As I write this from Ecuador, my thoughts are with home as the United States marks its 250th anniversary. Like many of you, I hold mixed feelings in my heart. I feel deep gratitude for having been born in this country and for the extraordinary ideals upon which it was founded. At the same time, I recognize how far we still have to go in fulfilling the promise that all people are created equal. The American story has always been one of aspiration, and of the ongoing work to bring our highest ideals into lived reality.

This anniversary invites us to honor the vision and courage of our Founding Fathers. Their leadership helped give birth to a remarkable experiment in democracy. Yet alongside them stood women whose contributions were equally indispensable, though far less celebrated. These Founding Mothers are rarely the focus of our history books, yet their love, intelligence, endurance, and moral strength helped shape the very soul of this nation.

Martha Washington left the comfort of home to endure the brutal winters of the Revolutionary War alongside her husband, sustaining both him and weary soldiers with steadfast presence. Deborah Franklin managed her husband’s business, finances, and family for years while he served abroad, creating the stability that allowed his public work to flourish. Martha Jefferson brought warmth, partnership, and emotional grounding during the years that shaped her husband’s public life. And Abigail Adams, with remarkable intellect and courage, urged her husband to “remember the ladies,” reminding the founders that justice must eventually include those whose voices had too often been excluded.

These women did far more than support their husbands. They held the sacred space within which a nation could emerge. While raising children, managing households, and carrying enormous responsibilities, they were thoughtful partners, trusted advisors, and keepers of vision. They practiced a form of leadership that was relational rather than positional, quiet rather than celebrated, but no less essential. Without their strength and sacrifice, history itself might have unfolded differently.

We must also honor the countless women whose names history barely records: Indigenous women, enslaved women, women of color, immigrant women, and women without wealth, property, or political voice. Their labor, resilience, wisdom, and courage helped build this nation even as they were denied many of its freedoms. Their stories deserve to be remembered not as footnotes, but as part of the living fabric of America’s unfolding journey.

I often speak of our time as the Sophia Century, an era calling us to restore balance between the masculine and the feminine within ourselves, our institutions, and our cultures. This is not about women replacing men. It is about reclaiming qualities our world desperately needs: compassion alongside courage, collaboration alongside competition, wisdom alongside power, and stewardship alongside ambition.

Perhaps nowhere is this more important than in public life. As we prepare for this November’s election, we have an opportunity to ask not only who will govern us, but what qualities of leadership our times require. I hope we will seek out and support women, and men, whose lives reflect integrity, service, courage, and a commitment to the common good. Our democracy, like every living system, flourishes when diverse voices, perspectives, and gifts are welcomed.

One beautiful way to honor our Founding Mothers is not simply to remember them, but to continue the work they began: helping to build a nation that more fully embodies its highest ideals, where every person has the opportunity to contribute, to belong, and to help shape a future worthy of generations yet to come.

From the women who quietly nurtured a new democracy 250 years ago to the Indigenous women today protecting the Amazon and the future of life itself, women continue to hold the unseen threads that sustain our

With love and appreciation,

Lynne Twist