every) women from being highlight-worthy:

1. She may not be rich. Or come from wealth. That’s privilege, and we want to eat the rich. They deserve to rot.

2. She may not have opinions we don’t like. None. We don’t care if she risked her life to save thousands. She contributed to something someone didn’t like about today’s society, so off with her head.

3. She could not have made mistakes. This one is less vague, as your metric for mistakes is different than mine, but basically, we need her to have today’s standards of goodness living in a nineteenth-century world. Two hundred years ago? We don’t care. Live as we want you to live, and we may allow you to sit at the table.

4. Under NO circumstances could she have been sexually promiscuous. If she was a sex worker or mistress, that is the only thing you are permitted to discuss. She is a whore and nothing else. Next.

5. Was she a mother who didn’t make her children her life’s work? Did she have a strained relationship with them? Obviously, straight to obscurity with no mention of the miserable wench.

6. Did she have an affair or an unsavory relationship? Straight to prison. She should live in the memory of that decision, labeled like Hester Prynne, overshadowing everything else she accomplished. Whore.

7. What’s that you say? She struggled silently, contributing to her husband’s greatness. Well, good for her. We love to celebrate that. But now we ask that she get credit for it? To hell with her and you for suggesting such a thing. Blocked.

8. And this one is weird. Did you identify her sexuality by today’s labels appropriately, or are you othering her? We don’t care that said woman never identified herself—or that historical records don’t prove her sexuality. If we heard it rumored, I can now label her as I see fit, and I will demand you do the same. Hater.

   Honestly, I could go on and on. Because we are so very uncomfortable with these things: 1. Accepting that women are complicated, and 2. Women claiming a spotlight.

   With constant comments about a historical woman’s beauty, it’s obvious we are still obsessed with women fitting a mold. We want straight lines around what women can be. Smiling. Beautiful. Says all the right things. Spotless history without mistakes.

   Spoiler alert: there is no such thing.

   

Men are allowed to exist as many things. We celebrate Winston Churchill as the man who saved us from Hitler. People are fine knowing he was a raging asshole. George Washington was a pillar of freedom who owned hundreds of slaves. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh maintained their image as great American industrialists despite their unending support for Hitler.

Women are not given that same multi-truth awareness. We only want to celebrate those who meet our standards. Standards that were set by men to keep us compliant.

Do we see a pattern?

I realized a while ago that my content will never satisfy the masses. I have a specific brand of women’s history—the kind where we look at women as multifaceted, complicated creatures who often did awful things along with great things. I highlight when men have stolen credit, but it isn’t the basis of my message. I want us to celebrate the woman herself, or the sisterhood that made it happen. Of course we must speak of the system that made them, but I focus on how they broke convention and followed an internal compass.

I focus on the power because that is how we use historical women as a blueprint for our own.

Here’s the startling truth of it all—the system isn’t about a set of rules we need to follow for success; it’s believing that there is any success at all. Because every time we meet the rules of engagement, they move the goalpost. Stop trying to win an unwinnable war. There are no rules that will grant you magic acceptance. These are arbitrary and hide the truth: the setting up of expectations is the distraction.

You won’t ever be enough for them.

Stop trying to climb the ladder of a system built for you to fail. Step out and build your own damn system. Where you can be fat, loud, unconventional, witty, or whatever the hell else you really are.

We’ve been conditioned to silence our truest selves from the outset. From day one, they guide us to be more compliant. Quieter. Softer. Nicer. Then we will get a piece of what THEY believe we deserve. But the second we misbehave, they will call us ugly and fat. Mid. Overrated. The most beautiful woman in the world gets cut down the moment she dares to speak up.

And here’s the ugliest truth of all: the call is coming from inside the house. The ones who will hit you the hardest will usually be other women. We help attack each other. We uphold systems and go on the offensive as a way to feel powerful. This is ingrained, and I fight like hell to break that pattern.

I’m mostly talking about white women here, but we have a big problem bringing mean girl energy to every table we sit at. Don’t bother fighting me on it, because I will die on this hill. Our internalized misogyny is so deep, the river finds every crack to slide into and swells whenever we get a chance to cut someone down who infringes on our sense of safety. We get uncomfortable with loud women. Angry women. Those rules I mentioned? It’s mostly women in my comments who uphold them.

I’m not surprised. This shit is heavy and we don’t know how to break out.

We start now. We stop meeting beauty standards that only ever set us up for self hatred. We take ownership of our bodies just as they are. We celebrate life milestones like menopause that allow us to reclaim our internal power. You know, that shining light we extinguished for decades at the expense of keeping our parents happy, or to snag a man, or to keep a man. We stop believing we can only earn power and agency when we look or act a certain way.

We were always the power.

And the more we learn about the women history erased, the more we will realize that we’ve been renegades this whole time.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack, but you can click below for ways to support me. Please buy my book The Secret Courtesan about a historian who works to uncover the truth of a female artist erased from history.

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Women’s friendships are a wondrous thing.

There’s a reason society makes girls think they are each other’s competition. Because the truth is far too dangerous—women working together can literally break the world.

Female friendships hold a fierce loyalty and understanding that can heal wounds and build confidence from scraps of insecurity. They see you and honor your struggles. They make you feel as if nothing in the world can take you down, because you have a circle of the most incredible humans beside you.

When women support each other, something superhuman happens.

In one of the most incredible stories of female solidarity, I present to you a the Ravensbrück Nine.

The nine who forged a friendship near the end of WWII all joined the Resistance as young women. They had smuggled arms across Europe, saved parachuting agents, maneuvered escape routes out of France, and hid Jewish children in safe houses. The Gestapo has them arrested, interrogated and tortured. They continued to meet in various French prisons, and in transport to the notorious women’s camp, Ravensbrück. Their bond strengthened while forced to work in a labor camp in Leipzig 1

Most of Ravensbrück’s population were political prisoners. Guards starved and tortured the women, stripped them naked, and forced them to stand in the snow. Though the hunger was unmanageable, they had a tradition of donating one spoonful of soup into a bowl, donated to the woman who needed it most that day.2

Over 130,000 prisoners passed through Ravensbrück during the war. The conditions were brutal. They faced widespread disease, starvation, and overcrowding. Some prisoners underwent horrific medical experiments and others forced into work at camp brothels. All were subject to daily beatings and random executions.

While prisoners, these nine women were still resisters. A the labor camp, they assembled shells for Nazi weapons, and secretly sabotaged their work. Their friendship grew through the horror and their tiny moments of rebellion.

In the spring of 1945, officers evacuated thousands from Ravensbrück after pressure from the Allies. They would rather kill them than see them liberated, so they sent prisoners on death marches. Forcing the sick and injured to trek to other camps, they would beat or kill anyone who stumbled.

The nine were among them, barefoot, blistered feet, underweight, in thin clothes, with illnesses worsening by the minute. Led by Hélène Podliasky, an engineer for the Resistance, they made a drastic choice.

They jumped into a pile of corpses, hoping to be left behind.

It worked.

For ten days, the nine women wandered the German countryside with the goal of reaching the front lines and crossing over to the American occupation zone. They were starving and weak. One had diphtheria, and another had tuberculosis. They had hip pain, pneumonia, and broken bones. Yet they made a promise that no one would fall behind.3

After they crossed the Mulde river in Saxony, Germany, they couldn’t go on. Just then, a Jeep approached, carrying two American soldiers. They offered them safety and a cigarette.

The women all miraculously survived. While a few were friends from childhood, the rest met along the way, forming an unshakeable alliance through their arrests, imprisonment, and escape.

Though they all survived, they carried the shame of their time as prisoners. Women were discouraged from discussing struggles after the war, with people eager to “move on.” This left them isolated and struggling with PTSD. Many, many women were never recognized for their heroic efforts, with stories like this one remaining silent until many years later.

An 83-year-old Hélène Podliasky first told her harrowing story to her grandniece. After decades of silence, she finally spoke of this incredible story of survival. Around this time, the nine came together for a reunion.

Shortly after the war, one of the women, Renée Lebon Châtenay (known as Zinka), was miraculously able to reunite with the baby she had while imprisoned.

The Ravensbruk Nine:

Hélène Podliasky

Nicole Clarence

Suzanne Maudet (Zaza)

Joséphine Bordonuve (Josée)

Jacqueline Aubéry du Boulley (Jacky)

Yvonne Le Guillou (Mena)

Renée Lebon Châtenay (Zinka)

Madelon Verstijnen (Lon)

Guillemette Daendels (Guigui)

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People love to celebrate strong women, but very few can handle the reality of who a strong woman is.

In today’s society, we loathe to see a woman with an opinion you can’t change. A voice that doesn’t shake. The audacity to remain in the spotlight even when angry detractors demand she shrink.

