Women of the Week
We women are everywhere. Our stories matter. Our stories are gospel, even and especially in the face of excruciating circumstances and blatant injustice. We rise. We fall. And we do it together.
Dearly Beloveds,
Today’s Substack is a roundup of the Women of the Week—ones who made the headlines, ones who didn’t, but should, ones who love me personally, ones whose work of love, justice, and mercy keep the world spinning.
After all, we women are everywhere. Our stories matter. Our stories are gospel, even and especially in the face of excruciating circumstances and blatant injustice.
We rise. We fall. And we do it together. Thanks be.
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#1 Susan Kay Livingston McKeever (my mom!)
On my 42nd birthday last Monday, April 15, I wrote the following about my mom:
Since becoming a mother myself I’ll never not think of and celebrate my own mother on my birthday again. How she grew and changed and softened and breathed me into this world. How she loved me. How she fed me. How she mothered me…
What I know today on my 42nd birthday is this: it does me good to remember what it felt like to be held. Because even here, even now, when I get quiet and still enough, I can remember…I am held. I am loved. We are held. We are loved. Always. Forever. Amen.
#2 Women Activists in Sudan
Shaza Bala Elmahdi and other women activists in Sudan have been working for peace and the return of democracy for decades. Learn more here.
#3 Caitlin Clark and the WNBA
Though the WNBA draft, which took place Monday, April 15, shattered the previous record for viewership from 601K in 2004 to 2.45M this year (WOW!), the increased attention on Caitlin Clark and the WNBA highlights major inequities in pay, viewership, collective bargaining, and more between the WNBA and the NBA.
This article helps explain these issues as institutional ones, which means no one player or one group of people can make it right. What we can do is keep watching women’s sports with the gusto and energy with which we watch men’s sports and advocate for the institutions to change.
#4 Black Mamas in the U.S.
Black Maternal Health Week (organized by Black Mamas Matter Alliance) was April 11-17, and its sole purpose each year is to raise awareness, inspire activism, and strengthen organizing for Black maternal health. Black women are 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women in the U.S. This is not okay. Learn more about how you can join the movement for justice and change here and here.
#5 Women and Girls in Gaza
155,000 women in Gaza are pregnant or breastfeeding and an estimated 5,500 are expected to give birth in the next month amidst destruction, bombs, violence, disease, starvation, and more. Read more about this crisis here. Offer help here.
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“What good are our prayers on Sunday if they make no meaning in our lives on Monday?” —from the Glossary of Blessed Are the Women
May the stories of women that we read and pray and learn and see move and transform us today, tomorrow, forever.
Let us pray. Make us instruments of Your peace. Peace that stands on ancient, sacred ground amid all conflict, rage, astonishment, and turmoil. Peace that speaks truth, challenges systems, uproots lies, and dares to transform that which is into that which might be. Amen.
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See you back here next week, beloveds.
Love,
Claire
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Blessed Are the Women is available at all major booksellers and at your local bookshop and library upon request! She makes a beautiful gift for Eastertide, graduation, Mother’s Day, and more. Purchasing options here!
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