I found a small disk in my mother’s jewelry drawer. It rested in a velvet-lined box as if it were a gem.
I knew it was special. I just didn’t know why.
Without my mother—or her sisters—here to ask, I tucked it aside, meaning to research it later. When I finally did, I learned it was an early credit “card” from Abraham & Strauss, the grand department store in downtown Brooklyn. Polished counters. Serious saleswomen. The faint scent of perfume and starch.
The card was no larger than a silver dollar. Oval. Plain. Unadorned.
Revolutionary.
My mother would have taken the subway there from her apartment, gloves buttoned, handbag clasped. I imagine her stepping up to a counter, the hum of conversation around her, the weight of a world that did not easily hand women their own accounts.
“Under whose name?” someone may have asked.
Under mine.
It is easy, now, to underestimate the courage packed inside such a small object. In her era, a woman’s credit was often tethered to a husband, a father, a signature not her own. Financial independence was not assumed. It was negotiated. Explained. Sometimes defended.
Yet here it was.
Her name.
Her line of credit.
Her quiet insistence made metal.
That oval disc was not simply permission to purchase. It was permission to stand alone. To be accountable. To belong in the room without borrowing someone else’s authority.
She figured out a path. So did her sisters. So did countless women whose names never appeared in headlines but whose steady resolve widened the doorway for the rest of us.
And now?
I sit here, free to write what I choose. Wallet full of plastic cards. Opportunities too many to count.
I tap to pay. I click to publish. I sign my own name.
And I am surrounded by women who cheer when I do.
Women who read drafts and say, “Keep going.” Women who send a link and whisper, “This reminded me of you.” Women who edit, illustrate, teach, mentor, bake, build, design, advocate. Women who buy one another’s books. Share one another’s work. Recommend one another’s art.
We are no longer just asking for credit.
We are extending it.
International Women’s Day can sound grand and global—and it is. But sometimes the revolution is intimate. Sometimes it is a woman standing at a counter insisting on her own account. Sometimes it is a woman forwarding another woman’s essay. Sometimes it is a donation that helps a young writer find her voice.
We stand on a foundation poured by women who endured the raised eyebrows and the fine print. They did the unglamorous work of opening accounts, opening doors, opening possibility.
They gave us more than purchasing power.
They gave us footing.
May we use it wisely.
May we spend it generously.
May we continue to extend credit—to one another’s talent, ambition, creativity, courage.
Thank you to the women who came before.
Thank you to the women beside us now.
And thank you to the women still learning to sign their own names.
Helaine Fiedler splits her time between cities and sandy shores. She writes about life, growth, and all the wonderfully imperfect bits in between. Her Substack, Quiet Roars, is a love letter to everyday life—neighbors and nature, puzzles and compost piles, moments of quiet reflection and bursts of laughter.