On Wednesday the world lost a truly influential person – Maya Angelou, poet, novelist, and teacher, died at her home in North Carolina. It was a terrible loss for everyone who has ever read any of her work, and an even greater one for those who haven’t. This article does a wonderful job of summarizing how and why she was such an important, influential person.

Why is she being featured here, on this blog about being a woman in science? Because Maya Angelou never stopped fighting for equality for everyone, no matter their gender or the color of their skin. And because a short quote from her leaped off the page and touched me.

“I created myself.”

Isn’t that what we all do, every day? Don’t we all present ourselves a certain way in order to try to control how we are perceived? As a female scientist, I am always very mindful of who I’m talking to and how – I have to have so many versions of myself, some less true to myself than others, that I sometimes feel like I’m having to recreate myself every time I walk through a doorway. Who’s here? How well do I know them? Do I trust them? All of these questions and more constantly make me reevaluate how I present myself.

I am lucky to have never had to endure such horror as she did as a child, when she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. I am lucky to work with men that I trust, and to be able to avoid those few who I don’t. I am lucky to be able to create myself by choice, in order to do something which I love, rather than to have to overcome the barriers that she did. It is because of women like Maya Angelou – strong, determined, and always fighting – that I can work with men and generally be treated as their equal.

And yet I hope that someday we will no longer need such fighters; perhaps someday the battle will be won, and we will no longer have to create ourselves. We can just be what we are.

While I do not, in general, like to discuss current affairs, in light of the shootings in California this past weekend and the incredible response to them online, I will be writing a few blog posts that highlight some of the things I have read that really clicked with me. If there are any articles, blogs, or anything else that you have seen as responses to the shooting that you would like me to consider for an upcoming blog post, please feel free to either post them in the comments section here, tweet them to @againstthepull, or post them on the blog’s Facebook page.