Washing clothes is a powerful act of optimism. It means that we believe in a new day.

Since the beginning of time, women have been gathering down at the riverbanks, at the public lavoirs, and in their backyards, washing their clothes, tending each other’s children, and sharing their lives. It was through this daily act of communal labor that women held space for the creation of community.

Here, they forged strong bonds, cared for each other and were able to speak freely. Wash! in piazza honors these ancestral heroes – our mothers, foremothers, and aunties – who paved the way for us today. Many of the dreams they dreamed, we are living today.

Their lives are represented in the cultures they created and the oral histories and quiet teachings that they have passed to us, one generation to another. While they may not have written history, they spoke it, and it is precisely in the speaking that their stories live within us. Every time we honor our own stories or the stories of others, we honor them, and we pay tribute to their strength, resiliency, grit, and willingness to show up to perform the hard labor of living.

Everyone has a wash story. Participate by sharing yours.