I’ve always hated the term “feisty woman.” This embodies a certain sassy lady, who says what she wants and gets away with putting men in their place. This woman is rarely the one to disrupt the system. She is rarely the one to amass piles and piles of hate for standing up for what she believes in. She is the socially acceptable version of strong—the woman who takes up just enough space to be seen but never kicks the walls down.

For those who kick the walls down are reviled. Abused. Hated.

True strength is when a woman is no longer here for your approval. She allows you to misunderstand her. Misquote her. Bully her. Make her pay for the crime of not apologizing.

And she still won’t back down.

From the day we come into the world, they train us to be nice. Don’t speak up. Make sure your parents and teachers and bosses, and friends all like you. Being disliked is a character flaw, they said. It’s the strongest tool to control you. Make you believe the way to happiness is to avoid dislike. Loud women are bitches. Militant. Ugly.

I like to remind people that every woman you look up to from history was absolutely HATED in their time.

Eleanor Roosevelt? A buck-toothed ogre who couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Rosa Parks? Disruptive. A communist liar—and somehow also a tired seamstress. Amelia Earhart? A reckless loser who didn’t have the skills to fly a paper airplane. Marie Curie? An immoral foreigner stealing French jobs. A home-wrecker who broke up a family.

A strong woman is more than a catchy title to put on merch. It’s embodying the notion of disruption. Breaking rules and creating a system outside what everyone believes you should live in.

I highly recommend the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The monologue in the show’s final episode still gives me goosebumps:

I want a big life. I want to experience everything. I want to break every single rule there is. They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a woman. Maybe. But you know what's really unattractive? Waiting around for something to happen. Staring out a window, thinking the life you should be living is out there somewhere, but not being willing to open the door and go get it. Even if someone tells you you can't. Being a coward is only cute in The Wizard of Oz.

I’ve been thinking about strength a lot lately. I haven’t mastered the art of being misunderstood. As my platform grows, so does the hate. The comments that want to pick apart every word, admonish me for highlighting a woman or situation they hate. Personal attacks on my looks, my age, my eyes, my hair…

I’ve learned that the more successful a woman becomes, the angrier the world around her gets. Breaking down a woman with a voice is America’s favorite pastime.

It’s one thing to love the idea of being strong. It’s another to sit in a moment in a tiny spotlight as insults are hurled at you. I will never forget a comment on one of my posts highlighting the abuse women get online. This woman said, “I would think studying women’s history would have prepared you for this kind of response.”

She was right. It should have. It’s why I study this. So the rest of you can read how Helen Keller was a founder of the ACLU. So the woman who wonders if she can start a new career can read about how Virginia Hall couldn’t become a diplomat as a disabled woman so she became one of the Gestapo’s most wanted Allied spies and trekked mountain passes in blizzards to escape Nazi capture. I write for the woman who has felt ignored and invisible in her own life, so she can learn about Simone Melchior, Jacques Cousteau’s wife who was monumental in the world of scuba, called the “real” captain of the Calypso, and who was practically erased under her husband’s fame. So the woman who wonders how she can overcome the hardest moment of her life can read about how Harriet Tubman risked her life to rescue slaves while suffering from severe headaches, seizures, and narcolepsy. For the single woman who wonders if something is wrong with her for not wanting marriage, I offer Martha Gellhorn, who chose her groundbreaking journalism career over marriage (two divorces of men who couldn’t handle her commitment to being a war correspondent), and was the only of Hemingway’s wives to leave him.

When you’re in the moment, or in the hot seat, that is precisely the time to summon these stories. When you are certain you can’t do this and the world has broken you and you just want to give up.

Strength isn’t a title to claim. It isn’t fun, and it isn’t pretty. It arrives in the darkest moments. In the ugly of a life about to shatter. In the overwhelm of online bullying that only worsens as you grow. In the quiet of your life, when everyone knows how to silence you.

I am an Enneagram 4 with childhood trauma, mental health struggles, and a neurogenic cough from years of silencing my voice. Every insult stings. But learning to continue talking about women’s history is a little battle won with every post. Every book. Every article. Strength for me is learning to hold the confidence others try to strip from me. And it is a daily battle. I created Badass Women in History for the shy girl who never heard women told in history lectures. For her terrified little voice that too often never made it into words. And I made it for you, so you can face your battle that others have no idea you’re fighting.

We have a legacy of strong women who let go of approval and tapped into a torrent of strength to be authentically her while the world threw stones at her confidence. Women like Frida Kahlo and Billie Holiday made art that literally changed how people viewed society, and they did it against vicious attacks.

When you succeed, people will want to watch you fall. The higher you climb, the louder the chants get. If we can still take that next step, they won’t win. We will win.

And we can truly stand in the joy that is emotional tenacity. In a world that fears women’s voices, can we be the ones they don’t silence? Can we turn away from the mean girl energy that permeates our lives and teaches women that breaking each other down is the quickest way to power in the patriarchal structure? Can we not bristle when a woman rattles the system?

If you get uncomfortable when a fat woman celebrates her body, I urge you to sit back and think where that thought came from. If you hate an outspoken woman for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on, that’s a warning to look deeper.

Inside, under all that insecurity, I hold a belief that they won’t break me. I bet you have that too, it’s just been buried under a lifetime of people pleasing.

Be the change. Fuck their opinions of you. Truly, the only way to freedom is to let them judge you while you keep slaying.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack. Please consider buying my book, The Secret Courtesan, about a female sculptor erased from history.

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In 1919, a group of writers and intellectuals gathered at the Algonquin Hotel near New York’s Times Square for a battle of wits. A roast, if you will, for a drama critic at The New York Times. They engaged in scathing criticism, wordplay, banter, and clever insults. They had such a raucous time, they decided to make it a daily occurrence. Their round table lunches became the stuff of literary legends. Among them was the brilliant queen of dark humor, Dorothy Parker.

By the time she was twenty, she had lost both parents and had to support herself. This always witty lover of poetry landed in New York magazine publishing. In 1914 she sold her first poem and used this to storm into Vanity Fair to demand a job. It worked. At 22, she took an editorial job at Vogue. She became a drama reviewer at Vanity Fair, becoming the first female critic on Broadway.1

These literary luncheons would eventually give way to the birth of The New Yorker, and Dorothy was on the founding board. There she published poetry, fiction, and book reviews. She became friends with Ernest Hemingway, Harpo Marx, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many influential socialites.

But Dorothy wasn’t one to climb the social ladder and live in adoration. Her biting smarts rode the edge of darkness, hiding a deep sadness. Humor and pain lived in the same space for her. Her words were razor-sharp and funny, holding just enough satire to keep them grounded. She used humor as social commentary, highlighting the complicated nature of being a woman. Especially one who could outwit most everyone in the room.

“I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”

“You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.”

“Beauty only goes skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone."

Her work frequently expressed bold humor with a thread of loneliness underneath. Her love life was turbulent. She suffered with depression and alcoholism, and attempted suicide multiple times.

Her poem “Resume” reflects her unimaginable struggles in her usual pithy witticism:

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

Dorothy never held her tongue. She pushed against the rigid, formal environment at Vogue, constantly writing work editors refused to print. Vanity Fair fired her for her scathing critiques of Broadway producers and actors—many of whom advertised with the magazine. She refused to sanitize her opinions, even when they were big names. On one play’s review, she wrote, “Not even the presence in the first-night audience of Mr. William Randolph Hearst . . . could spoil my evening.”

This, unsurprisingly, angered the men in power. After they let her go, she would never again hold a steady desk job or draw a regular salary.

Dorothy, never one to give up, reinvented herself. She was a fixture in the New York scene in the 1920s, but by the time the Great Depression hit, her saucy commentary was labeled flapper fluff, and considered out of fashion. I mean, the powers that be will only tolerate a woman who writes outside the lines for so long.

She pivoted to screenwriting, writing plays for Broadway and Hollywood. Parker’s second marriage was a turbulent one, but they co-wrote some successful work, including, A Star is Born. It appears Dorothy (or Dottie as she was known) did the bulk of the work on this screenplay.2 The heart of that story is the tragedy of being a woman on the rise and loving a man at the tail end of his. Their work earned several Academy Award nominations.

Dorothy’s humor was her shield. A safe way to express her deepest pain and vulnerabilities. Her personal life was volatile. She never could live the way everyone wanted her to, and her commitment to her truest self left her with perpetual, blinding loneliness. She was an outsider, and her writing reflected that—but on her terms.

“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

She discounted her achievements, even mocking herself. She had big ambitions and made no apologies for them, but lived the harsh space between success and despair. The reality of this place can be seen acutely in A Star is Born. Her aspirations to be a great writer were tempered by a deep insecurity, and I’d presume, anger over her limitations in a world that shunned wryly intellectual women.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

She became involved in social justice, reporting from Spain on the Civil War, and committing to the Civil Rights movement here in the US. Her leftist, anti-fascist views led to her being blacklisted from Hollywood, and the FBI compiled a lengthy dossier, led by the ruthless and blatantly corrupt J. Edgar Hoover. They tracked her for 25 years. When questioned at her home, she told FBI agents: “Listen, I can’t even get my dog to stay down. Do I look to you like someone who could overthrow the government?”3

Exiled from the film industry, she did what Dottie did. Used her voice. Before her death in 1967, she left her estate to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—a man she had never met. After his assassination, the estate moved on to the NAACP. Though it wasn’t much financially, the symbolism was powerful. 4

For Dorothy, the things that made her successful were also what drove her to darkness, often joking that she was “a drinker with a writing problem.”

She’s always fascinated me for her refusal to play nice. She played honest—brutally, painfully honest. Her vulnerabilities and emotional pain were right there in her acerbic words—if anyone cared to look. She returned again and again to writing, despite the continual struggle to put out work she could claim was “good enough.” Just like her second marriage, which she returned to through separations and turmoil. She hungered for self-expression and for love, as her words seemed to burst with longing.

She was known as enormously warm and funny, but had a dark side of cruelty, especially when she drank. She gave away money freely, and loved her friends fiercely, but turned her criticism to the world around her, often unable to stop pushing boundaries. The world saw a brave writer who slayed the written word with her wisecracking insults, but just like all famous women, she was all that and the honest raw parts that weren’t celebration-worthy. She struggled with the deeply human parts of herself, never feeling loved or emotionally safe.

Maybe that’s why I like celebrating her. She was true to herself, even when the less likeable parts took hold. I often wonder who she could be soft with. Who she was behind all that bravado and smarts. I presume she was just as broken as the rest of us, just trying to find a way to love herself.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack. If you’d like to support me, please buy my book about women artists erased by history:

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**A note on quotations: Much of her writing was wordplay on established sayings. I quoted her where I could find reference to her as the original writer, but some have been questioned over the years. I did my best to only include quotes attributed to her across multiple sources.

I have a historical beef with J. Edgar Hoover.

He led the FBI for 48 years, from 1924 until his death in 1972. He created a law enforcement agency that ran with extreme abuses of power, operating outside the judicial system and enacting personal vendettas through misinformation, planting evidence, illegal surveillance, and harassment.

He held the position for so long in part due to his running log of secrets on presidents, threatening blackmail if they dared to question him. He amassed embarrassing details on fidelity and sexual lives of politicians.

He had a long list of enemies and used the bureau as a personal propaganda machine.

They labeled every social justice movement as communism, and anyone who held views he didn’t like was on the docket for retaliation.

Here is a list of some surprising women targeted by this corrupt FBI, and their “offenses” were proof that this country has never supported free speech like we claim to.

1. Eleanor Roosevelt

   

   You know I’m going to take every opportunity to talk about my favorite historical figure. Hoover hated her. Especially when she accused the FBI of acting like the Gestapo. She was incredibly progressive for her time, fighting for anti-lynching laws, voting rights, civil rights, and women’s rights. All things Hoover vowed to fight against. He wanted women quiet and submissive, and this Eleanor was not.

   They had a 38-year investigation on her, tracking “communist, anti-American” behaviors.

   The full file is available on the FBI website.

2. Helen Keller

   

   Surveillance on Keller lasted from the 1930s through the Cold War era. Keller was a well-known disability advocate, but she was also incredibly subversive. As a member of the socialist party, she criticized capitalism and used her platform to advocate for women’s rights, birth control access, and labor rights. She was a co-founder of the ACLU, and you can imagine what Hoover thought of protecting indivisual rights…

   Her full FBI file can be found here.

3. Aretha Franklin

   

   The FBI tracked any of Aretha’s association with Black Power movements. And they followed her for 40 years. She was close friends with Dr. Martin Luther King, a favorite of the bureau’s target list. The bureau did not like her involvement with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They looked for any sign of “violent acts” through her support of the civil rights movement. They never found any, but still tracked her until her death. 1

4. Eartha Kitt

   

   In 1968, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson welcomed women to a White House luncheon to bolster support for her husband’s political agenda. She invited Eartha Kitt because of her work with a non-profit organization aimed at reducing youth crime, and she had previously supported President Johnson’s legislation in that area. By this time Eartha had just hit a new level of fame due to her portrayal of Catwoman. Outspoken as ever, she pushed back about access to childcare, but she didn’t stop there. She spoke against the Vietnam War, stating how it disproportionately affected minorities.

   This bold act left her blacklisted from Hollywood. The FBI and CIA compiled a dossier, surveilling her and pushing the notion of her being “unpatriotic.” She couldn’t get work in the US for over a decade.2

5. Lucille Ball

   

   The FBI liked to hide behind “communist” activities, and they used this as an excuse to open a confidential file on Lucy, who registered to vote under the Communist Party in 1936 and 1938. In 1953, she was brought before the House Committee for Un-American Activities to testify about her allegiances. They continued to track her. I have to think that Hoover had an issue with her power. She was a bold powerhouse in Hollywood who married a Cuban man. It was well known that Hoover disliked Desilu, their production company, for making “The Untouchables.” He was jealous that the movie gave credit to Treasury agents for fighting Capone—and not the FBI.

6. Lorraine Hansberry

   

Lorraine Hansberry was the creator of A Raisin in the Sun and Hoover took personal issue with this story. The FBI monitored the progress of the play even before it premiered on Broadway. Prior to that 1959 debut, they tracked Hansberry seven years earlier, concerned by her association with a Harlem-based newspaper which called out racism, labor abuse, and colonialism. Hoover had a special dislike for Black writers, constantly worrying about their influence. They tracked Hansberry for years through multiple successes on the stage, amassing over one thousand pages, which only stopped after her death. 3 4

And a few bonus names I couldn’t leave out:

I often think about Charlotta Spears Bass.

Though you may not have heard her name, she was a powerhouse in the civil rights movement. She devoted her life to fighting the KKK through her newspaper, documenting the Klan’s lies in an attempt to bring down Black leaders. She sued the KKK for libel and won. She was the first Black VP candidate when the progressive party nominated her for their ticket. She supported voting rights and turned her garage into a reading room and voting registration site. Even as a bedridden 90 year-old, FBI agents were positioned outside her nursing home to monitor for any subversive activities.

Josephine Baker spent the war years smuggling Nazi intel to the Allies in invisible ink on her sheet music, and returned to a country that wouldn’t serve her food at a lunch counter. So she fought for equality, and landed on the FBI list with her visa revoked. They followed her for years.

These women were powerful because of their voices. Their unshakeable commitment to truth and their audacity to question authority. Never underestimate the power of your voice. Your message. Words and inspiration sent these ladies to the top of Hoover’s watch list. But they never backed down. They embodied courage and didn’t let intimidation soften their message.

If you want more stories of women who broke the rules, check out my book The Secret Courtesan. And thank you for reading Badass Women in History.

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An author interview once asked what my before and after was. A life change that altered me so deeply, it created a rift between the me before and the me after. I found it an odd question, since the rest of the article was lighthearted and silly.

I answered the obvious. My father’s death. The day my daughter was born.

My generic answers never really answered the question. Those moments changed many things, but they didn’t change ME. Because I hadn’t yet experienced a true upheaval of the self. Not until recently, anyway.

Everyone thinks growth looks like a powerful phoenix. It doesn’t. It’s ugly and messy, like a blind raccoon with rabies. In writing, we put our characters through a dark night of the soul—a moment where everything they’ve built must come crashing down because staying still hurts more than change ever could. Forced growth where characters release their misconceptions with no promise of what’s on the other side.

I’ve known struggle and pain. All too well. I’ve been on a lifelong spiritual path to become a better person and have spent decades in therapy. And still, I hadn’t ever really had a before and after moment. That life-altering, earthquake-shattering cliff that life shoved you off of.

In crashed spring 2026.

If you’ve followed my page, you know I hit a mental health spiral—okay, fine, we’ll call it a breakdown—in March. It was hell. And as I come out the other side, I see now that it was my moment. My life before could not lead to my life after.

That’s what that question meant.

Anxiety and panic attacks and OCD brought me to the brink, but the brink was really shoving me through a plate of glass that would peel the skin off as my nervous system shoved me through. Sometimes, in wound care, they will introduce micro-wounds to induce bleeding to grow good/healthy tissue. Cuts to bring healing.

This breakdown was a long time coming. It was childhood trauma mixed with stellar coping skills (insert laugh emoji), avoidance, and the realization that I’ve lived longer than my father did, when I think I expected to get sick young, just like him. Since March, I must face the truth. I can’t and won’t live one more day as the me who’s screeched by on fumes, propped up by survival and grief.

