There are women who grow peace in pots

And dream the world green again

Who burn the midnight oil

Weaving repair into the fabric of this game

Sending words over airwaves

Dreaming of when

We’ll all gather again

And in the meantime

Casting vision around the world

From one country

To the next

A constellation map

For the women learning to see in the dark

There are women who grow peace in every crack

Hey, y’all. I’m Amanda with One Million Grandmothers. I’m showing up here to tell you a story.

As women, we too often render ourselves for everyone and everything, always seeming to draw from some invisible well of reserve that often has no source of replenishment. My granny Kit Josephine came from nothing in the company town. When she made it, and she did, her generosity was her calling card. No need that ever crossed her airwaves went unmet. She’d drive her Lincoln to the grocery store and load it up, and she’d take it home and turn that abundance into her unique brand of medicine: southern fare. There was not much a meal from her couldn’t fix. To this day, people remember her for that special something in the food she’d serve you. It was simple, she was dishing out love in every spoonful.

Women hold the fabric of this place together, unraveling tangled threads and smoothing them out to be rewoven. Rebecca D’Agnilli is one of the great weavers of the way forward. She has given her voice, her resources, and her essence to amplify the voices of the marginalized, exiled, erased people of this earth. Her heart beats with the pulse of this whole thing. She never asks for her self, only for the other…for the Mother. She’s not asking for this now, but she’s allowed it because first and foremost she is a mother. And there’s nothing a good mother won’t do for her babies.

Bex and her family treasure the outdoors as a place of peace and as way of connecting in a way that doesn’t diminish resources. Bex is master at finding and meeting needs. The way she loves her kids and does everything she can to provide for their needs is wild. For one of her kiddos, fishing is her peace. As an autistic child, the water and the serenity of nature are where she’s most at home. It’s a passion she shares with her dad, Paolo. Every lure has a story, of the northern pike they caught on that one fishing trip, or that one that they tied together.

Early on the morning of Sunday, September 13, Bex and her family were robbed. Their packed truck, full of the outdoor gear they’ve gathered for many years, Paulo’s work equipment and tech, and tools they were going to sell to make the money go a little further, was emptied. The value of what was lost wasn’t just $5,000. All the touchstones of memory tied up, carried off into the night.

It’s not just some stuff, it was Paulo’s mobile office, the rods and reels, copper to scrap to have a little more to make another birthday something other than another day, tools to eat dinner on the beach. These are treasures gathered and collected. Blood, sweat, tears, and time exchanged to gather these memory-making tools.

Let’s give Bex a taste of her own medicine. There are so many of us whose own hearts have been cracked open by hers, let’s show her how it feels to be on the receiving end of generosity. Thank you!