The Big Sad: How Dr. Blasey Ford Gave Me the Courage to Speak of My Assault

I was watching TV with my husband and children when my phone notified me that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s written statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee had been released. I scanned it once, and then paused the show to read a few lines to my husband. Over the years—especially over the last couple weeks-- I have read many statements written by survivors of sexual assault. In fact, a week ago, I shared my own statement at a press conference with Senator Blumenthal, proud to note that my voice was clear and my eyes free of tears. However, as I read Dr. Ford’s statement aloud, I found myself sobbing in the middle of the living room, my husband reassuring the kids that Mommy was just tired.

As I read Dr. Ford’s statement aloud, I noted how much of it I could have written myself. Our experiences were different, of course, but so much of the feeling was the same. I did my best to suppress memories of the assault, she wrote, because recounting the details caused me to relive the experience, and caused panic attacks and anxiety. As I spoke her words, I recognized what a struggle it has been this week to focus when my kids tell me a story or ask me for homework help. I remembered going to dinner after the press conference last week, how I spent the whole meal feeling as though I was outside myself, watching my body nod its head at the children and push food around its plate.

Right now, forcing myself to recall memories of one of the worst years of my life, the feeling is similar to the one I felt at dinner.  It’s the feeling that something horrible was done to me and no matter how I try to wish it away or ignore it, I can’t make it unhappen. It’s the feeling that even if I were to run screaming through the streets, shouting all the terrible details and naming names, no one with any authority would care. It’s the feeling that I should be able to get over it, but I can’t, and the more I try to think myself out of it, the worse it gets. It’s the thing I’m fighting through tonight as I attempt to put the awfulness into words so some phantom reader will know, at least momentarily, that they are not alone. It’s a feeling I privately refer to as The Big Sad, and it’s one reason I didn’t report to the police when I was assaulted fifteen years ago.

As many survivors know, The Big Sad is but one of many reasons a person may make the excruciating choice to stay silent after an assault, but it’s a good one to start with because it’s fairly uncomplicated and non-survivors can relate. If you’re raped, you’re sad. It makes sense. But The Big Sad doesn’t wake me up the middle of the night to call me both a coward and a liar, like Self-Doubt and Denial have been known to do. Unlike Guilt, it doesn’t appear in my brain to spin a Rolodex of treasured memories the instant before I name names, asking, “Do you really want to hurt this person? I thought you loved them.” The Big Sad is a cousin to Grief, but unlike Grief, it doesn’t trap me for years in the bargaining stage, attempting to renegotiate the details of the assault and make it more of a hiccough than a trauma. Of course, you can’t have Grief without its friend Loyalty, who shreds the accusatory letter right before I drop it in the mail, assures me that it’s better if I just keep my thoughts to myself where they can’t endanger anyone’s marriage or career. The Big Sad tells me no one will care if I tell my story, and that’s much easier for me to live with than the Fear, which tells me that someone will care, very much, and will dox or hurt me for writing this. It’s much easier for me to admit to sadness than admit that I am still ruled, to a certain extent, by Shame, which even now is trying to convince me to walk away from the computer and close my mouth. These other reasons are much more difficult to unpack in an op-ed, because unlike The Big Sad, they are nuanced and feel particular to my experience, but they are no less real.

These reasons have been my burdens and my security blankets for over a decade. They’ve worked together to keep me quiet. But Dr. Ford’s statement has turned my face toward truth. For a myriad of complicated, personal reasons, not every survivor comes forward after an assault. In fact, the vast majority never report. They carry the secret truth in bodies’ forever, unable or unwilling to make an official accusation or share the names of their rapists.. As difficult and painful as it is to say it publicly and permanently, I am one of those people.  I am a survivor of sexual assault. And you, Reader, are not alone.

