Feeling alive... by Liz Flaherty #RomanceGems

May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive. - Fennel Hudson

May is the fullest, most poignant, and arguably the most beautiful month of the year. Fifty-one years ago on the 26th, I graduated from high school. A year ago that day was my brother's funeral. My father-in-law's birthday is the 27th, our wedding anniversary the 29th. Our daughter-in-law Tahne was born on May Day. I met my husband in May a few days after he got his draft notice and two months before he left for basic training. Memorial Day is celebrated in solemnity and gratitude. The Indianapolis 500 is run in May, as is the Kentucky Derby.

This time is a microcosm of life-as-we-know-it. It is joyous and grief-filled in turn, exhaustingly busy but interspersed with gentle days of birdsong and flowers blooming and dinner off the grill. 

It has dark moments and a sometimes sagging middle. Times of sheer light and joy and times of happily-ever-after. It is populated with people we love, people who interest us, people we wish we could have somehow avoided. It navigates every emotion known to...anyone. It has excitement and passion and heartbreaking loss. 

May 29, 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. “And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”

On May 15, 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association.

May 20-22, 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman (and only the second pilot) to fly nonstop and solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregation of public schools "solely on the basis of race" denied black children "equal educational opportunity" even though "physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may have been equal. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

On May 21, 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.

Margaret Fuller, the first female foreign correspondent, and Arabella Mansfield, the first American woman attorney, were born in May. So were Golda Meir, Nellie Bly, and Florence Nightingale. (Many of these citations are available on http://www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/may.htm I went there to look things up and didn't want to leave... - lf)

The month of May is a romance novel, isn't it? Better some years than others, but full of everything that makes a good story. Strength, emotion, accomplishment, empowerment, relationships of all kinds. The woman’s journey told by ones who both understand and embrace it.

What a good time it is.