Where She Wrote, Where I Began Again

An International Women’s Day Reflection

Last summer, tears filled my eyes before I even stepped fully into the room. I was standing at the threshold of my hero, looking at the desk where she had spent countless hours putting pen to paper. Eleanor Roosevelt was a prolific writer for her time, but it wasn’t her writing that drew me to her.

It was her resilience. Her courage. Her refusal to remain small.

The Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park was breathtaking. Flowers in bloom. Trees lining the walkways. The Hudson Valley stretching toward the distant Appalachian Mountains. It was all beautiful.

But it was her bedroom that undid me.

I stood at the doorway, unable to enter, only to gaze. I wanted to sit there with my own notebook and write where she had written. To borrow the air. To press my pen into the same silence she once did. But the rope across the entrance reminded me this was sacred space. To be observed, not inhabited.

So I stepped aside and let others take their turn at the threshold, though I was certain none of them felt the weight of it quite the way I did.

I wandered through the rest of the estate, eventually making my way outside to the stables, then to the gardens. And there, quietly resting beneath open sky, were the graves of Franklin and Eleanor.

It was humbling to stand there and trace the arc of her life in my mind. Governor’s wife. President’s wife. Diplomat. Advocate. Writer. Champion for women. She did not simply occupy those roles. She expanded them.

With limited time, I hurried to Val-Kill Cottage, Eleanor’s chosen home.

Val-Kill was more than a house. It was a strategy room. A problem-solving lab. A place where Eleanor and her friends mapped out how to move Franklin from Albany to Washington. It was where she wrestled with practical questions like how to sustain Hudson Valley farmers through long winters. The solution became Val-Kill Industries, a factory that turned skill into livelihood when farming could not.

Even when the Great Depression shuttered the enterprise, the building evolved. After Franklin’s death, it became her primary residence. After her own passing, it was eventually restored, preserving the place where she wrote books, columns, letters, and policy ideas that shaped the world.

The walls were covered in photographs. She loved pictures. Every room felt layered with memory, evidence of a woman who understood that stories matter, that people matter.

When the tour ended, I planned to sit and write. To finally open my notebook. But a storm was rolling in, and I needed to outrun it on my Harley.

That detail feels symbolic now.

Hyde Park was my first weekend-long solo motorcycle trip. Washington, DC had been my first solo trip after my divorce.

And in Washington, something similar happened.

I had been walking along the Tidal Basin on a spring afternoon when I stumbled upon the Roosevelt Memorial. I expected to reflect on a presidency.

Instead, I found her.

A section dedicated to Eleanor Roosevelt. A statue. An inscription. A woman who, for so much of her life, stood beside power yet built her own.

I sat near her statue, my laptop balanced on my knees, and let inspiration take hold.

That solo trip to DC felt bold and fragile all at once. I was still finding my footing after the divorce. Still recalibrating who I was on my own.

Sitting there with Eleanor felt steadying.

She once said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

She did.

She endured public betrayal. She reshaped her identity. She stepped into global leadership when grief could have swallowed her whole. She advocated for women, for civil rights, for human dignity. She did not retreat into the shadows history had prepared for her. She expanded the stage.

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate women who broke barriers. But I also think about the quieter inheritance they leave behind.

Permission. Permission to begin again. Permission to take the solo trip. Permission to ride the motorcycle. Permission to build a life that reflects who we are now, not who we used to be.

At Hyde Park, I could not write in her room. In Washington, I did.

And maybe that is what thriving looks like. Sometimes we stand at the threshold and absorb strength. Sometimes we sit down and create it.

International Women’s Day is not just about honoring women like Eleanor Roosevelt. It is about recognizing that her courage did not end with her.

It continues in every woman who leaves a marriage and rebuilds. In every woman who takes the trip alone. In every woman who starts the business, writes the book, applies for the position, sets the boundary, or speaks the truth.

We do the thing we think we cannot do. Not because it is easy. Not because we feel ready. But because we understand that our lives are not meant to be lived at the doorway, looking in. They are meant to be lived fully, boldly, and without apology.

Eleanor wrote anyway.

Today, we rise anyway.