Call Dad

I don’t think many people believe me when I tell them I talk to my dad every day, but it’s true. When we’re busy, we usually take a few moments to check in. When he’s working overnight as a pediatric nurse, he pretty regularly sends me messages during his downtime. Nothing urgent, just, “Are you still awake?” or “I see Stella had a friend over today. How did it go?” Days when my kids are in school and he’s home from work, it’s not unusual for us to talk for over an hour. We speak so frequently that he sometimes doesn’t even say hello, just picks up on the conversation where we last left it. “Yeah, so, it turns out the mulch was on sale so I just bought enough to do the front and the backyard and it’s humid as hell.” Even 900 miles away, my father is a part of my everyday life. He’s there, via cell phone, when one of the kids does something amazing and I have to call and brag. He’s there when one of the kids is giving me trouble and I need to vent my frustration. He’s there when I’m anxious, bored, or complaining about my in-laws. He’s there when I desperately need him. But he’s also there when I don’t need much of anything at all, just calling to tell me about his day, ask for my opinion, update me on the health of my uncle, who now lives with my parents, or ask, “So how old does your sister have to be before she doesn’t have to put my income on her FAFSA?” Sometimes, he just sits on the phone as I cry. Sometimes, I do the same for him.

              

It’s important to mention that things haven’t always been this way. For the first few years of my life, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with my dad. In fact, in my first memory, I am standing on the steps of our house in Pittsburgh, leaning far over the railing to spit on my dad’s head as he paints a wall with my baby brother sleeping next to him. That will teach him, I remember thinking. When Mommy comes home, she’ll take my side (turns out I’ve always been a manhating feminist­). In middle and high school, my father and I used to fight so often and so loud we probably shook the walls. “I hate you,” I would shout, truly meaning it, as my dad stalked around in his tighty whities, forbidding to let me leave the house. “I am out of here, do you here me?! I’m going anywhere else. Anyone else’s family is better than this one. I’m going to my boyfriend’s house, where they respect each other and everyone just does what they want!” It is only recently, as my own older daughter edges closer to thirteen, that I realize sometimes the best way to show respect for your child is to chase after her in your underwear, refusing to let her leave the house. Another way to respect your child is to forgive her when she leaves the house anyway, to refuse to say I told you so when she comes home devastated. You have to strike a balance. My father didn’t always get it right, but he tried, and sometimes the trying alone was a herculean task.

One time my father got it right—the most important time—was when he returned from a family vacation (one I’d refused to go on because I was twenty and barely speaking to my family) in 2005, hoping to spend a nice, relaxing day hanging out with his four kids and working in the yard. Unfortunately for him, that peaceful day was not to be. Instead, as my mother and I stood in the kitchen, waiting for his coffee to brew, what he got was this exchange:

Dad: Everything go okay while we were gone?
Me: Yep. How was your trip?
Dad: It was fine, but man, being around all those little kids made me realize I’m happy to wait a long, long time before I become a grandfather.
(At this moment, my mother, with whom I’ve already had a Very Important Conversation, bursts out laughing.)
Me: Well, that’s funny, Dad, because I’m pregnant.
Dad: Ha ha. Very funny.
Me: Dad, I’m not joking.
Mom (attempting to stifle nervous laughter): She’s not joking.
Me: Happy Father’s Day?
Dad: Oh. (an infinite pause) I need to...
(My father walks around the house for a good fifteen minutes with only one shoe on, saying nothing, his hands in his hair. He walks back into the kitchen, still only one shoe.)
Dad:I need to go to Lowe’s to buy a plunger. For the toilet. In the bathroom.
Me: You need to go to Lowe’s right now? To buy a plunger?
Dad: Yes.
(He leaves the kitchen. I assume he finds his other shoe. He goes to the store.)

