Welcome to Indigo Women

Welcome to Indigo Women.

This is a place for women who are curious about who they are, where they have come from, and the women whose lives have gone before them.

I believe that history is not simply something that happened in the past. It helps shape the way we understand ourselves, the world around us, and our place within it. Yet so much of women’s history has been overlooked, forgotten, or told only in relation to the men, families and events surrounding women’s lives.

What happens when we begin to look more closely?

What might we discover when we find the women who came before us and begin to understand their lives in the context of the times in which they lived?

And what might happen when, through knowing something of their lives, we begin to see something differently about our own?

These are some of the questions that have brought me to Indigo Women.

For me, discovering women in history has been more than an intellectual interest. It has changed the way I see myself. Hearing the voices of women who lived long before me — through their letters, diaries, stories and traces left in the historical record — opened a window into a world I had not known was there. In a very real sense, my world became bigger.

I have come to believe that there is something powerful in that experience.

Sometimes we need to know that women like us have existed before us: women who navigated expectations, made choices, endured circumstances, found ways forward, created lives, challenged conventions, cared for others, took risks, and sometimes simply found ways to survive.

Their lives were not all extraordinary. And that is part of what makes them important.

Indigo Women is interested in the ordinary as well as the remarkable — in the everyday lives of women and in the social, cultural and historical worlds in which they lived.

It is also interested in what happens when women begin to explore their own stories.

Here you will find reflections on women’s history, family history, ancestry, identity and the connections between them. I will share stories from my own research, ideas that have emerged through my work with women, and thoughts about what we might discover when we begin looking at the past through women’s eyes.

Most importantly, I hope Indigo Women feels like a safe space.

There is no particular way you need to be a woman here. There is no particular story you need to have. You don't need to know anything about genealogy or history. You may simply be curious.

You are welcome to look, wonder, question, remember and discover.

Perhaps you will find a woman in your family history whose life makes you curious.

Perhaps you will discover that something you had thought was simply a part of your own story has a much longer history.

Or perhaps, as happened for me, you will find that looking for women in the past somehow helps you see yourself a little differently in the present.

That is the possibility that interests me.

Because sometimes, when we find women who have been hidden from the story, we find a little more of ourselves too.

Welcome to Indigo Women.