It's TalisWomen's Month

The Celebrated Women Who've Made Me Who I Am

QUICK: Name 5 women you respect (not women you're related to).

Apparently, that's a challenge for many men, and I suspect a lot of women, too.

I'm a bit different. I've collected celebrity women since I was a little girl, like other children collected Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch Kids (we're talking late 70s, early 80s).

A desperately unhappy child (depressed, abused, and autistic but undiagnosed ), I hoped to obliterate myself beneath the blanket of another identity. I remember praying that I would wake up as someone else — as one of the women I admired—my Taliswomen.

50 Stars in my Pantheon

My Taliswoman project was born to me in 1972. But truthfully, it began way before me.

I believe it began when one of the earliest human girls looked at one of the earliest human women with stars in her eyes, thinking, "I wanna be like her. I want people to feel the way I feel when I look at her" (without such words, of course).

At this time last year, I was finishing my project about my 50 Taliswomen, determined to get it done by the end of the month.

The urgency seems silly now, but I'm proud of finishing it.

Here are all 50 of my Taliswomen and the micro-stories and videos I made about each.

Some are almost universally known (like Beyonce and Dolly Parton), but some are obscure.

If you know all 50, we should be friends.

Happy Women's History Month!