And that was it. No yelling. No chasing me around the house in his underwear. No long speech where he informed me that I had ruined my life. No accusing me of bringing shame on the family. No tears, at least in front of me. We had a conversation so free of drama I don't even really remember it, and less than a month later, I had moved out of my downtown apartment and was back with my parents, waiting as my uncle and father converted his beloved screened-in back porch to a spare bedroom with a nook to keep a baby's crib and a window to the kitchen where we would eventually pass the baby back and forth between feedings. This feat-- the last-minute, frantic addition of a new bedroom-- is especially astounding when one considers that my father has been planning to build a deck around the swimming pool since I was eleven years old. He's been planning to convert the room back to a porch since that babh, my daughter, was a year old, and she's twelve now. He has been remodeling the kitchen so long my husband and children don't know a time when knives and utensils were kept in a drawer instead of a big Tupperware container on the floor. I share this not to pass judgment, but to illustrate the true miracle of my father committing to and finishing an extension to his house in under a month. What made the new room different from all the other projects, of course, is that it wasn't for him. It was for me. So it had to get done. 

Being a father-- especially a good one-- is very often a thankless job. Moms get most of the credit because in general, and this was especially true when I was kid growing up in the eighties and nineties, mothers do most of the hands-on work of raising the kids. When I was growing up, my mom stayed home to take care of us and my dad went to work, much like my own family operates now. And much like my own family (shout-out to my husband, Thom-- Happy Father's Day, honey!), my dad often came home from his first job to start immediately on his second. He worked all day as the Chief of Planning at the Army Corps of Engineers and then came home and painted houses, painted driveways (the nineties were a strange time), cleaned beach houses and cared for his ailing parents, all the while making sure that he only rarely missed a parent-teacher conference, cheerleading competition, concert, school play, poetry reading, or basketball game for his four children. We rarely, if ever, thanked him for that. Why, my siblings and I must have figured, should we thank him for just doing what a father is supposed to do? Dads work all the time and when they're not working, they're spending time with their kids, begging their teenagers to switch from MTV to "regular TV" at 8:00 so they can catch a peaceful hour of their shows in their special spot on the couch before sleeping for a few hours and doing it all again the next day, regularly waking in the middle of the night to a teenage daughter sneaking home way, way after curfew and having to take the time to chase her around in their underwear for an hour or so, responding to to every "I hate you!" with "Oh, no you don't! You're just being a brat!"

Being a father is the kind of job where you know you're doing a good job if everyone in your house is able to take you for granted. Need a parent to be the bad guy at a parent-teacher meeting? Call Dad. Need to make a creepy boyfriend disappear? Call Dad. Need someone to help you with your Algebra homework while you accuse him of "not even doing it the way they taught us so how can you possibly help me!?" Call Dad. Wreck your car? Call Dad. Poke a hole in the pool siding and flood the backyard? Call Dad. Lose your wallet in a foreign country? Call Dad. Break your arm? Call Dad. Run out of money? Call Dad. Need someone to come over and deep clean your house while you recover from a c-section? Call Dad. If you're doing your job right, your kids will never really understand that many kids grow up without a father, or at least a good one, to call. If you're doing your job right, your children and even your grandchildren will grow up knowing your house-- the house you work so hard for-- is a safe space, where trespasses are forgiven and you're always welcome home.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Talk to you soon.

For Joyce and Robin on Mother's Day

When I was little, I had a recurring dream that I had lost my mother. In the dreams, I would wake up from a nap or return from school to find that she was gone. Not dead, necessarily, but missing. Her toothbrush, makeup, and perfume missing from her bathroom, her clothing gone from the closets, even her favorite giant coffee mugs replaced by dainty tea cups. “Where’s Mom?” I would ask, and my father would say, “Oh, she left. You missed it. And now she’s never coming back.” In my childhood dreams, she never left on purpose. It was never a decision. She just had to leave suddenly and she couldn’t stand to say goodbye to me so she left while I was distracted. She left without saying anything. I think it was my brain attempting to process my unmentionable, almost unthinkable fear that my mother would die. It was a fear I told myself was ridiculous and impossible. Mothers of young children didn’t die! Mothers of young children weren’t allowed to die. They had too much to do, they had too many people depending on and loving them—too many people loving them too fiercely for any higher power to take them away. There was no power higher than my need and love for my mother. You only died, I thought, when no one cared about you anymore because you got too old. You only died when you were a senile great-great-grandmother no one saw anymore.  As long as I paid attention to my mom, she wouldn’t die. And I couldn’t have stopped paying attention to her even if I wanted to—she was my entire world.

