Persistence - Being heard

My grandmother - like pretty much every other woman in my family - was one to speak her mind.  I imagine it was because speaking at all was very difficult for her.  Born without a palate, it was a miracle she survived, let alone learned to speak - which she did through sheer persistence.  

I can’t say for sure that my grandmother was a suffragist.  I do know that she was a business woman, owning her own needlework shop in her home town of Gridley, California, in the early 1900’s.  I know that she was the executor for her brother-in-law’s estate - which was an unusual role for a woman in the first half of the 20th century.  I know that during the great depression she organized a WPA project to help poor women support themselves by making quilts.

Mamie Sala in front of her needlework store, Gridley California

But I also know that when the 19th amendment passed, my grandmother, then a farmer’s wife, worked to register women voters in rural Minnesota.  Herself a descendant of revolutionary patriots, she was frustrated by her German and Scandinavian immigrant neighbors who told her “Oh I couldn’t vote - my husband wouldn’t let me.”  My grandmother couldn’t understand passing up the opportunity to make oneself heard.  

To me, my grandmother personifies persistence.

“Nevertheless, she persisted” has become a rallying cry for women this year.  It means that we will continue - to vote, to speak up, and eventually be heard.