The old me died during that spiral. And I don’t mean that metaphorically. I am a different person now. The old me was a shell anyway. A patchwork of lies I believed and insecurities I fostered. I’ve built so many walls and obsessions to manage, but the perimenopausal version of me roared to the surface to set fire to those rules, and left me not knowing who the hell I am without them.

I couldn’t go back to normal because “normal” is what got me here. Normal was the bad place.

Who are we without our trauma?

For too long, I lived life in a deficit.

Always running toward a goal I hadn’t reached or an accomplishment I hadn’t earned. Time was running out instead of time happening right before my eyes. Creativity and writing were not exploratory, they were another thing to conquer. Growing up, I had to be small and easy and not have needs so I didn’t rely on my unstable mother. I hyper-independenced (yes, I made that a verb) so hard in my life that I forgot to simply live. Soak in the moments and not let fear over all the “what ifs” decimate my joy. Any of you OCDers know exactly what I mean. I pushed myself to exhaustion and found new levels of fatigue even farther down because I am nothing if not an overachiever.

I’ve avoided silence because silence is where the bad thoughts take over. Emotions were simply something to solve, and nothing would come at me I hadn’t prepared for. My mind was my superpower. And it turns out, that superpower ran out of juice. My new power is silence. Quiet. Rest. Living from abundance because I refuse to allow mental health to rule me any longer. Believing I deserve it. That’s probably the biggest shift of all.

I read recently that life will crash you hard right before you level up. As I sit here in my backyard, writing to you under the falling buds of the apple tree, I tend to agree.

Colors are brighter. Literally. I lay in bed in the mornings, listening to the birds outside my window I had never noticed before. I was too busy jumping out of bed to get to work. Must conquer the world today, after all.

Like many of you, I learned to read a room like a world-class champion. I thought I was an empath. Maybe I am. But I read the room to prepare. I soaked in every person’s emotional state and avoided the ones who would upset mine. The world was terrifying, exhausting, and no amount of counting, breath-holding, or compulsive behaviors would fix it. I know, how very rude.

Turns out, I had to stop fighting. Stop pushing. Stop living like the scared little girl who knew no one would help her.

This is my before and after. The month my body and mind revolted to show me how to become the person I was always meant to be. I think we spend most of our young lives living in the remnants of a survival-based performance, committed to succeeding at who the world made us into, and somewhere along the way, we find the quiet, weird kid with big dreams and a voice that roared. I’m coming back to her. And I see now how that glass I had to walk through was all for her.

Cuts to bring bleeding so I could finally heal.

One could call this a rebirth, but I call it coming home.

What is your before and after? I’d love to know.

More history coming your way! I will release a second substack this week with a story of a historical woman who will leave you in awe. But first, I had to bleed on the page just a little. Wounds don’t always heal themselves—sometimes an audience of readers helps push the growth along.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my Substack, so please buy my historical fiction book about a female artist erased by history, or click the link below for more ways to support me.

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I hadn’t planned on writing anything for a few weeks, as every time I look at my personal computer, I get a wave of grief, but this morning, I wanted to write. I want to talk about humanity. I’ve had a shot of its best recently, because of me being at my worst.

I’ve always had anxiety. It’s been this ever present thump in my chest since middle school. It retreats, it flares. I manage, I suffer, I breathe. I move on until the next wave decides to crash down.

A few months ago, another cycle reared up. This was different, but that sneaky bastard is a shapeshifter, so I figured it was just a new avenue for torture. My obsessive thoughts escalated. My physical symptoms tightened and twisted. Things that usually give me joy brought panic.

I decided to go back on meds. Now, I’ve jumped on and off the SSRI train a few times over the years. They usually work wonders to get me out of the mess and stabilize me for a while. I don’t like being on them long term because of side effects, but I knew this flare up was escalating and I needed help.

I started on a low dose of one I’ve used previously. First few weeks I began having increased symptoms. Nothing new. I know I get a few awful weeks before the relief kicks in. But this time, week 3 was worse, and week 4 worse still. I went from not managing to borderline crisis. Persistent, daily panic and dissociation that would retreat for only short bouts of time. I’d never been in a cycle this long before.

After a family trip for spring break where I couldn’t sit through a movie, and endured panic attacks that lasted hours, I decided to stop the meds. This wasn’t working. I called my doctors office several times but the answering service kept leaving messages and saying they couldn’t get through. I needed help and I was afraid to go into the weekend without knowing how to taper off these things.

I stopped in the office at 4:40 P.M., wide eyed and teary, my kid in tow. This is where the humanity starts, and the goodness that sprinkled my next week is what brought me to the computer today. The usually serious receptionist took a look at the messages I left and said “Here.” She handed me a fidget toy.

A fidget toy?

I started spinning it and the weight of this Robert Langdon looking tool felt good in my hands. The spinning actually took the edge off. “I have anxiety too,” she said. Then she pulled out her coloring books to show me how she gets through her days. She asked the nurse to come talk to me and said, “We’ll get you some relief.”

I nearly burst into an ugly cry right there at the counter.

The nurse came to speak with me and decided she would sneak me into the doctor’s last slot. The nurse spoke to me about her meds and her struggle with mental health. The doc sat with me well past 5:00, asking details and letting me feel like I had some control in the situation. She gave me a plan to taper, and an as needed prescription if things got tough.

They got tough.

The panic spun tighter and the dissociation louder. Whether it was a day I took the SSRI or I didn’t, it was all the same bad. I couldn’t connect. I went to Costco on Saturday, forcing myself to grocery shop with my husband. Do it scared, they say. I stopped at the pharmacy and the tech made light conversation about my Stevie Nicks T-shirt, a conversation I couldn’t follow because my vision was blurry and I the dizziness had kicked in. His name was Dave. He told me the med wouldn’t be in until Monday.

I just wanted to get the hell out, back into the fresh air, back home, where I could panic in peace. I went to put my card back in my wallet and he noticed me shaking. He took another look at the med and said, “You know what? Let me see what I can do.”

As he worked to put this through as urgent, he talked to me a bit, saying how sometimes the meds that should help send you for a loop. He normalized it, didn’t shame me, and pushed through that med in 10 minutes. Dave made me happy cry for the duration of the day.

I went home and took this prn med (which is really mild and should have been like taking Benadryl) and it knocked me on my ass. Sent me to sleep for 12 hours and left me feeling high and dissociated all through the next day. Easter. Another celebration stolen by anxiety.

The next few days were horrendous as my nervous system went into overdrive. I couldn’t focus on work. No amount of meditation, exercise, or rest could touch it. My usual anxiety tricks were useless, and sleep just brought on more panic attacks.

At this time, my husband came home from work, brought me calming tea, and held my hand while I cried on the front porch. He held me until my breathing calmed. He walked with me around the block and distracted me with jokes. My daughters brought me tea in bed.

When I skipped my monthly coffee with local writer friends, they sent me flowers. My best friend walks with me daily and talks me through every up and down, asking every day what she can do to help.

My sister took over Easter so I could lie on the couch.

I fessed up to my boss, who admitted that he, too, struggles so intensely with anxiety that he has passed out at work a few times.

A coworker saw a social media post and sent me a message about his own mental health and addiction, with a note about how proud he was of me and what an amazing person I am.

In the worst time of my life, I found what I have always been looking for—the feeling of not just being loved, but believing I deserve it.

I slept without a panic attack last night, and this morning, I was shocked to feel hungry. Today, I have acupuncture and therapy, two more women who make me laugh and keep showing up to help me through this.

I have much healing to do, but I’m doing it with an army of kindness around me, and that will bring me back home.

Please be patient while I take a break from history posts. I will return stronger and sassier, I promise.

xoxo

Kerry

Type A overachievers to the front. We need to talk.

I’m 48, and fresh off the worst mental health spiral of my life. We took a lovely spring break trip to Victoria, B.C., and I spent over half of it in and out of panic attacks and dissociation. Back home, panic attacks woke me from sleep, and I spent my day working through trembling hands, nausea, and yes, more dissociation (which is probably the worst of it all if you ask me). My mind was stuck in obsession, fight or flight, and pure panic that I was losing my mind.

I’m in therapy. I work out daily. I’m on meds. What the ever loving fuck is going on?

Something brought me out of it. One moment of clarity, and my entire world came to a whooshing stop.

I heard someone say how a common trauma response is fear of quiet. Quiet is a welcome mat to entice the ghosts of your past. Come in, torture me, if you please.

I have spent my entire adult life avoiding quiet.

I am an antisocial introvert who works fully remote and spends hours alone. That’s not what I’m talking about. Even alone, I fill my every waking breath with mental distractions. I’ve been going so hard for decades that my nervous system put me into crisis just to wake me the fuck up.

