The voices that hold space in my head

"It wasn't meant to be."

Mom said that so often, the words still play through my head at least once a week, even through I've always had a very different take on the world. I don't believe things are meant to be or not. They are what we make them. Mom was not a religious person. She never talked about a god (unless she joked that maybe there was a goddess?), but she was raised in a religious family, and there was an element of faith and preordination that was deeply ingrained in her. It came out in her way of speaking. And now her voice is forever in my head. The things she said again and again will always be with me.

My mom in 2013, visiting Alaska.

She told me once that she talked to me nonstop when I was a baby. I know this was her way of showing me her love, and helping me learn about the world. Then, one day, when I was about two years old, and not long after I had learned to express thoughts, I interrupted her dialogue and said (as she put it) politely, but firmly, "Mom. Be quiet." Having time for silent contemplation is still a non-negotiable for me.

But now, more than 50 years later, I would give anything to hear her voice rambling on, sharing her thoughts about the world. I feel a bit angry at my two-year-old self for telling her to shut up. I'm not sure she felt as free to talk with anyone as she did with her children. And, I didn't know until very recently, there was so much she was holding inside.

In the first few years after her death, I heard her voice in my head all the time. I had long conversations with her about life, the world, our family - I could easily imagine her responses, her opinions, her thoughts. But that changed on the day I learned that she gave up a baby at the age of 19. There was one thing in this life that she could not tell me, and in death she has no voice in my head on this matter. Instead, I felt emotions - my own and hers, mixed together. There was loss, and surprise, and wonder in learning about the son she lost - in learning that she had grandchildren.

Since that day, her voice has gradually returned. But she's much quieter. I hear the same thing from her again and again, "It wasn't meant to be," she whispers to me, and I know these are the only words she has to say about all the things she buried deep inside her in life. She believed this baby was meant for someone else.

I think her voice is also growing quieter because the world is changing so fast that parts of it would be unrecognizable to her now. There are things happening that we did not imagine 11 years ago, just before she died. I like to think she died feeling certain that Hillary Clinton would be the next President. I'm glad she cannot see how all the changes made in her lifetime that allowed women to have a voice in the world are being pulled back. She would have something to say on this.

But I know she is leaving this one up to me. Her voice is still inside me, along with the voices of all the women that came before us - my grandmother and her mother, and all the mothers who came before them. When I speak or write, I feel all of their voices building in me, all of the words they couldn't say for themselves in their lifetimes move through me and out into the world. I have all of their voices, all of their secret hopes and dreams, filter into my work and my words. I feel every decision they made that led me to being here now, with the privileges I have.

I am the first woman in this line of women to have a public voice, the first to own her own house, the first to finish a graduate education, the first to travel the world on her own. The first not to have her own children (maybe the first to not feel obligated to have children). And that makes me the last in this particular line of women. I have been so lucky to experience so many things that my mothers only dreamed about. While I have no daughters, I still feel an obligation to do everything I can, for as long as I can, to ensure that the women who follow me have a voice (and a choice).

I still don't believe that anything is 'meant to be.' Our world is shaped by our thoughts, our decisions, and our actions. We are shaping a new world each day, built on top of the world we were born into. Every small action we take gives the world a new shape. This is what I hold in my heart as I try to find ways to move forward and support our fight for civil liberties, human rights, and a sustainable world -- I have an army of women behind me who have laid the groundwork. I am obligated to them and to all the women that come after me to show up for this and use my voice.

The women whose voices are in my head: My mother (the toddler) and my grandmother holding her. My great-grandmother (on the left), and her mother, my great-great grandmother, on the right.