If one were to line up side-by-side everything I’ve written—essays (personal and journalistic), memoir, drama—one particular theme would resonate: the theme of rescue. The idea of woman as savior, or nurturer, is not new. Yet it is evident in all I write—as an undercurrent that carries my mother’s (and her mother’s) voice, roiling, churning, and boiling, ultimately disrupting my own notions of womanhood.

I imagine the theme of saving—either oneself or others—and how gender roles are purposed in the action. I question the intentions behind the act of rescuing (whether they are obligatory or selfish) and ask of the audience whether the right to rescue even exists at all. I challenge what it is we think we are rescuing and why.

I’ve surprisingly come to this realization only recently in hindsight. What I had understood of myself as a writer was simply that I choose to write about women: I write about my grandmother's letters; I write about my mother's tap shoes; I write about my inadequacies. I also write about saving rivers. Saving bees. Saving the world.

Until recently, I wrote from a private and personal space, reserving any notions of having an impact on the world, and just concentrating on the authenticity of my experiences. Yet from this authentic perspective and the encouraging feedback audiences have provided, I now recognize my potential to create a wider reaching awareness of what it means to be a woman in this world.