It’s the day before the election. I can’t help but sit here pensive and nervous waiting to see how tomorrow turns out. If I’m nervous, how much more so are you feeling these moments? I can’t imagine being you…well, ever…but most especially right now. You are on the cusp of making history. Our history. Women’s history. You, I believe, will forever change the landscape of what women see when they look in the mirror each day. Forget that. You already have. Because of you and those who paved the way, I got to take my nine-month-old daughter with me to cast a ballot for a woman for president. I wanted her to see history happen even if she won’t remember it; she won’t have a bedtime tomorrow either. I am determined to give her this gift. A gift she can’t understand right now. But, maybe when she’s older, she can look back and see where her place in history began, and be encouraged to know that she got her start at one of the most pivotal moments in women’s history. I’d like to think that will mean something to her. It means a great deal to me.
I guess I’m writing this because I want you to hear something encouraging – that you matter. I’m sure many people would tell me that you are confident in the knowledge that you matter. But I guess I see you as a person like any other. We all have our insecurities. We all need a reminder that we matter. That we are human first, and whatever else we are second. And, quite frankly, it has been my experience that those who matter the most, usually aren’t confident in their mattering – and consequently spend their lives straining for that ever elusive goal.
So, Hillary Clinton, you matter. You matter because you teach us all that what people say about you isn’t what matters. Spending your life doing all you can to improve the lives of other people matters far more. You remind us that how history remembers us is often not how the present sees us. I’d like to think that when your story is told many years from now, it will be read from the beginning and include all of the important parts, not just the parts that sell the news. I’d like to think that when it’s read, the readers will see you in context the same way we do so many other stories in history. I’d like to hope that history will finally do you justice. I hope you take heart in that.
I think many in our country have forgotten that your story isn’t a novel in which we get to read the true motivations of the main character, so they are projecting and super imposing their own motivations into your story. Hell, I’m doing that as I write this. So, since that disclaimer is out there, here is what I see. I see you holding on and trying desperately to make the choices that history will see as the best you could have made regardless of the often shortsighted and ill-informed perspectives of your contemporaries. I see the times you took a back seat instead of driving so that you could save your currency for when it really counted because those choices are more expensive for us. I see you taking the beatings so that fewer of us have to take one. I see the sacrifices, the regrets, the frustrations, the triumphs, and the feeling that you wish you could somehow show how you see yourself to the world and still be safe from its cruelty. I see myself. I see all women in that story.
I think that we, as women, know that we all must wear armor. So all I mean to say is that I know the armor is heavy and that you likely wish more than anything to put it down. I can’t know what’s underneath it, but I can appreciate its necessity. And it’s ok that you need to wear it. You do.
Which brings me to why I’m excited at the prospect of your presidency. My hope is that you will help to create a world in which I need to wear less armor; one where my daughter needs less armor; one where her daughter will need even less. My hope is that, when this country sees a woman in the highest office, that it will see all women differently. That it will begin to recognize our strength, tenacity, intelligence, resilience, and our capacity to do great things. The fact that people will call me naïve for writing this demonstrates my point. I’m not a fool. I know the problems we face won’t disappear magically just because a woman is in office. Instead, what I do recognize is that significant change is made of many small changes, and this is no small change. So, thank you. No matter how tomorrow goes, thank you for being a part of the many small changes that are opening up doors, windows, and ceilings for women all over this country in hundreds of tangible and intangible ways. And if tomorrow goes your way, as I suspect it will, then thank you in advance for all the ways in which you will continue to reweave the fabric of our country to ever include more of us in it.