At one point, I was working two jobs, 60 hours a week, training for half marathons, and working on my doctorate degree on nights and weekends. Housecleaning is a mad dash to finish so I can get to the next thing on my to-do list. I get an adrenaline hit with the little game I like to play called “How fast can I get my work done today?”

This is not normal.

Even now, as a working mom of two kids, I pack every minute with something to keep my brain moving. I write fiction at 5 a.m. until the day takes off. I work my day job in healthcare, eating lunch at my desk and listening to writing podcasts in the background. I write a weekly Substack and a monthly newsletter, create social media content every chance I get, and somehow still pack in 10k steps a day and weight training 3 times a week.

You can do this. It’s possible. And it will wreck you.

Perimenopause isn’t all bad. It’s the time of life when your body and mind whack you across the head and scream at you to wake up. Your body will no longer allow you to abuse it. Your mind begins to stand up for itself. Old patterns crumble to dust, and your coping skills go up in flames.

And for me, anxiety pushed me into a mental health crisis because it was trying to save me.

I finally listened.

I realized I had been so self-reliant that I confused joy with overachieving. Proving everyone wrong became my identity. Publishing rejects me? I’ll build a platform and sell my books, and MAKE you notice me. You tell me I can’t be a writer? I will work a full-time job and lose sleep to make this dream happen. My abilities for self-determination and motivation turned around and began gnawing at me from the inside.

My superpowers were no match for my anxiety. That bitch actually loves me. She traumatized me until I saw what she was trying to tell me: You’re killing yourself, and I need you to stop.

The moment I heard her, she released her claws.

I am begging you to please, slow down. Rest. Leave space for wander and daydreams. Take a walk to hear the birds and feel the sun on your face. Read, paint, bake, garden, stare at the flowers and smile. Cry. Watch your dog sleep. Anything that isn’t tied to success and outcomes.

Get comfortable with quiet.

Overachieving doesn’t gift you strength like you think it does. True strength is sitting in the fully awake moment of your life and feeling ALL the feelings. It’s listening to your highest calling, but never allowing it to take control of the wheel. When we become a passenger to our ambitions, we’ve lost more than strength.

While in my spiral, I gathered a list of historical women who found a way to thrive, despite mental health problems. I may be coming out of the storm, but it will always be with me, on alert, prepared to act if I once again fall behind. And I need examples of women who never let the storm topple them. Here are a mere 5 of the many who inspire me:

Ynés Mexía:

Ynés Mexía spent ten years under the care of a psychiatrist in San Francisco for a mental and physical breakdown after two divorces which financially devastated her family ranch in Mexico. An entire decade she suffered through severe distress, often spending hours in bed. During this time, she became involved in conservation and took healing trips into the redwoods of Northern California. As she recovered, her interest in environmental studies grew, and she enrolled at UC Berkeley at the age of 51. In her 13-year career as a botanist, she traveled solo or with indigenous guides through Ecuador, Peru, and Denali National Park. She collected over 145,000 specimen, 50 species were named after her, and she categorized over 500 plants.1

Clara Schumann:

Born in 1819, Clara grew up under the instruction of her pianist father, a tyrannical man who controlled every aspect of her life. He even wrote her diary entries until she was married. A gifted musician, she made her concert debut at age 9, and composed music throughout her childhood. She went on to have a 61-year career where she composed 66 pieces, many of which are still performed. She had 8 children in 13 years, who she cared for during her husband’s struggles with severe mental illness and who ultimately died in an institution. Her children faced numerous tragedies, from mental illness to drug addiction to tuberculosis.

All this forced Clara into her own battle with grief, anxiety, and emotional distress. Imposter syndrome caused constant anxiety, and she returned to performing after her husband’s death so she could support her children, having to endure panic attacks backstage. She made fundamental changes to the way piano recitals are performed, and her teaching spread throughout the music industry for years to come. She was one of the first pianists to perform from memory. 2

Billie Holiday:

A childhood of trauma and sexual abuse set her up for a lifetime of struggle, but Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan) would battle her mental health and change the face of music. Her father died because of denied medical care based on prejudice, and the court took her from her mother. After release from a Catholic boarding school, she worked in a brothel and was the victim of childhood sex trafficking. Facing extreme racial harassment and drug addiction, she spent a year in prison. But none of this stopped her from singing about racial injustice. She suffered from extreme depression, but devoted her life to music and influenced decades of musicians that followed. 3

Ada Lovelace:

With depression and probable bipolar disorder, Ada self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. All of this would influence her work as she became the first woman programmer. Her father was Lord Byron and her mother was a controlling mathematician. Ada suffered through mood disorders and bouts of mania as she developed the first algorithm and discovered that a computer could follow a set of instructions. 4

Mary Wollstencraft:

British philosopher and feminist, Mary wrote groundbreaking ideas about women empowerment and advocating for women’s education. She suffered through periods of extreme depression, anxiety, and survived two suicide attempts. Her childhood with an abusive, alcoholic father never left her, but she still created a platform for gender equality and pushed for societal and legal changes to society in defense of women. Her daughter was Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. 5

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Mental health. It’s a buzz word, a stigma, a catch-all term. It’s been co-opted by capitalist greed under terms like self care.

Here’s what it means to me.

It’s spending my life living with extreme anxiety and panic disorder, only to receive the missing piece at 48. I now have a diagnosis of OCD, and it’s left me with the searing awareness at how often women are overlooked and gaslighted by a system who refuses to listen. I set out to bring you a list of women who went on to do amazing things despite mental health challenges. That piece will come out next week. Today, I want to shed light on the historical bullshit that swirled around women’s rights and the way people threw around the diagnosis of insanity to shrink and control women.

Elizabeth Packard’s story will make your blood boil. But stick with me, the payoff is worth it.

A legal doctrine called coverture paved the way for extreme laws in the 1850s that viewed women’s identity as nonexistent outside of their husbands. It stripped married women of property, legal rights, and the ability to earn wages. This allowed men to forcefully institutionalize their wives without any proof of mental illness. Behaviors deemed “insane” could be as minimal as disagreeing with one’s husband, holding differing religious beliefs, or requesting a divorce. Since the legal system viewed wives as property, they had no legal custody of their children or representation by the law.

Elizabeth Packard was born in 1816 Ware, Massachusetts. Her father was a Calvinist minister, and she attended a female seminary. Her exposure to varying beliefs would plant the seed for later challenges.

At 19, she suffered what was known as “brain fever.” Modern theories point to encephalopathy, but in the 19th century, this was labeled as a form of hysteria, rather than an infection that caused high fevers and delirium. The treatment included bleeding and purging. Her father committed her to an asylum for 6 weeks. Elizabeth felt that the treatments were far worse than the illness, and thus began a lifelong mistrust of the medical system. 1

Once fully recovered, she married a Calvinist minister who was 14 years older. This unhappy union bore 6 children. After a move to the Midwest, Elizabeth began to question their Calvinist teachings after engaging in the most dangerous of acts—reading. Her preacher husband was disapproving of her exploration, growing more and more restrictive as her voice grew. She dared express her beliefs on abolition and women’s rights at a Bible study, prompting her husband to have her committed to Illinois Hospital for the Insane. 2

The required two letters from doctors could be done by interviewing the husband and never performing a single exam on the woman they were committing. Elizabeth’s history of “insanity” made a strong case for Theo to toss her away without rights.

She assumed this would last a few weeks, and her husband would allow her to return home. She remained in the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane for three and a half years, denied contact with family or friends—including her children—all at the behest of her enraged husband for the crime of religious curiosity and independent thought.

She was subjected to physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the staff. She met numerous other patients admitted by their husbands for “acting out” which included offenses like reading novels. One patient was 5 years old.

Elizabeth, being the independent thinker that she was, began organizing prayer groups aimed at improving treatment of patients. She reported urine-soaked floors, spoiled food, and physical punishments. As her popularity grew among the women, the director placed her in solitary for “disrupting the inmates.”

She was finally released, most likely because she became too problematic for the director. In 1863, her doctor declared her incurable, and she was finally released at the age of 47.

Except now, she was a prisoner in her own home. Her husband continually threatened to have her committed every time she disobeyed him. He locked her in her room and nailed the windows shut, shut off the heat, and refused to let the children visit. He instructed them not to interact with their “insane” mother. 3

He tried to have her placed back in the asylum, but the staff refused, claiming she was untreatable. He worked on a plan to get her committed for life in a Massachusetts asylum. All because she had the audacity to think for herself.

Amazingly, Elizabeth was able to slip a note to a friend, who enlisted the help of a lawyer, and a trial ensued. His only proof of her insanity was her wild religious beliefs. Thankfully, a jury deemed her sane.

She was free.

