On a warm August morning this past week, in Oahu, Ann Holder held her newest granddaughter, Madeline Grace, just one week old. Waves rolled gently behind them, the same ocean Ann looked out at throughout her life, as a child and as a daughter, a mother, (with her daughter in the picture), and a grandmother. In that moment, she thought of the span of time her arms had just bridged — the generations behind her and the ones still to come.
It brought to mind a lesson in “whole of time,” a concept poet Joy Harjo has called the 200-year present: the years stretching from the oldest person who once held you to the youngest you now hold in your arms. That continuum is not just history and future — it’s the living present you can touch.
For Ann, that living present also carries a drive that began in a fourth-grade classroom growing up in Utah. When her teacher asked the class who would go to college, a boy turned to her and said she couldn’t — and certainly couldn’t go to the Air Force Academy — “because you’re a girl.” It was a moment that lit a lifelong refusal to accept limits, a determination to push through barriers and prove what’s possible.
That same spirit fuels Ann’s work at Marani Health: challenging norms, reimagining prenatal and postpartum care, and ensuring that technology serves the mothers and babies of today — and the generations yet to come.
“It’s about leaving a legacy of new technology that brings women’s health to this generation and beyond. It’s a drive to change the paradigm and begin again for all mothers and babies born in the next 200 years.”
As each of us takes a bit of a breather, a respite, during the waning days of August, let’s think about what we do today, at present, that will gift the 200-year present span.