A reflection for Women’s History Month

Every year when International Women’s Day arrives, I pause to listen to the voices that live inside my bones. They are not only my own. They belong to the women who walked before me: my mother, my abuelas, the women who crossed borders of land and silence so that the next generation could breathe a little more freely.

I have often written that the body remembers. My waist holds stories. My center carries memory. The curves of a woman’s body are not simply shapes, they are archives. Within them live migration stories, whispered prayers, kitchen table wisdom and the quiet endurance of women who survived more than history ever recorded.

As a first-generation immigrant who arrived in this country as a child, I learned early that women often carry the emotional infrastructure of families and communities. We hold people together. We translate not only language, but systems, cultures and dreams. We become bridges long before anyone calls us leaders.

Over the years, my work in immigrant advocacy has shown me the extraordinary courage of everyday women. Women who will do everything in their power to get their men out of immigrant detention. Women who wake before dawn to work, organize, pray and protect their children’s futures. Women who face systems not designed for them and still insist on dignity. Women who refuse to be diminished or disappear as designed by the patriarchy.

There are days when being a woman in this world feels heavy. We grieve together when injustice rises, when our communities are attacked by ICE, when war kills our children, when misogyny speaks loudly in the government’s inaction to do justice and when fear tries to shrink our voices. On those days, grief itself becomes a form of solidarity. Our tears remind us that we belong to one another.

And yet, we are also joy makers.

We gather.

We tell stories.

We write poems.

We laugh loudly at kitchen tables.

We celebrate life.

We bless our homes and neighborhoods.

We stand under the moon and remember that wonder still exists.

The women who came before us did not always have the luxury of dreaming openly. Many of them survived by enduring. But every act of endurance planted seeds. Today, those seeds bloom in our voices, our advocacy, our organizing and our refusal to stay silent.

International Women’s Day reminds me that our lives are not separate stories. They are braided together across generations and across borders. When one woman rises, she carries many with her.

I think of the young girls who will inherit the world we are shaping right now. What will they remember about us?

Will they say we were afraid?

Or will they say we were rooted and rising despite the challenges?

Today, I honor the women who shaped me, the women who walk beside me and the women who are still finding their voice.

May we continue to write, to organize, to nurture, to resist and to dream.

Because the story of women has never been one of silence.

It has always been a story of rising.