But during the trial, her husband had sold their home, discarded her clothing, and moved the children out of state. She was penniless, homeless, and still married to this monster.

She made a bold decision to detail her time in the asylum and submit it for publication. With books in the works, she gave speeches and lobbied nationally for women’s rights and mental health reform. With everything stolen from her, it would have been easy to give up. With help from friends, and a raging sense of justice, Elizabeth worked with state legislatures to create mental health reform in four states. Known as “Mrs. Packard’s Personal Liberty Law,” this guaranteed everyone accused of insanity, including married women, a jury trial. Mary Todd Lincoln received a jury trial in 1875 under this law when her son declared her insane. 4

Elizabeth influenced 34 bills in state legislatures, and a national law protecting inmate’s access to mail.

She petitioned the court and won custody of her three youngest children.

By the late 1800s, another incredible woman would carry on the fire Elizabeth started when investigative journalist Nellie Bly went undercover at Blackwell Island. Read more about her in my article here.

I think of all the women who didn’t have a friend to slip a note to and all the women who never found a way out of the system intent on subjugating them. Thanks to women like Elizabeth Packard and Nellie Bly, women like me have access to the pinnacle of mental health: being seen by those who have the power to help.

Thank you for reading badass women in history. I don’t monetize my substack, so if you’d like to support me, please buy my book, The Secret Courtesan, or click below for other ways to support me:

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We’ve become such a loud society.

Screaming at people is celebrated, physical altercations are rampant, and it’s common for people to shame those who don’t engage in those activities.

We’re all tired and walking the line between staying informed and doom-scrolling into the early morning hours, coasting on caffeine and cortisol spikes, reminiscing about the good old days when pocket devices didn’t rule our lives. This increasingly viral world hits us with the misbelief that screaming at people online is somehow activism.

Eleanor Roosevelt would like a word.

With a substack titled “Badass Women in History,” you might think I celebrate women who punched and humiliated people. But this title means something deeper. I celebrate women who knew deep in their bones that they would follow their passion, regardless of the societal fallout. Sometimes, they did it knowing they would fail, or that they would never receive recognition. I celebrate women who fought for justice and equality by living true to their purpose while kicking down the pillars of the patriarchy so other women could rise up too.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s style of activism was going behind her husband’s back to try to pass an anti-lynching bill. It was driving to a civil rights speech with a loaded pistol in her glove box because the KKK had a bounty on her head. It was sitting in the middle of the aisle of a segregated meeting without saying a word. She lived by her favorite uncle’s policy: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Her activism was about doing the next right thing, knowing it would be unpopular. The louder they yelled, the firmer she became. Her strength came from an unwavering belief in truth.

Septima Poinsette Clark was a revolutionary in the civil rights movement.

We often don’t hear about her because she believed in knowledge and education, focusing on voting rights and community activism. She wasn’t on a stage or the face of a movement, yet she made powerful, lasting change.

Ida B Wells style of journalism fought with the power of written truth.

She boldly documented lynchings, breaking apart the whitewashed narratives presented to the public. She used a forensic style of research that identified how mobs form and what systemic lies facilitated them. 1 Her power was in her written word and the unflinching bravery of speaking against the system.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a time for loud.

Emma Goldman gave passionate, angry anti-government speeches in support of labor rights. She was an anarchist who was arrested and deported.

I believe in the Julia Sugarbaker style of communication. You absolutely should speak out against misogyny, injustice, racism. To hell with “tone.”

This is not the same as trolling the internet for people to attack from behind a blank profile pic. This is not the same as believing that sometimes a level head and firm stance can get you farther than starting a brawl with the bitchy customer next to you at Costco. This is not the same as walking through life, fists raised, in search of people you think aren’t fighting hard enough.

As the main character in my book, The Secret Courtesan says, “You can’t change the world by fighting every ridiculous man in your way.” Recognize what drains your power, and where to put your energy.

If your personality is the kind to run for office and hold impassioned speeches, do it. Awesome. Most of us aren’t that. I’m a highly sensitive introverted author who struggles with mental health and selectively leaves the happy bubble that is my house. My ability to brawl is nonexistent. But I can be firm in my opinions and straightforward with my words. I can write about women’s history to motivate and empower readers. I can channel my rage into work that shows us a blueprint for how to resist. How to live from a place of power.

Not all of us are Julie d’Aubigny, the cross dressing, bisexual, opera singer who fought duels and set a fire at a convent to rescue her girlfriend. 2

Some of us are the quiet ladies by the window in WWI and WWII who used knitting and crochet to track movements of enemy troops through dropped stitches.

I’ve said over and over again on this page how women who followed their passion, quirky interest, or oddly specific hobby, went on to fulfill their purpose and often changed the world. The little girl who loved drawing and documenting mushrooms would begin illustrating nature—Beatrix Potter dreamed of becoming a botanist, but ended up authoring one of the most iconic children’s stories. Madame Tussaud was forced to use her sculpting skills to craft wax heads of those guillotined at the French Revolution and built a somewhat strange but lasting cultural moment.

Toni Morrison worked as an editor for Random House, bringing Black voices to mainstream fiction that would have otherwise never been given a chance.

Every one of us has a part to play. Some change the world with fiery voices and physical acts of resistance—hello Joan of Arc. Others by quietly, meticulously devoting their life to their art and craft.

Edmonia Lewis committed to sculpture, despite overwhelming odds against her as a Black and Native American woman. She became a PR pro, crafting stories to help her sell her absolutely stunning works. No fanfare, no shouting, just simply beautiful art that opened doors for women like her.

In WWII occupied France, some people hid Jews in their attics. Others kept the secrets. Each of us can play a role to do the right thing, and often that role comes quietly, without going out in a blaze of glory.

I never want to give the impression that being a badass woman equates to aggression. To me, control and passion are the marks of a woman who knows what’s right and will not allow the world to bend her.

There is no one way to be strong. Sometimes that’s loud and forceful. Other times it’s quiet and subversive. And frequently, it’s letting your quirky self free. The world will try to break you, and this moment can make us feel helpless, like we aren’t doing enough. Don’t think for one minute that the time you spend making art isn’t the best example of badassery. Voice and expression change the world.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack. If you’d like to support me, please buy my book The Secret Courtesan, or click below for more ways to support my work.

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This piece has been living inside me for damn near two years.

I’ve ruminated on how to approach this subject, while taking time to listen to all sides before putting words to these feelings. I’m here now to tackle it. And some of you are going to be angry.

Women’s bodies have always been objectified. After reading about history for decades, I’ve come down to the idea that men look at women’s bodies (not the humans inside) as otherworldly, and therefore, must conquer them. When something isn’t understood, those in power assume it is theirs for the taking, to own, ogle, and explore. They remain mystified by our bodies to this day.

Women have, not surprisingly, found ways to maintain power in that imbalance. I think the basis for this substack lies in this truth right here. Some women fought to break the system that objectifies them. Others help the patriarchy by attacking those who push boundaries. I’m always in search of the breakers.

For a few years now, we’ve seen the onset of drastic physical changes in the famous people on our screens and in our feeds. From intensive plastic surgery to gasp-inducing weight loss, the altered reality of what is considered “beautiful” morphs right before our eyes into something we’ve never seen before. Every curve sucked and starved. Protruding bones. Wasting muscles. Previously already beautiful women now appear gaunt and skeletal. They appear unnatural.

They appear weak.

The rise of GLP1s has revolutionized bodies. It’s an incredible tool for weight loss and treatment of many health issues. It’s also getting abused—but we aren’t supposed to talk about that. In the interest of honesty, you should know that I tried one. Perimenopause hit me like a fucking hailstorm, and the weight I gained pushed my labs into unhealthy territory, despite daily exercise and a healthy diet. Two doctors suggested meds, and I had tried everything else.

I was on it for one month, and it made me so sick I felt like I had the flu. Brain fog made it nearly impossible to work, and I spent Christmas in bed rather than with my family. But I lost some weight. Yay? These drugs aren’t right for everyone. Stop pushing the idea that they are. I don’t believe we should shame anyone, either. But hell, why are we so dichotomous? They can be transformative for some. For others, dangerous.

But every time we show up to have a conversation about unhealthy messaging around women’s bodies, there is a crowd of people (often women) who want to shut us down. The message is, don’t shed light on the places we’ve worked so hard to keep dark.

Criticism of skinny culture has nothing to do with attacking skinny people. It has to do with the societal pressure to make every woman fit into one body expectation. And this latest one is extreme.

Skeletal frames on the red carpet and on film are beyond disturbing. Is this what has to be done to get work? When we call it out, there’s always someone there to say, “Stop commenting on women’s bodies.” Or “I’m a size 0 naturally. Stop shaming women.” “Maybe she has health problems, you don’t know.”

