My daughter had a baby last February, a sweet little boy. We were talking yesterday about the world in which he will grow up and her dreams for him. Like all new moms, she wants to give the moon to her little son. He is her world right now. Her hope is for him to live in a world filled with nothing but joy and love.
Like many women, my daughter and I have been shaken to the core not only by the comments made by Mr. Trump on that bus, but also by the reaction many people, including her own husband have had to them. We talked openly about the things we’ve both encountered as women in our own lives, including both of us enduring sexual assaults. In the aftermath of last week, we’ve seen that the response of so many women sharing their own stories was similar to ours. How is it that so many women have had to endure such horrible experiences in their lives? How did it get to be this way?
When my daughter shared her feelings with her husband, he had the same reaction as many other men, “I don’t think it’s a big deal. Lot’s of guys talk that way. It’s just locker room talk. It’s just political nonsense. We need to be focusing on more important issues that really matter.” He dismissed her feelings as if they weren’t worth spending any time talking about. It left her angry and frustrated, not just with him, but with the culture that taught him to see things the way he does.
When we watched Michelle Obama’s great speech, it spoke to our hearts. She said everything that we were thinking in such a beautiful and eloquent way. It made us cry to feel how visibly shaken she was by the events of the past week. We realized we weren’t alone. Many many women have felt the same way we do this past week. Then we began to talk about what would happen if women decided to do something about those feelings.
We began discussing the future, and our hopes for my sweet little grandson, who has yet to be introduced to all the ugliness we’ve been seeing this past week. We talked about how we wish and pray for a different world for him to grow up in. We mentioned how great it will be if Hillary gets elected, and women can finally have a real voice in the highest position of leadership in the world. But then we allowed ourselves to really dream.
We decided that if women just banded together, along with men who feel the same way we do about the events of the past week, we could not only have Hillary as president for the next eight years, but we could follow her up with Elizabeth Warren for eight years, and then after that Michelle Obama could be president for eight more years. My daughter smiled happily and said she would be very satisfied to have her son grow up in a world where until the age of 24 he thought it was the normal thing for women to be in charge.
So, I guess what I’m asking is, why not? There are more of us than there are of them, and I’m not just talking about women. I’m talking about people who feel the same way we did about the insulting remarks, and the hate, and the ugliness, and the divisiveness in our country.
Last night I watched Bernie Sanders on the Seth Myers show. He said something about how nothing has ever changed in our country unless millions of people stood up and demanded it. So how about it? How about we start a roar of women, demanding that our country change. I plan to start my roar with a vote for Hillary. Even though I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary in my state, I believe if the roar is loud enough, it will inspire her to go beyond what she ever thought possible, and work with whoever she can to make real lasting change for all my grandchildren.