For far too long, women have been relegated to second-class status in America — our contributions ignored, erased, or rendered a footnote in history.

With a hostile Administration that is carrying out draconian and dangerous attacks against women every day — denying survivors long overdue healing, pushing Black women out of the workforce, policing our bodies — the state of women in America can feel grim.

But the fundamental truth is that the women who came before us wrote the blueprint for our survival.

Women have done the work of growing, raising, preserving and defending our democracy for centuries. This work is as simple as it is profound. Raising babies, feeding a hungry neighbor, sheltering the vulnerable, writing strategy, architecting policy.

This Women’s History Month, we continue to honor the long legacy of women and activists— especially Black women leaders— by following in their footsteps, taking up space, and showing up as our full, authentic selves.

We stand on the shoulders of our mothers of movements in our fight for a better future.

We honor Shirley Chisholm, a disruptor, a truth-teller, and a trailblazer of gender equity in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As we fight to make the Equal Rights Amendment the law of the land, we recall the strength by which she led a multiracial, intergenerational coalition to advance gender equality and protect the rights of women and LGBTQIA+ people.

We honor Coretta Scott King, who found the love of her life in our great city of Boston. As an effective strategist and activist, she reminded us that every disparity, hardship and social ill is the result of a violent policy or budget choice.

As we push back against sexism rampant in our society and gender discrimination legislated by this callous Administration, we remember that we too can legislate equity, healing, and justice.

We honor Maya Angelou, whose brilliance informed and encouraged the intersectional struggle for justice with the power of her words and wisdom.

As we strive to protect all children from hardship and trauma, we recall the importance of truth-telling and the impact of storytelling that reminds us a more just world is possible, a world where a childhood is a right and not a privilege.

We would not be here today without the humanity, resilience, and belief in radical change of women leaders throughout our history.

As we honor the firsts, the justice-seekers and table-shakers, we too honor the women who nurture us, who pour into us, who challenge us, who surround us daily.

The work I seek to do every day is informed by my mother. A parent is a child’s first and best teacher, and she was an extraordinary parent.

She did not read me bedtime stories of princesses being saved by anyone.

Instead, she read me the powerful speeches of Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm. She taught me that to be Black is to be beautiful. And she had an expectation that I would do my part in the liberation of Black people, and that meant resisting against the politicization, criminalization, and objectification of Black women.

This Women’s History Month, we stand on the shoulders of the grandmothers, the mothers, the aunties, the daughters, the sisters, the friends who make us whole.

We honor the women whose labor — visible and invisible — goes unrecognized. The women denied an equal wage. The women of the care economy, of small businesses, of invisible workforces. The 300,000 and rising Black women who have been pushed out of the workforce in recent months.

We honor the women who have been unjustly detained, incarcerated, or separated from their babies due to systemic racism, inequity, and abuse of power at home and around the world. The women who would do anything to sing their babies to sleep yet are forced behind the wall or out of their homes.

We honor the women whose bodies kept us healthy and strong. The Black women facing a preventable maternal morbidity crisis. The women navigating miscarriages, abortions, and the environment to raise a child against a landscape denying reproductive freedom at every turn.

This month, there will be no erasure of the contributions of generations of women who have made us who we are today.

The brilliance and beauty of women live in us all. We are the manifestation of generations of women before us. This Women’s History Month, we show up for them, and we show up for us.

Ayanna Presssley is U.S. representative for the Massachusetts 7th congressional district.