What if you tried to cook collard greens like the ones from the popular Carolina Kitchen (the ones folks stand in line after church on Sunday for), but you only had half the ingredients?

You’ve got the greens, sure. But no smoked turkey. No onion. No garlic.

And not a clue about the secret seasonings that make them taste like somebody’s grandmother prayed over that pot.

Now what if you tried to log into your Wells Fargo account, and remembered your username but forgot your password?

The money is yours. You know it’s there. But you still can’t access it. That’s frustrating. I’ve been there.

And here’s one more…

What if someone asked you to write your own life story, your family’s story, your people’s story, but told you that you could only use half the alphabet? Maybe just A through M.

You’d be searching for words. Cutting out the truth. Leaving out names, places, feelings, and facts that matter. You’d try. But the story would be incomplete.

And that is exactly what happens when history is told without fully telling the stories of women.

Half just won’t do. Not in cooking, not in banking, not in writing. And certainly not in history.

We want the whole story. We need the whole story.

When we tell just half the story, we only get half the truth.

That’s why Women’s History (HerStory) Month matters.

But let me say clearly: this is not just one month on the calendar.

This is every day!

Every day we should be honoring, learning from, and preserving the stories of women who shaped our families, our communities, our classrooms, our churches, our social justice movements, our businesses, and our lives. Every single day.

And I’m not just talking about women with a list of degrees after their names; or women with titles on office doors; or women on television, radio, YouTube or podcasts.

No., I mean women who gave us courage.

• Women who modeled dignity, discipline, faith, kindness, excellence, and grit!
• Women who changed the temperature of a room.
• Women who made us think differently.
• Women whose examples still live inside of us. The way we make decisions, solve problems, love our families, and respond to hardships.

There are countless women I could name, but today I want to lift three women whose lives touched mine personally: Isabel Wilkerson, Catherine B. Jolley, and Lillie Mae Taylor.

Not because they are the only women who matter, but because they each taught me something I’ll never forget.

Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize winner, brilliant author, and truth-teller, made history in 1994 as the first Black woman in American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting.

Then she gave the world The Warmth of Other Suns, that extraordinary book about the Great Migration - the movement of six million African Americans out of the Jim Crow South into the North and West. She spent fifteen years working on that book. Fifteen years. She interviewed more than a thousand people. That kind of work takes more than talent. It takes discipline. It takes determination. It takes devotion.

What makes her story especially meaningful to me is that Isabel Wilkerson was my American History student at Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C.!

When I attended her book signing, she said her love of writing and history began at Roosevelt. That touched me deeply. Sometimes you never know what seed you planted in somebody. You never know which word of encouragement, which assignment, which expectation, which push towards excellence helped shape a future giant.

The lesson I took from Isabel is self-discipline.

When I struggled through writing my own first book, Make Love, Make Money, Make It Last!, with my husband (Dr. Willie Jolley), I thought about her.

I thought of the patience it takes to tell a story well. The courage it takes to tell the truth without making someone the villain. The effort it takes to keep going when you are tired, frustrated, or just not sure.

• Self-discipline is what gets you started when you don’t feel like it.
• Self-discipline is what keeps you going when the excitement wears off.
• Self-discipline is how dreams stop being wishes and start becoming legacy.

Then there’s Catherine B. Jolley, my mother-in-law, an educator, a woman of grace, and a woman of uncommon kindness.

She taught high school. She sold World Book Encyclopedias. She sold vitamins. She raised two sons after her husband died of cancer when they were only 12 and 13 years old. Think about that. She was grieving, parenting, working, surviving, and still building!

When I married Willie, we moved into the attic of her home so we could save money to buy a house. Let me be honest. I did not want to do that. I wanted an apartment. I thought moving into that attic was a hard NO, but Willie was determined, and there I was.

And what changed my heart was not an argument. Not pressure. Not a lecture.

It was Ma Jolley’s kindness. Her thoughtfulness. Her generosity. Her spirit.

She had a way of making room for people, for possibilities, and for peace.

Ma Jolley taught me that kindness is not weakness. Kindness is power under control.

The lesson I learned from her is this: kindness in action can smooth out a whole lot of rough edges. A generous spirit can heal what pride would keep broken. There is always room for one more at the table. There is strength in being the first one to extend grace.

And here is another lesson she modeled very clearly: always have more than one income stream! That woman understood survival and strategy!

And finally, there’ s Lillie Mae Taylor, my mother. Businesswoman. Entrepreneur. Detail-keeper. Legacy-builder.

She only had an 11th-grade education from a country schoolhouse. But never mistake limited formal education for limited intellect. When she helped her parents with sharecropping and saw that they were being cheated, she spoke up. Because of momma’s insight, her parents worked toward buying their own farm.

That same business sense helped her and my dad build a beauty salon, a barber shop, a grocery store and a fast-food burger place. They worked so hard that I honestly thought taking a vacation was a sin.

My father was the visionary. And my mother was the detail person. Profit margins, accounting, payroll, taxes, insurance. She handled what made the dream sustainable.

The lesson my mother taught me is that strong women know how to wear many hats without losing themselves. They know when to nurture, when to lead, when to calculate, when to pray, when to push, and when to protect what matters most.

She also taught me this: if you are building with your spouse, guard the marriage while you manage the business. Speak with respect, even in disagreement. You can replace inventory. You can rebuild profit. But don’t be careless with your partner standing beside you.

And what should we do with all of this?

We take action!

Not next year. Not when life slows down. Not when we feel more organized. Not when somebody else gives us permission.

NOW!

The truth is:

1. We are carriers of the memories.
2. We are builders of families.
3. We are keepers of wisdom.
4. We are creators of culture.
5. We are protectors of legacy.

And far too many of our stories are sitting in silence.

If we do not tell our stories, somebody else will shorten them, distort them, or forget them all together. And once a story is lost, a piece of our identity goes with it.

Here’s what action looks like:

1. Speak to your elders.
2. Record their names.
3. Ask where your people came from.
4. Ask what they survived.
5. Ask what they built.
6. Ask who sacrificed.
7. Ask who prayed.
8. Ask who started the business, bought the land, held the family together, taught the children, kept the books, sang the songs, and kept hope alive when times were hard.

Women’s History Month cannot be a once-a-year conversation. It must be a lifestyle of remembering. A discipline of honoring. An urgency of documenting. A commitment to building.

When you finish reading my article, do something productive like…

• Call a relative.
• Write down a story.
• Start writing that book.
• Label those boxes of photos.
• Ask the questions.
• Mend relationships.
• Launch the business.
• Preserve your legacy.

HerStory is waiting to be told. And YOU must be the one to tell it!