The one thing that flew in the face of my logic, that opened the door for my recurring nightmares, was the fact that my own mom’s mother died when my mom was a little girl and her father died when she was a teenager. She hardly ever talked about it, and she had a ton of siblings and a stepmother who made the hole left by her parents almost unnoticeable to her children. But I knew it had happened. She had gone to elementary school one day and when she got home her mother had died of a heart attack at thirty-five years old. She hadn’t meant to die. She hadn’t said goodbye. She just had to leave suddenly and she disappeared. This bit of family history panicked me if I thought about it too much, so I tried to make sense of it. Maybe, I thought, my grandmother hadn’t really been a nice person. In the three photos I’d seen of her, hanging in a big frame over the sofa in our living room, she looked nice. She was young and pretty and smiling—she looked like my mom. But no, that couldn’t be. Maybe because my mother had so many brothers, she didn’t need her mom like I needed my mom so the higher power was able to swoop in and take her away. Maybe, even though my mom still mentioned her love for her mother and her desire to have her mom alive and in her life, she hadn’t really loved her. She thought she loved her, but she didn’t love her mom as much as I loved my mom. And if she didn’t really love her mom, then it was okay that she wasn’t around, because she must not have been that great. I mean, what kind of mother just dies? That’s not allowed. That’s selfish.

My parents have a nice house. It’s my favorite place in the world—the one place I could walk through my eyes closed and never bump into a thing. I know all its smells and its quirks, and one thing I know about above everything else is that it’s an impossible place to tell a secret. No matter where you are, no matter how quiet you think you’re being, your attempt to keep something confidential guarantees that someone will, without even trying, hear exactly the thing you never wanted them to hear. That’s important for me to mention so no one thinks I was eavesdropping on my mother when I was right years old and overheard a hushed phone conversation that robbed me of my naivete regarding the unfairness of death. I was taking a shower in my bathroom when I heard my mom on the phone with a friend. She was in her bedroom with the door shut and I had the water running, but even so, I heard, clear as a bell, “… and Lindsey is the same age I was when my mom died, I keep thinking, I can’t die now, I can’t leave them now. I know it’s silly, but I still worry about it. It makes me sad to think about all the things my mom missed.”

Wait. My mom had the same fears I had? My mom was also afraid that something would happen to her and she would suddenly leave and my siblings and I would never get to say goodbye to her? I was only eight! My mom had just had a baby! Sure, my dad was great, but he could never take care of four kids on his own. Didn’t my mom understand what I had figured out—that if you really love someone, they can never leave you? I wanted to explain it to her, but I was getting older and deep inside I knew my belief that love prevents death was superstitious and would actually hurt more than help her. Of course my mom loved her mother. She didn’t talk about her that much because she didn’t have that many memories of her, and she didn’t talk about her grief over losing both her parents because she didn’t want to burden or worry us. She wanted to create the happy, intact family that she had missed out on, and I had taken the credit for it, believing that I had been psychically responsible for keeping her alive and well. All of a sudden that idea seemed not just childish, but stupid and hurtful. Important, beloved people died all the time for no reason at all, and you didn’t stop loving someone just because they got older. Love wasn’t a finite resource that eventually depleted, allowing your former loved ones to fade away into the ether, leaving nary an emotional mess behind. After all, my paternal grandparents were elderly and I still loved them. They were still people with personalities whose lives were just as important and vital as my own. They were people, just like me. My mom was a person, just like me. And just like me, she had loved her mom more than anyone. And her mom died. Not because she didn’t care or no one cared about her. Not because she was selfish or stupid, but because she was unlucky. There’s no cosmic justice to take people away when they no longer deserve to live. Some people, through no fault of their own, just experience an almost unimaginable, unfair amount of loss. And my mother—my silly, nurturing, God-loving, joyful mother, is just one of those people. It sucks.

