Seed of Change: From Election Week 2020

The United States has elected its first Woman, first Black Woman and first Indian Woman as its Vice President.

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One of the greatest forms of love is listening.  The still, small voice within is always teaching about what it means to love.  This year, leaders I follow made an unprecedented shift towards shared leadership by elevating people of color, especially, black women.  I am grateful to have been able to learn from black women and men whose wisdom and words helped evolve my worldview, incuding: Chiddima Ozar, Rachel Cargle, Isabel Wilkerson, Ibram X. Kendi,  Layla Saad, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Bryan Stevenson to name a few.  As I unlearn the history I took for granted and understand more about the experience of people of color and the deep roots of systemic racism, misogyny and oppression in America (and our world), my heart melts open, and it hurts.

While I intended to leave Facebook entirely this year, I allowed the departure to be a process rather than a split decision.  And, one of the things I am grateful of that platform for is that it’s given me the ability to continue to listen to people who believe differently.  I kept listening to people who adamantly supported the 45th President and read occasional articles from alt right and conservative sources.  When I listen, I hear that we want many of the same things – freedom, justice, fairness and security to name a few.  Our beliefs about the way towards those aspirations and which leaders can help us there vary divisively.

Six months ago, shortly after police killed George Floyd, I sat at the base of the stunning Teton mountains in Wyoming with my beautiful toddlers.  My inner welling of sadness, rage and despair about the systemic oppression of which I was part felt so dissonant alongside my outer experience of life’s magnificence.

Today, with Kamala Harris’s election to Vice President, that outer beauty and inner fire have found in each other shared seed.  The dreams we dreamed as girls have birthed in our reality.

Today, we celebrate our progress.

To all who have continued to believe…thank you. When my four year old daughter asks, “Mom, can girls be leaders?” I can show her real life examples in our highest offices and in social servants who help pave the way.

 

“The moral arc of the universe…bends toward justice.”

 

 

 

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