It’s actually Day 4 because somehow I missed Day 3, but here goes anyway. It’s International Women’s Day, after all, and I just saw Suffragette at the Vineyard Haven library.

For more about the 3 Quotes, 3 Days challenge, see Day 1.

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Adrienne Rich, “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying”

“Women and Honor” is a sacred text to me. At the opening night of the first writers’ workshop I ever attended — the 1984 Feminist Women’s Writing Workshop, held in Aurora, New York — we listened to a tape of Rich reading it.

I’d already read it several times. My copy of Rich’s On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966–1978, which includes it, has “May 1981” scribbled inside the front cover. But hearing Rich read her own words, as 18 women came together to focus on writing, our writing, and each other — this was powerful.

This is why I write. This is why I try to speak my truth. This is why I get so impatient when women with so much truth to tell hold back for fear of being wrong or giving offense.

Even though at every step of the way I know why we hold back.