story to paint womankind as “second in creation, and first to sin.” That tagline brands our culture—it’s our DNA, it informs our daily lives, it lives in our bodies.

I know, in my bones, that we can break Cassandra’s curse, that we can dispel our culture’s enduring mistrust and devaluing of women. And when we do, all of humanity will benefit.

Perfection or damnation.

All I know is that in my early thirties I became acutely aware of the feelings of constriction, heartache, and anger that had been brewing in me since I was a girl. Slowly, the desire to do something to change the story became stronger than my fear of speaking up.

You may think these stories are the stuff of “once upon a time” and have nothing to do with you or your times. But “once upon a time” is now, because the past is laced into the present on the needle and thread of stories.

When you make a study of a wide range of the old stories, it is stunning to see how many of them serve as warnings against women doing “unfeminine” things, like speaking, or claiming autonomy over our bodies and sexuality, or being gallant.

is Cassandra’s story, and it is the story of any woman who has been dismissed, gaslighted, or punished for having an opinion of her own. It is the old trope of the hysterical girl or the scorned woman who is not to be believed as a witness to her own experience.

“As you enter positions of trust and power,” Toni Morrison wrote, “dream a little before you think.”

History isn’t what happened. It’s who tells the story. —Sally Roesch Wagner