If you’re lucky enough to have your mother in your life well into your adulthood, as I am, something strange and wonderful starts to happen. You start to see your mother not as A Mother, but as A Person. For me, the majority of that experience has been wonderful. I’m still close to my mom. Though they still live in South Carolina and I now live in Connecticut, I speak to my parents almost every day. I rely on them for emotional support in almost all aspects of my life. Whenever I have a parenting question, my mom is the first person I call, and even when I don’t take her advice, I value it. Sometimes when one of my kids is having an epic meltdown and I feel like I am going to explode, I pick up the phone to call my mom and I realize she was denied an experience that I so fully take for granted, and my maternal grandmother was denied the same. My grandma never got to meet her grandchildren. My mother never ended a horrible day by dialing a phone and saying, “Mom, you would not believe the day I had. Come get your grandchildren because I need a break.” They both missed out on so much.

But despite all this loss, I now know there were many things my mother and grandmother did get to share. I can see how wonderful my grandmother was in the wonderful way her daughter has loved and raised her kids. I know because so much of who I am as a mother came to me, subconsciously, from my own mom, and thus through my grandmother. I know that in the few years my grandmother was able to spend with my mom, she taught her a lot: how to cuddle, how to be silly with your kids, how to listen to children like their feelings and experiences matter, how to live in the moment. How to be strong in the face of hardship or grief, but how to avoid allowing that strength to harden your heart. How to be fiercely, brilliantly alive. How to love. How to be loved.

It Gets Better: Maternal Mental Health Week

I had a baby three days shy of my twenty-first birthday.  The choice to parent had been an immediate and joyful one, so my pregnancy was celebrated by the people who loved me most. Even though she was a surprise baby and her father wasn't in the picture, I was excited to be a mother. It was my #1 goal in life-- to have a daughter (or daughters, if I was lucky) and raise her to be strong, compassionate, and deeply loved. When she was placed in my arms after an easy, relaxed labor and delivery, I truly felt as though all my dreams had come true. I loved everything about her. I never wanted to put her down. She was born at 10:20 pm and I stayed awake all night just staring at her face. 

And then we left the hospital and things got complicated. Contrary to what I thought at twenty, motherhood didn't magically solve all of my life's problems. I was still poor. I was still in a dysfunctional, emotionally abusive relationship. I was living in the converted back porch of my parents' house. I had no job. I'd taken the semester off from school. I had no driver's license. And every morning I watched my parents, boyfriend, and siblings eat breakfast and head out to engage with the wider world. My friends liked the baby and loved me but they were young. They were still living the life I hadn't fully realized I was leaving behind. They rarely came by to visit. And my baby had colic. She had trouble latching and would eat every ninety minutes for forty-five minutes at a time. Every second I spent breastfeeding was physically and emotionally excrutiating and  I felt trapped in my home by this endlessly hungry creature-- my daughter. My much-wanted, much-loved daughter with whom I could not stand to be alone. I was afraid of her, and afraid that others could see how afraid I was. 

While everyone was away at work and school, I would sit on a glider in the family room, feed her, and cry. I was so lonely. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I would sit on the front porch swing and wait for someone to come home, audibly sighing with relief when my mother's minivan would turn into the cul-de-sac.