Hear me right now. Calling out the systems that say we are not allowed to age or have normal body shapes is not bullying women. And those who say that are doing one thing: working overtime for the patriarchy. Silence gives a giant megaphone to those in power who want women small and pretty and quiet.

If you are naturally a size 0, we aren’t talking about you. If you have a health problem that caused rapid weight loss, we aren’t talking about you. If you are a famous singer or actress who, at sixty years old shows up one day flaunting your new terrifyingly skinny figure that you achieved through 900 calories a day and attributes it to a vegan diet and Pilates? Yeah, it’s okay to question what the fuck we are doing. Don’t “not all men” this situation.

We need to celebrate all bodies, not just the ones that prove how hard we can restrict ourselves.

I purposely never put up images of the women I’m talking about. I never call out names because these women have been victimized enough. But you bet your ass I’m going to talk about the trend to make women small. We all know GLP1s cause muscle wasting if you don’t actively work to reduce it. We also know that increased muscle mass protects against dementia and osteoporosis. So when already thin actresses take these meds so they can walk around in a skinsuit hugging their bones without any fat or muscle getting in the way, I can’t NOT say something.

That world is not real. I get it. And I am so far removed from caring about what actresses look like. But my daughters aren’t. My self-esteem and confidence attempted to bloom during the years when Jessica Simpson was considered fat at a size 6. Where we were told Bridget Jones couldn’t get a man because of her wobbly bits. Kate Moss was the epitome of beauty, with heroin chic dominating our media. I spent years restricting myself to get my size 4/6 body to look “bonier,” despite being hailed as a skinny girl.

Every show talked about women’s eating habits. Every girl I knew was on some kind of diet. Even the tiny ones. A friend in college said she loved going to bed hungry because she could feel her stomach concave against her hip bones. It didn’t matter if we were already skinny. We were trying to be smaller.

I am still untangling my fear of carbs from those years, and my new love of fiber has been a revelation.

This new trend makes those years look benign. These silhouettes are terrifying. I scroll Instagram and come across women who look barely alive pushing a “healthy lifestyle.” I’m not exaggerating here—I had to block a few because it hurt to look at the sharp line of their cheeks and ribs. Women in the comments, in an attempt to be a “girls girl,” talked about how beautiful and strong they looked.

Tell me, please, at what point are we allowed to speak about dangerous messaging? As women develop health issues from excessive weight loss, as they die young, develop early dementia, fractured bones… or are we still expected to stay silent under the guise of “supporting women?”

Girl boss mentality. On the surface, it’s empowering. But it asks that we climb existing power structures built for our oppression. Because you find a few free rungs, should you climb it? Hustle. Sacrifice. Live under the rule of patriarchy and prove how hard you can work to exist there.

Ultimately, all this is the same story. Society teaches us to seek validation. Acceptance. If we are not liked and approved of, it’s the end of our survival. It’s the simplest, most powerful lie that has had us in a chokehold for centuries.

They don’t want us strong. They don’t want us loud. They don’t want us accepting our bodies—and let’s be crystal clear, we will NEVER attain whatever impossible standard they set. The capitalist machine needs us to loathe our fat and our skin and our hair and our nails because then we will be on a constant quest to buy products.

A man commented on my social media post about this subject with, “You are promoting obesity by shaming skinny women.” There is such fear of fat in this society that we see “healthy” as stick thin with a thigh gap. And we see a discussion about societal obsession with bodies as bullying.

Ultimately, we are fucking terrified of women owning their power. And there is no greater power than to stop feeding the beast. That beast is male approval. Chasing youth. Silence over the very dangerous display of excessive thinness. Because beauty standards like this aren’t about being thin. They are about compliance.

Taylor Swift said something I have never forgotten. “There is always some standard of beauty that you aren’t meeting. Because if you're thin enough, then you don't have that ass that everybody wants. But if you have enough weight on you to have an ass, then your stomach isn't flat enough. It's all just fucking impossible."

Even when you comply, there is another hurdle to jump.

This struggle is not new. I’m currently working on a story set in Gilded Age high society. Beauty treatments for women during this time included: Swallowing arsenic to make skin translucent. Putting poison belladonna drops in eyes to make them sparkle. Painting skin with lead makeup for a pale complexion. Mercury for reddened lips. The ultimate beauty was to look like you had tuberculosis, and women poisoned themselves to get there.

This substack is a place to honor and celebrate historical women. Every woman I highlight has one thing in common: they refused to live under the expectations of the patriarchy. They followed a passion or belief that made them a target because they did not fall in line with what was expected of them: silence, politeness, beauty, and serving men.

And here we are, still fighting this same battle. I want more women to be like the historical ones I share on this page. Fuck the expectations. Set fire to the fear of stepping out of line. Burn every insecurity to the ground. Aspire to be strong, not skinny. Put your health first, but don’t starve. Eat the fuel you need and don’t feel guilty about it. Speak out about how unhealthy skinny culture is. The next generation of girls is watching. They’re listening. And I want them to be the first in centuries to spend more time celebrating their brilliance than demonizing their bodies.

I’m still in the process of shedding the need for approval. That teaching runs deep. Be ungovernable. It’s our best asset, and we don’t use it near enough.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack. Click below for ways to support me. And buy my book, The Secret Courtesan.

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In 1899 Cage Springs Canyon, Arizona, a couple held up a stagecoach. The woman had cut her hair short, dressed as a man, and brandished a .38 revolver, ordering the passengers to file out of the coach so she could raid their pockets. She realized how easy this job could be by how the scared men left their revolvers on the seat and followed their instructions.1

This woman went by the name Pearl Hart.

Her life story is the stuff of legends. A blend of facts and lore make her childhood hard to trace. She was born in Ontario Canada, moved to Toronto sometime in her childhood, and left a boarding school at sixteen to elope.

Her husband turned out to be abusive and drug-addicted. She left him and headed west, taking up with a dance hall musician. She frequented brothels and gambling halls, and when her new man went to war, she moved to the mining town of Globe, Arizona. Here, she would have an affair with a drifter named Joe Boot.

Since they were low on cash, Pearl got the wild idea to rob the last of the stagecoaches traveling through the area. Interesting choice, seeing as how neither had any experience as bandits.

They surprised a coach and stole $421 dollars from the terrified men. Pearl felt bad for the passengers and gave each back $1 so they could buy themselves lunch. 2

They weren’t very skilled at bandit work, so they were easy to track down. A sheriff arrested them four days later. The press went wild with the notion of a female robber, and Pearl was happy to oblige. She learned how to spin her story and step into notoriety, hosting photographers and reporters in her cell, while playing up the role of woman criminal.3 Gives Roxy Hart vibes, doesn’t it?

She was so good, she convinced the guards to help her escape. She was caught again, creating even more intrigue.

Her trial was a sensation, with Pearl playing up the demure woman, out to find money to care for her sick mother. She told the court, “I shall not consent to be tried under a law in which my sex had no voice in making.” While this was another attempt at manipulating the jury, her words still ring true—with badass wit. She makes an excellent point that we still struggle with today: How do we operate in a world that is built and upheld by men with the intent purpose on domination and subjugating women?

The jury bought her story, and acquitted both bandits. But the prosecutors couldn’t let it go. They brought another case against them for mail tampering, and had them arrested again.

While her accomplice received a thirty-year sentence, Pearl only received five. Neither would carry out their terms. Joe Boot snagged a prison job doing fieldwork, only to walk off the job one day, never to be heard from again. Pearl was up to her usual antics, making such a sensation that the federal prison in Yuma gave her a private cell with visitation privileges. After eighteen months, Pearl claimed to be pregnant.

The governor didn’t want to deal with explaining how a female inmate ended up pregnant, and he pardoned her on December 19, 1902. Of course, no child materialized, but Pearl Hart was free.

The rest of Pearl’s life is a mystery. Some reports have her hitting the Vaudeville circuit, while others say she traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Many historians claim she settled down with a rancher for a quiet, boring life.

We don’t know, because she dropped off the historical record. Maybe she quit while she was on top. Or maybe, she continued her antics with a bit more secrecy. You decide.

What a ride, Pearl.

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It is exactly then that we need art the most.

I’m fascinated with subtle art forms, and how subversive they are without alerting the system that it’s being attacked. I often see comedy as one such vehicle, hiding scathing social commentary under laughter. Photography also gives me this feeling of quiet revolution. A viewer can feel outside their world view, without knowing how or why. Photography can rely on our inner world to stir outrage through a searing truth we don’t see in our everyday lives.

The famous photograph, “Migrant Mother,” is one such photo.

We instantly see the struggle. The exhaustion. The terrified children.

