• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Women's Legacy Project
  • Home
  • About
  • How To Curate
  • Our Collective Legacy
  • Writing Online Memoir
  • Blog
Women's Legacy Project > Blog > BE > Women's Legacy > A to Z > A to Z of Legacy 2015 > Family and Friendship in Legacy

Family and Friendship in Legacy

Written by: womenslegacy
Published: April 7, 2015 -- Last Modified: April 7, 2015
4 Comments

When I announced to people that The Women’s Legacy Project was launching in the near future I wrote:

I think I have found the connecting thread within and between my interests, writings, academic & educational areas of dalliance: women, information and legacy.  At first glance my interests may appear to be all over the place, but that is not quite the case.
Culture and demography delight me.  I grew up memorizing genealogies and visiting cemeteries as though they were historical parks.  The rather strange relationship I had with my mother fostered my early and ongoing interest in both the enabling and limiting constraints of women’s information systems, including the lack of historical depth in maternally linked information.  The feminine divine inspires me and the continuously added nuances to the exclusion of women as players in the “major” religions of today disturbs me no matter what the type of fundamentalist group doing it.
Whether it be the stuff of a trunk in the attic or truck bombs in the neighborhood, women are concerned about the legacy we leave to our children.  I have been an independent scholar for many years. While it surprised me to find legacy as the connecting theme in my writing, it should not have.  My father loved history and valued what community over time could fashion.  I am a cultural anthropologist by training and well-versed in the semiotic concerns of American Pragmatism.
Some of the recurrent topics in my writing over the years:

  • American Women’s History
  • Women’s Culture
  • Women’s Information
  • Feminization of the Internet
  • Life’s Work
  • Blogging as Women’s History
  • Women’s Legacies
  • Mother Earth and the State of the Planet
  • Genealogy and Personal History
  • The Creation of Meaning
  • Tools and Toys
  • Demography and Cohort Personality
  • Peace and Social Justice Movements

So I am fashioning a site and a project called the Women’s Legacy Project.
wlpCan a project last for decades?  That is my intention for this one.  It is not about my legacy, I have my memoir for that.  This project is beyond blogdom.  It derives from and extends beyond:

  • the meetup group I have coordinated for three years
  • the network of women writers and travelers of a certain age I have met and grown to trust as friends over the last seven years or so
  • the wisdom I gained as I cared for my mother as she passed away in her home at age 92 and then watched as my brother, who began showing signs of dementia around the time of her death, and from which he died within a few short years, mishandled everything for her
  • my knowledge and awareness of cultural processes that I see unfolding, developing, and filling new niches around me at an ever-escalating pace
  • my desire to share information with those who might find it useful

Family and friends are the stuff of my own legacy.  Mothers, fathers, brothers shaped me and all that I might leave behind one day.  But friends, from childhood, mentors that became friends, and the wonderful and inspiring women I have met via writing connections in the last decade have influenced me just as greatly albeit in very different ways than family.
woman-123150_1280
 
We take bits of the stories and lives of all those people we meet and incorporate them into our selves.  When we give of ourselves to others, we give them a bit of all the souls who have touched us up until that time.  When I view legacy this way it conjures up an image of a web of interconnection, of life energy and information that stretches out between the past and future the world touching a person and interweaving all the lives that have influenced another life in some small way.
 
 
 
 
——–
Day 6, The Letter F, April A to Z Blogging Challenge
 

Categories: A to Z of Legacy 2015, Mothers & OthersTags: april A to Z challenge, evolution of this website, influence, interaction, Legacy, networks

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org
Previous Post: « Evoking Essential Information
Next Post: Googling Gaia »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Phil Jackman

    April 7, 2015 at 7:42 am

    Very interesting. One of the things that I am trying to work on is getting more women into technology. Only about 20% of the workforce globally is female in the ICT industry and it seems to be getting worse. Google and Facebook have much lower percentages.

    Reply
    • Nancy Hill

      April 7, 2015 at 9:23 am

      I know. I went to a tech university, Purdue, although I studied something else, I learned to incorporate tech and analytic processes into what I do. Retrospectively, I should have continued with my “Fortran” coursework.

      Reply
  2. Shonna Slayton

    April 7, 2015 at 8:47 am

    What an interesting project. I have some similar interests in women’s history. For me, it comes out in my research and writing of historical novels. My current novel, Cinderella’s Dress, is marketed more toward the fairy tale angle, but a story spark that started it was when I learned window dressing for department stores was primarily a male occupation until WWII, one of the reasons being, in New York at least, women had a working curfew of 10pm and the window dressing went on well into the wee hours of the morning. So I set my novel in the 1940’s so I could get my main character into that job.

    Reply
    • Nancy Hill

      April 7, 2015 at 9:17 am

      Exactly. These bits of information can fill out and lend credence to a world of understanding. I will have to check out your work!

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Footer

Recent Posts

  • Ending, and Beginning
  • For Our Daughters
  • Stand and Write
  • Context and Little Things
  • A Month is Just a Month… as Time Goes By
  • Processing Two Very Different Deaths
  • A Dehydrated and Delusional Friend Found Wandering in 100° Heat
  • About Women’s Legacy & Hill Research
  • Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

Archives

Powered by
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
View my Flipboard Magazine.

© 2023, Nancy Hill, Women's Legacy Project of Hill Research Services, LLC

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Reject Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT