When Women’s History Month rolled around this March, stories of women’s achievements were everywhere; I even read one profile on a small, digital screen at a gas pump. Instead of feeling cynical that this celebration was a form of tokenism, or being frustrated by the slow progress of women’s rights, I now had genuine pride – and more important, a connection.

So, what was different? Was Women’s History Month being celebrated in a more meaningful way, or had I changed?

I still seized an opportunity to point out to anyone who would listen, that the “B” in Susan B. Anthony stands for Brownell. But my connections to trailblazing women who fought for our rights had grown deeper. I realized that as we grow older, history becomes more a part of our lives. We become part of history.

As a writer of historical fiction, I realize that the genre usually requires focusing on a time period at least 50 years before the present. That era is now well within my own lifetime. I’ve also realized something that I’ve dubbed “The Grandmother Connection.” Because I’ve heard so many stories from my mother’s and grandmother’s lives, my experience extends to long before I was born – at least to 1890. That was the year my grandmother, poet and author Amanda Benjamin Hall, was born in Norwich, CT.

I once read that one way to connect with history is to consider all the living people you might have shaken hands with, and all the people that they, in turn, might have touched in their lifetimes. This forms a chain of connection across the centuries.

My life overlapped with my grandmother’s by almost three decades, so I like to picture all the amazing people she could have touched, whose lives overlapped with hers, even by a few years. Here are a few people who could have shaken her hand: Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Annie Oakley, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and yes, Susan B. Anthony.

I can imagine my grandmother, Amanda, then 3 years old, holding Harriet Beecher Stowe’s hand. As a teenager of 16, she could have shaken hands with 86-year-old Susan B. Anthony, and heard her speak those famous words, “Failure is impossible.”

For me, Women’s History Month has become less about history and more about now.

Caption: Amanda Benjamin Hall

Note: Lisa Brownell is the author of the historical novel, “Gallows Road.”