Dorothea Lange took this photo in Nipomo, CA, in 1936. Dorothea remarked later how the woman asked no questions. She told her how they survived on frozen vegetables from nearby fields and birds the children killed.1 She had sold her tires to buy food.

You don’t need that background to understand, do you? You see the Great Depression deep in this woman’s eyes, and feel her plight, even without context.

Lange documented working-class people and poverty with a gritty, stripped-down approach, but she did so with dignity. You can feel that in this photo. I don’t admonish this woman in the photo; I want to hug her.

Lange took these photos as part of the Farm Security Administration’s attempt to document the challenges of migrant workers through the New Deal. This program also employed Sanora Babb, whose notes were stolen and given to John Steinbeck without her approval. He used them to write The Grapes of Wrath.

Dorothea grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey. She came down with polio at age seven, which caused her to walk with a limp for the rest of her life. This disability challenged her in many ways, even humiliating her. She felt this experience gave her empathy, especially toward anyone “othered.” Her own fight gave her perspective on suffering. That’s what her camera picked up.

Her mother wanted her to be a teacher, but she dropped out of school and followed her passion for photography, opening a portrait studio in San Francisco. After the stock market crash in 1929, the world turned upside down, and she felt the pull to capture how the depression affected the most vulnerable. Her portrayal of the devastation held moments of pure desperation, but amazingly, grit. As if her images were saying, see me, but don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve still got some fight.

Lange used her camera as activism, hoping to spark societal change. She said, “The world is potentially full of good photographs. But to be good, photographs have to be full of the world.” 2

She photographed labor strikes, bread lines, farm workers, disadvantaged Native Americans, and industrial workers.

In 1941, she became the first woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship. But shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she gave up the award to commit to the Japanese internment camps.

During WWII, she worked for the War Relocation Authority, documenting the relocation of Japanese Americans—but Lange did it her way. Her images weren’t just documentation. They told a story of upheaval, trauma, and a nation dropping into irrational fear. The federal government suppressed these images during the war because they were too sympathetic to the internees.3 They needed the public to believe the lie that imprisoning citizens was for the safety of the country.

Even Lange herself didn’t see them for twenty years.4

If that doesn’t prove the power of subversive art, I don’t know what does.

Her images are haunting. It’s as if they hold a spotlight to the enduring human spirit, while also wagging a shameful finger at the country that forgot its people.

Even when she worked for the government, which enacted and promoted these policies, her approach never wavered.

Her pictures weren’t pretty. They weren’t glamorous. They were real American experiences, brimming with brutal honesty. She worked with “social documentary photography,” often including direct quotes from her subjects and adding her observations.

Lange chose her career over family, leaving her first husband and two boys (as well as stepchildren) to follow photography, and a second marriage. During the Great Depression, the boys bounced in and out of foster care, as she pursued a career that kept her on the road much of the time. She maintained a complicated, strained relationship with her children until her death in 1965.

Lange spent her final months preparing for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). This one-person show would be the first dedicated to a female photographer.5 Sadly, she didn’t live to see the final exhibition.

Early in her years as a mother in 1929, the family went camping in Lone Pine, CA, and during a thunderstorm, she had a spiritual experience. She reports it as an “awakening” where she was being called to document all walks of people. She made a promise to herself not to follow money, but to follow the story.

And that she did.

For more on Dorothea’s life, check out the Rebel Yell Podcast’s latest episode. The host, Amy, believes in art as resistance, and meticulously documents those artists who inspire us to resist too.

And please make your art. Tell your stories and push into the side of life where truth matters. In times like these, your voice is the most subversive tool you have.

Thank you for reading. I don’t monetize my substack, but if you’d like to support my work, please click the link below for suggestions. The best way to support me is to buy my book, so I can bring you more stories of badass women in history.

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Around 1986, I had a moment that would change my life. But I wouldn’t realize it at the time—or even for the next several decades—because I was only 8, and I couldn’t know one fleeting thought would set the course for my life.

That moment was a singular musing. I didn’t voice it, but it stayed with me, lingering in the background, pulling me back again and again.

My father was a US history teacher who held his honors class in our living room every Thursday. From the time I was a toddler, I watched high schoolers discuss history. They were animated and loud. They filled the house with laughter and heated debate. And behind the couch was little me, listening and taking in the unique weekly occurrence with awe and intimidation.

As I sat there and listened, a question popped in my head. Were there no women in history? This isn’t hyperbole. At 8, I truly thought women just weren’t around until recently. History only spoke of presidents and war and kings. All men. If we did exist, I guess we just were in the background, not doing much of importance.

This is the message we send little girls when we don’t teach their legacy.

Looking back, I see that one moment as the one that changed me. Believing there were no women stories to honor imprinted on me a sense of unimportance. I wasn’t important. Men deserved the spotlight, the platform, the world. My spot was behind the couch, hidden and silent.

My life took a turn toward a career in healthcare. I wanted to study English and history, and my father said it was impractical if I wasn’t interested in teaching. He chose my major, and I never thought to question it. He was larger than life, and at the time of my college acceptance, dying. I wanted to make him proud, so I let him dictate my life.

My education became a way to honor him.

Even after he passed away during my junior year at Oregon State University, I never considered changing majors. This was the path set for my life, and I was hell-bent on proving I could do it. I went on to get my masters degree and then my doctorate degree, wracking up piles of student loan debt. All for a career I never wanted.

It wasn’t until I turned forty that everything fell apart. I had two kids that mattered more than the job that was ruining me. I quit my life. Truly. We sold everything we owned. And I mean everything—from the house to the silverware. We left California to move across the country where I could afford to be a full-time mom and settle my fried nervous system.

It was in a long winter in Bozeman, Montana, watching my babies nap, that I finally asked the question, “Kerry, what do you want?” I wanted to write. I was too afraid to say it before then. Somehow still afraid to disappoint my father (who had been dead for 20 years). Friends, our minds are a weird fucking place.

I’d been writing secretly for years, never finishing anything because I was the girl behind the couch, remember? Who was I to think I could be a writer? I wasn’t strong enough to choose my own life, and certainly wasn’t allowed the spotlight. I pulled out a little project I had hidden on my computer 15 years prior. And I wrote. Every morning, every naptime. I secretly ignited a long dormant part of myself. And everything I wrote asked the question, can women’s history have the spotlight now?

Everything changed. I changed. Not overnight, because nothing happens that way. Tiny fractures appeared in my view on the world. I read more. Wrote more. I built a community of writers and devoted myself to craft. I dove into research, aghast at the stories I uncovered. Women who were warriors, resistors, spies, pilots, scientists, inventors, athletes, record-breakers, philanthropists, financial geniuses, tattooists, balloonists, sculptors. Our history is rich and layered and powerful and tragic. And I knew none of it.

None of us do.

Then the rage set in. Who would every little girl be if she could hear these stories, showing her what is possible? I never asked how far I could go. I lived in other’s expectations. Other’s spotlights. Other’s worlds. Midlife me was going to blow up all I’d been taught.

I published books that centered on strong women from history. Tales where WE are the heroes of our story. Where WE are the main characters. I built a social media platform about my writing.

But I was too afraid of the anger. Women aren’t allowed to be angry. I softened my message, asking for permission to put women in that spotlight (are we seeing a theme?). Every angry comment and wave of resistance shrunk me a little more.

A few nearly sent me into hiding.

One day I cried for hours over a whisky, looked at myself and realized, I was still hiding. Still very much afraid of taking up space. My husband (who was gifted with the IDGAF gene) said, “What if you just say what you want to say and let people be angry?”

Just let them? How does one do that?

At a writers retreat last spring, I realized something that would change my entire life. I was holding my hand over little 8-year-old me’s mouth. I was telling her women stories can’t be told if the men in power don’t approve. Telling her to shrink for other people. I was showing my daughters that we retreat when things get tough.

That weekend saw more tears and a whole lot of writerly love from my community. I drove home with new focus. That weekend I crafted a reel that reached six million views. I refocused this substack. Though I’d published several books already, I completed a manuscript that changed everything. Who I’d always been—shy girl hiding behind the couch with a fire raging in my belly—well, she finally came roaring out.

Badass Women in History is the deepest part of myself searching for light. It’s my insecurities, my hope, my anger. That manuscript I finished? It was my ninth, and the first one that rose from that place that started in 1986. It’s me, raw and ragey and feminist, celebrating the women history erased. It’s for me and it’s for you.

The Secret Courtesan published today. A lifetime of work and emotion in one story about a historian who will stop at nothing to prove the existence of a female sculptor, even if it ruins her.

Please consider ordering this book to support my message, and the continuation of our collective movement in women’s history. No more hiding behind couches, silently waiting for someone to give us access. We decide right now that we already are fiercely important, and we write our own stories. We reclaim history for us and for our daughters.

Thank you for letting me share my world with you.

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