Your Own Timeline – What Does It Say About Where You Are Today?

Driving back from Ithaca along beautiful lakes and rolling hills, I eased into Auburn. I’ve driven the road a hundred times going to the Finger Lakes to produce events for women entrepreneurs. I often noticed the little white house situated behind fences and a historic blue metal sign saying “Home of Harriet Tubman” but I never drove up the driveway. Yesterday when I saw it approaching, I finally turned in the driveway to satisfy a yearning to learn more about this historic woman.

The event building behind the notable home housed a museum including a long wall timeline of Harriett’s life and a passionate African American woman and man “acting” out Harriett’s plight and successes. I couldn’t help but notice the white and black children in the audience listening with awe. It was a surreal experience to be sitting in this space a day after I told a group of 15 women I was going to only use $20 bills with Harriet Tubman’s face on it at my women’s business events to celebrate a woman on currency. It also came the afternoon of the first female presidential candidate accepting her party’s nomination. As I drove home, I was so filled with female pride. Pride watching 20 women at my event working hard to make their business dreams a success. Pride watching the event speaker highlight Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon in 1967. Pride hearing about Harriet Tubman’s amazing life and how hard she fought for her cause; and pride in watching Hillary Clinton deliver a stellar speech with girls and women cheering her on.

This morning as I opened an email from one of the women’s causes I follow, it had a timeline of historic female moments that led to last night’s brilliant moment. It was a timeline about women finally rising in some areas of equality. The timeline made me think about Harriet’s timeline as well. It reminded me we each have our own timeline.

As my life changes this year as my two sons finally leave the area we live in, I look back on my own timeline to see my own feminist timeline. It started in 1964 being born to a woman who fought to leave a traditional Italian upbringing to go to college. It developed in 1979 at the age of 15 when I put together an all girls slate to run for our class board. It arose when the first female board member of the alumni association of my college tapped me on the shoulder at 17 to lead a high school initiative. My feministic approach to life arose again in 1992 as I fought to turn my full time position into a part time position in my higher education job to be with my sons more. I occurred again three years later when I created my first company to use my intelligence to continue to earn money while being an active mother. It happened when I stepped into the spotlight as a leader in women entrepreneurship in the early 1990’s. And it developed when I created a Women’s Athletic Network in 2014 for women to enjoy sports together and put more women in the seats at women’s college games to show our support.