Sitting through my history classes in high school, I always felt like something was missing. I would go through my notes and see empty spaces and then finally, reading Jason Porath's book, "Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics," I realized what it was. It was the women. We as a westernized society seem to have a form of historical amnesia. We have written our histories without so many important women without whom, our histories wouldn't have been possible in the first place.

Looking at how history is written, it has become much easier to see the blatant exclusion of women. Women historically have been less educated and their opinions valued less than their male counterparts, so it is no surprise that their own stories were not recorded by themselves, or recorded at all in the first place. Take Gracia Mendes Nasi as an example. A Jewish Portuguese businesswoman who created nearly half of Portugal's revenue herself when the Inquisition was raging through Europe during the mid-1500s. She not only was a badass business woman, but she was dubbed the "Savior of the Jews" as she created an underground network to smuggle Jews and new Christian converts out of areas affected by the Inquisition ultimately saving hundreds and maybe thousands. She did this by bribing rulers across Europe and by the end of her time working to create this network, paid off Suleiman the Magnificent in the Ottoman Empire to allow Jews into the Empire. SHE did this, yet she is forgotten in nearly every teaching and documentation of the Inquisition. She was removed from our history despite the huge impact she made on the empires she interacted and traded with and the people she saved, as well as those she couldn't.

I don't know about anybody else, but I do know that reading Porath's book and only recognizing the names of The Mirabal Sisters freaks me out more than I can even put into words. Obviously, women have received more recognition for our actions in history and are more documented and heard than ever, writing their own histories. Hell, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign shoes were just introduced put on loan to the Cornell Costume & Textile Collection for the exhibition "Women Empowered: Fashions from the Frontline." Women are working and women are winning, there is no question about that. However, it just makes me wonder who else has been put to the background of history. How many other names of women have been left out of our textbooks? How can we truly share a complete history without including her-story?

I don't know how I will ever justify learning hundreds of facts about the "fathers" of our nation when I heard a quick introduction about Abigail Adams, Eliza Hamilton, and Martha Washington until recently. I don't know how I can justify studying the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Locke to no end without studying Mary Wollstonecraft. I am not trying to say that their theories do not have merit or are not important to the development of thought and how we as humans look at our world, but what I am attempting to get at is that we, and our current education system, forget the women who have done just the same, removing them from the curriculum and thus, from the continued knowledge of history that students have as they move through their formal education.

I had family die in the Holocaust, so learning about Nasi opened my eyes to those that worked to save my people, and I cannot imagine history without her, as I am sure the families she saved would say the same thing. I wish someone had been there to save mine. But, as I have been taught my entire life, this is why we remember. We remember to not repeat history, to honor those who were lost, and to give thanks to those who made a difference. We are currently neglecting our duty to remember the innumerable women who haven't been thanked enough throughout history, the silent ghosts working behind the scenes. We owe it to ourselves to our children, to our ancestors, moms, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and beyond to remember. We all came from somewhere, and it is time that we put the work into piecing our history together.

It should no longer be about history or her-story. We need to fully embrace our-story. We need to wake up from our bout of amnesia and remember the women who worked to create the life we live today and the lives we are working to live tomorrow.