Whenever I could, I would hand her off and run to the bathroom where I could hide and press warm washcloths against my aching, burning chest. I would stare at myself in the mirror and curse myself. "This is what you fucking wanted and now you can't even fucking do it, you piece of shit. What unfair universe gave you this precious baby when you're too much of a selfish shitbag to properly love and care for her? You have no capacity for love or tenderness. You don't deserve this baby. You don't deserve anything." At night, I would sit in our bedroom while my boyfriend slept and watch reruns of Gilmore Girls and Mad About You until the baby finally passed out, and when she woke up moments later, already needing to eat again, I would feel choked with rage and resentment. Then I would look at her little face and say, "I love you so much." I would force myself to smile. 

As she got older, it just got harder. I moved out of my parents' house and in with my boyfriend. We fought all the time and I would call my mom to pick up the baby so she wouldn't hear the screaming. I wanted a happy family for my baby so we got engaged. Things got worse. They got ugly. I ended the engagement. I moved back in with my parents. Now the baby could walk and say "mama" but I was convinced she hated me. She preferred the company of my mother and I preferred sitting alone and telling myself what a horrible person I was. What a horrible, selfish person, throwing away everything she loved because nothing and no one would ever be enough to fill this ugly, gaping need for...for what? I didn't know.

Shortly after I moved back in with my parents, I started dating a friend from high school who was immediately taken with the baby. He thought she was cute and funny. He had always loved me, he said. He told me he wanted to raise the baby, adopt her, marry me. He was kind. I said yes. We moved in together and it was wonderful except I secretly knew I was a rotten faker incapable of love. 

One night when the baby was two years old, my fiance and I stopped by my parents' house with the baby. I'd purchased her flower girl dress and wanted her to try it on so my family could see it. She didn't want to. I was exhausted. She kept crying and reaching for my mother, wanting to spent the night with my parents. She could see what a horrible person I was. She could see through me. She knew I was a fraud and she was showing everyone-- through her unwillingness to try on the dress-- that I wasn't a good or even decent mother. I lost it. I screamed and cried and threatened to take the baby away from my parents forever. I just wanted to punish someone. I wanted someone else to be the bad guy. My family just watched me, stunned. "It's just a dress, quit being such a bitch," my brother said. But it wasn't just the dress. It was everything.

I was getting everything I had ever wanted. A beautiful child, a marriage to a wonderful man, a chance to go back to school and finish my degree. And I was miserable. I could see my happiness as an outsider, but I couldn't feel it. In the car on the way home, I tried to convince my fiance to leave me. "I'm not a good woman," I told him. "The only way for you and the baby to be happy is for you to be away from me. Maybe I should give her up to someone up the task of caring for her. I'm ruining her life and she's only two. She already hates me." We got home. I carried her inside and put her to bed. I cried myself to sleep.

And then, slowly and all at once, things got better. I started to feel things again. I wish I could say I saw the right therapist or was prescribed the right medication, and I did try those things, but they didn't work. The only antidote for me was time. One day my daughter woke up from a nap and her bedhead was off the charts and I laughed. She choreographed a dance and I watched it with joy. She fell asleep in my arms and her weight was reassuring. I looked in her eyes and I thought I might cry, but this time the tears were tears of love, not despair. She thought I was funny. I thought she was a genius. I had another baby, a little girl, and I could handle it. I loved them. I loved my daughters.

Earlier tonight the same child with whom I used to dread being alone showed me her awesome new tricks on the pogo stick. She told me she had decided to definitely take Spanish when she starts middle school next year. She sat on the couch with me and asked me to crack her toes and rub her back. Her sister handed me an imaginary Best Mom trophy because I remembered to buy Pirate Booty at the grocery store. I reminded them they weren't allowed on the computer because they hadn't finished their chores and they got mad and then got over it. It was a totally average night for our family.

Sometimes on these boring, average nights, I think about myself at twenty-one, crying in the bath with her leaky boobs and her broken heart, and I wanted to hold her the way I now hold my daughters. I want to tell her what I now know to be true. She is doing the best she can. She does love that baby. She's a wonderful mother. It's going to get better and it's going to break her heart over and over again in the best, most unimaginable ways. She's at the beginning of a miracle, of a struggle, of a life, of true love.

