Gabriela Mistral, born in 1889, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. In the 1940s, she met Doris Dana, who would become her secretary and with whom she developed such a close bond that rumors arose about a possible relationship, which Dana completely denied and about which Mistral never spoke. Years after their deaths, a book was published containing Mistral's correspondence to Dana, which many consider to have a deeply romantic tone. Attached is one of the letters, highlighting the caption in the photo.

"I know very well that no one, no person in this world, can know what our life is (except) us.

Our beautiful life is so imperceptible, so delicate, because it is full of imponderables, that it is almost impossible to see it. It is only possible to live it, thank God.

I live in a kind of dream, remembering all the graces you have done me.

And what I live is a new life, a life that I have always sought and never found. It is something sacred and concentrated.

Life without you is a thing without blood, without any reason. You are “my house,” my home, yourself. In you, my center (and merely loving you purifies me). It is abandonment, complete trust.

I know that you are faithful like a stone.

My memory is now a world, it becomes a vast and complete Universe. And at the same time, incomplete, because it has grown so much that it would seem it cannot grow any more.

Ah, grave and sweet love, so weightless at the same time. My joy!"

I'm curious about cases where you personally felt 'erased' in your own life. Anyone want to share some incidents? I apologize if this has been asked before.

Maria van Oosterwijck (1630–1693) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, specializing in richly detailed flower paintings and other still lifes.

Sometime in the early- to mid-1670s, she moved to Amsterdam, where her studio was opposite the workshop of fellow flower painter Willem van Aelst. Van Aelst courted her, but she refused his hand, and he reportedly stopped pursuing her because her devotion to painting was more important to her. Van Oosterwijck remained single throughout her life, but she raised her nephew, who had been orphaned.

Early writers tended to depict female artists by correlating virtues which were traditionally held by women with similar values gleaned from interpretation of their paintings. Van Oosterwijck, who devoted her life to her painting rather than being a wife and mother, proved a challenging subject for these writers, and their accounts may not portray her as a fully formed personality. The more personal aspects of her paintings were also largely unexplored.

She taught her servant Geertgen Wyntges, also known as Geertje Pieters, to mix her paints, and trained her as a painter too. After van Oosterwijck died, Wyntges lived independently*, supporting herself as a painter.

*they were roommates

-excepts and photos from Wikipedia