One of the complicated experiences I’ve had in connection with my mother’s death has been the process of cleaning out her house. It has brought me sadness, frustration, surprise, happiness, grief, joy. And memories—so many memories. I have found photographs of my ancestors that I have never seen before, and even a postcard written by my great grandma Amy (who I was named for) to her daughter Florence (my grandma) during the weeks after my mother’s birth. I found an amazing black-and-white photo of my dad’s mom, Elsie, riding a horse, and learned later, when I told my uncle about it, that she didn’t only love cats; she loved all animals and was a skilled horsewoman.

I have wondered why we have so many more photos of my grandma Florence’s side of the family than we do of my grandpa Fuzz’s; I would also love more photos of my great grandma Emma.

Sometimes I have felt the presence of my female ancestors gathered around me, sharing something of themselves with me. Like being hugged by a ghost.

I have been reminded that women writing their own life stories is a radical feminist action.

I’ve read ever little scrap of a story written on the back of a photo in Florence’s or Elsie’s handwriting. I’ve had a secret hope that somewhere in my mother’s house I would find a notebook or a journal or even just a few loose pages written by someone, by any one of those hovering ancestors. To read and so to remember and carry with me something they felt, or learned; an opinion about a war or a politician or a neighbor; an impression of a sunrise or a flower or snow falling at midnight.

I didn’t find anything like that. When I told one of my sisters what I had wished for, she said “women didn’t have time to sit around writing their stories back then,” which only made me sadder. Men had time to write their life histories (I know of several in my family line). Many times they were assisted by their wives. It’s not that they didn’t have time. It’s that they weren’t given time, and they didn’t know their lives also held worth and so they should take the time. So their voices are lost, and all I have left are their black-and-white images, their precise cursive on the backs of photographs. Their wavering, ghostly embraces.

What I did find was a catalog of objects. Pretty dishes, statuary, trinkets. Jewelry by the boxful. Clothes, shoes, scarves, coats, jackets. Unfinished porcelain dolls. Almost-finished afghans. Pieces of quilts not yet assembled. Yarn. Old dolls. Old pans, an ancient pressure cooker, a pair of ice skates. Dusty framed pictures. An envelope with my mother’s hair and her baby teeth. Photographs, in no discernible order. A box full of Elsie’s bills from the 1950s and 1960s. Christmas ornaments, Halloween decorations, plastic Easter baskets scrawled with each grandchild’s name.

All of the contents of a person’s house, to sum up. The gathered collection of a life’s worth of accumulating stuff. And, yes: this sorting has been complicated. I can’t keep everything, my sisters or their kids can’t keep everything. But every object we choose not to keep feels like a rejection of her, somehow.

And in this process, one of the most overwhelming categories was Mom’s fabric. She had so much fabric. Like Smaug’s horde, only calico and florals and flannel baby prints instead of gold. (That sounds judgmental, and while her fabric stash made me deeply sad, I’m really not judging her; I understand the impulse of buying stuff you’re going to make something with. I mean…have you seen my scrapbook supplies?) The story of sifting through her fabric horde deserves its own post, but to sum up: everyone we know who likes fabric took some. One of my mom’s friends, me, Becky, Suzette; our nieces; our nieces’ friends, my friends, my friends’ sisters. In the end, we still had five packed-to-bursting boxes full of fabric that we are donating to various charities.

Yesterday, we took a box of brightly-colored flannels to an organization called Days for Girls. They make menstruation packs for girls in developing countries, to help them so that they are still safe and comfortable going to school when they are having their periods. When we dropped it off, they gave us a little tour of their space. There were about fifteen women working there, all volunteers. Sorting fabric, cutting, sewing, serging, assembling the bags. When the bags are taken to the girls, they are given individually, by an actual person, and the girls also receive education about their bodies, pregnancy, consent, and, if appropriate in the country where they live, some self-defense skills.

I held my mother in my heart as I learned about this project.

I had all of those female ancestors whose faces and bits of stories have been with me for the past six weeks, gathered at my shoulder.

And in front of me, an image of the girls and women my mother’s fabric would help.

Those ancestors shaped her, she shaped me, and my little part in helping will shape, in some small way, the lives of women I will never meet.

I think feminism is one of the most misunderstood concepts of our time. Men misunderstand it on purpose because it threatens their power structures. Women who misunderstand it do so, I believe, from a place of fear that is also tangled up with power. To find your own abilities and strength—your own power—you do have to first disconnect yourself from whatever power was controlling you, and that is sometimes a naked feeling, especially at first. I also think there is fear of being too strident, of coming across as a man-hater or as power hungry or, God forbid, as ambitious.

But my experiences this year have reinforced my belief in the power of women. We only need to realize that we are also worth something, independent of other sources of power. Our stories, voices, talents, experiences matter, and not in an oh-you’re-sweet kind of way. There is power in embracing who you are and then sharing it with the world. We each influence each other. I have learned from women writers, teachers, mentors, friends, family members, neighbors. Strangers. Other runners in races whose encouragement has kept me going, our lives so briefly connected for two or five minutes but yet changed for the better despite the briefness.

We have what we have: knowledge, skill, emotion, intelligence. Our interests, our history, our way of doing things. Even our possessions. And when we turn outward to help each other, we are claiming our power.

Suellen, Florence, Amy, Emma, Merle, Annie, Lizzie. Becky and Suzette and Michele. Haley. Cindy, Anna, Kayci, Lyndsay, Jacqui, Brittney, Breann, Madi, McKenzie. Chris, Wendy, Jamie, Julie, Margot, Midge. Reading friends and quilting friends and scrapbooking friends and running friends. You reading this—you reading this. Women making lives better, in small and large ways: There is a richness here that is burbling and growing and will continue to change the world.