For the second week in a row, I find myself mourning the loss of a trailblazer. The world lost a giant last week. Gloria Steinem, feminist icon, journalist, and tireless advocate for women everywhere, passed away at the age of 92. For those of us who admired her, the loss is profound. For me, it is also personal.
Gloria Steinem was a fellow Smith College alumna. Long before I knew her work well, or had had the opportunity to meet her, that fact alone created a sense of kinship. And the more I learned about her life and her convictions, the more that kinship deepened. Here was a person who believed, as I do, that showing up for one another is one of the most powerful things we can do.
When I read her memoir, My Life on the Road, she won me over completely. It was this passage that did it:
“When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.”
She went on to say that she had become a person whose friends and hopes were as spread out as her life, and that the one common element was the road. I love that sentiment deeply. The idea that one of the great gifts of a life well lived is the collection of people we gather along the way.
That spirit, I think, is the thread that runs through everything she did. She didn’t advocate for women from a distance. She showed up. She traveled toward people. She listened. She believed that real change grows from the ground up, from communities and individuals doing persistent, quiet (well, sometimes loud), courageous work every single day.
She lit a lot of signal fires over the course of her life. It’s up to us to keep them burning. We’ve got this, Gloria, rest easy.