To all influencers and bloggers

Elizabeth Monroe 5th USA President’s wife and what we can’t learn from her - to inspire (maybe!) all influencers, bloggers and writers.

Elizabeth Monroe’s carriage rolls through Paris, and this one quiet visit that shook a revolution and the history of the USA by echo.

In 1794, Paris is drowning in fear. Heads are literally rolling. Lafayette, the beloved hero of the American revolution, is imprisoned far away; his wife, Adrienne, is locked in a Paris prison, her own ENTIRE family already killed by the guillotine. James Monroe is the american minister to France and they get the idea of how to save the Adrienne from the execution. If you want to read the full long story with timeline, it’s here https://bobkova.online/elizabeth-monroe/

The main point of the story is that she makes sure the ride is visible: people can see that the American minister’s wife is going to visit a condemned woman. In a city obsessed with appearances, she uses that visual as a weapon.

She arrives at the prison, insists on seeing Adrienne Lafayette, and embraces her in public. Suddenly, Adrienne is no longer just a number on a list of “enemies of the people.” She is “the wife of Lafayette, friend of america, visited by the American minister’s wife.” Executing her now is no longer just internal politics. It’s an international scandal.

What strikes me: this is the kind of story that usually gets told in a footnote. “oh, by the way, the wife of the minister visited.” But look at it closely: remove that one action and the outcome might not be the same. History often turns on “minor” choices made by people who never get their own chapter.

What this tells us about women in history and science?

Elizabeth’s episode is not an exception; it’s a pattern. For most of history, women’s work is invisible by design, still is, hoiw it perfectly described in the amazing book by Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

So we end up with a history that reads like: “great men did things, and some women were their wives.” In reality, a lot of those “wives” or invisible big boss assistants or PhD students were:

• quiet diplomats (like Elizabeth Monroe)

• unofficial lab partners

• risk managers, keeping families alive while experiments, wars, or revolutions happened

• moral brakes, saying “no, that line we will not cross” at the right moment

and in science, the same logic holds:

• women run measurements, code, calculations, repetitive lab work

• they notice “weird” data that later becomes a breakthrough

• they write, edit, and sharpen ideas that someone else later presents on stage

but history books often only reward the face with the microphone and name on the signature, not the mind that shaped the message.

My new 2026 message to you:

Elizabeth Monroe had influence, but it was narrow: she had to be the right person, married to the right man, in the right city, at the right time. If she had been a shopkeeper’s daughter in a village, that same courage might never have been seen or recorded.

You, right now, are in a completely different world:

• you can publish a thought without asking permission from a king, a husband, a boss, or a university.

• you can find other women who think like you, build projects together, and amplify each other’s voices.

• you can document your work: your experiments, your failures, your solutions, your “small” wins. Those are exactly the things that used to disappear.

Your phone is more powerful than the entire information system of the 18th century. That sounds cliché, but sit with it for a second:

• Elizabeth needed a physical carriage to make her act visible. You need just a post, a video, a thread, an article.

• She could reach a few streets in paris. You can reach thousands or millions of people in other countries who feel alone until they read your words.

• She had no way to control how her story was written later. You can tell your own story in your own voice, as it unfolds.

Yes, you have to do a lot of work before you can influence the public opinion. “Influencer” doesn’t have to mean shallow

The word “influencer” got watered down by people selling random products. But influence, in its serious sense, is exactly what Elizabeth used: she understood how people watch, talk, gossip, and then act differently.

You can do that too, and not in a fake way. Some examples of how a modern woman can “elizabeth-monroe” the world around her:

• share your real story

• your path into a field where women are rare

• what you wish you had known earlier

• how you survived something difficult without romanticizing it

• show your thinking process

• document how you solve problems (in science, work, parenting, health, activism)

• share notes, diagrams, experiments, and failures, not just polished wins

• build small rescue missions

• maybe you can’t stop a guillotine, but you can:

• help someone leave an abusive workplace

• get a young woman into a scholarship or training program

• connect a person with a diagnosis, a lawyer, or a support group just because you shared the right link at the right moment

Promote local animal rescue center

The scale might look small from the outside. But it’s never small to the person or animal whose life just turned in a different direction because you acted.

You are not “extra” in this story

If you ever catch yourself thinking, “I’m not a scientist, not a politician, not important enough,” remember:

Elizabeth Monroe didn’t publish a treatise. She didn’t lead an army. She didn’t write laws (well… we never know if she did!). She simply used the leverage she had: her position, her visibility, her courage to go where it was dangerous and do something human in public.

Your leverage is different, but very real:

• your lived experience (the things you survived, figured out, or questioned)

• your skills (from lab work to spreadsheets to art to organizing people)

• your access (to languages, cultures, communities, platforms)

• your willingness to speak when others stay silent

Maybe your “lafayette episode” is:

• a thread that makes a complex topic understandable and gives someone the courage to push back at a doctor, a boss, or a system

• a video that makes a lonely girl in another country think, “oh, i’m not crazy, someone else sees this too”

• a project that starts small and ends up shifting policy, funding, or public opinion

So the invitation is simple:

• tell your story

• share your mind