I've got stamina.

Every morning on the drive to school, I try to play an empowering song for the girls. Recently, due to Lucy's well-documented love of all things Sia and Maddie Ziegler, we've been listening to "The Greatest" a lot. Usually it just plays quietly in the background while we check and double-check that everyone has their snacks, folders, water bottles, and homework in their bags. But today, the lyrics really got to me and when the kids got out of the car, I started the song again at the beginning and surprised myself by crying as I listened to it several times on the way home. 

Well, running out of breath, but I
Oh, I, I got stamina
Running now, I close my eyes
But, oh, I got stamina
And oh yeah, running to the waves below
But I, I got stamina
And oh yeah, I'm running and I've just enough
I got stamina

It's no secret that I love politics. I love the theater of politics. I love the way a good politician can reinvigorate citizens' desires to make the country better. I love watching social change start small and slowly gain momentum until it has a tangible effect on people I know. I love trying to see things from different perspectives, I actually enjoyed watching every primary debate and the conventions. 

I look forward to presidential debates like other people look forward to the Super Bowl. I love the zingers, the nail biting, all of it. But last night, as I watched Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump walk out and shake hands, I noticed that my heart was beating fast in a bad way. I wasn't excited. I wasn't nervous. I was terrified. I felt nauseous, on the verge of a panic attack. My older daughter, Lucy, loves Hillary Clinton and the idea of the first woman president. She sees Hillary as competent, experienced, and the obvious choice. She was sitting next to me last night and I almost wanted to just send her to bed. I didn't want her to see someone talk to a woman she admired the way Trump was about to talk to Clinton. I didn't want to watch it either.

There was something uniquely painful about watching a prepared, poised Clinton consistently work to stay calm and professional while an irrational, red-faced man screamed lies while a male moderator sat by and said nothing. I know this kind of thing happens to some extent in most debates-- the people at home want a show and it's the job of the nominees to give it to them in return for their votes. I know Clinton signed up for this when she decided to run for president, but come on.

Toward the end of the debate, Trump responded to a question about his blatant misogyny by attempting to hit Clinton where he thought it would hurt the most, while simultaneously casting himself as the more thoughtful and compassionate of the two:  "I was going to say something extremely rough to Hillary, to her family, and I said to myself I can't do it. I just can't do it. It's inappropriate, it's not nice." She just stood there, staring straight ahead and waiting for him to finish speaking. And who hasn't been that woman?

What woman hasn't had to sit quietly and maintain composure while a blustering idiot hammered her with misogynistic comments? What woman hasn't been accused of being dramatic while an hysterical man screamed at her that he was the rational one? I don't have enough fingers to count the number of times I've been expected to take responsibility for an opinion or action of a romantic partner, damned if I stood by him and damned if I didn't. All women have been in situations where we were well-informed and well-prepared, but shouted down by an unprepared, uneducated bully able to dismiss years of hate speech and lies with the shrug of a shoulder.

Last night's debate hurt to watch because it felt so personal. Hillary Clinton was every woman who has had to work three times as hard as the men in her office in order to be considered for a promotion. She was every woman who hasn't been taken seriously because she's either too hot to have a brain or to ugly for her opinion to matter. She was every woman refusing to sink to the level of an abusive partner. She was a woman, like so many women before her, sticking her neck out because how else are things going to change? 

Hillary isn't perfect. She makes mistakes. She doesn't always tell the truth, and she is held to an infinitely higher standard than her opponent. As a nation, we compare their scandals without any sense of scale and then say we've placed them on a level playing field. But she's used to having her mistakes amplified. She's used to people calling her names. She's used to being simultaneously labeled as too weak and too brash to do her job. As a woman, she's used to all this bullshit and more. But despite Trump's best attempts, she won't be swayed. She's got stamina. 

Election Season: An Open Letter to My Ten-Year-Old Daughter

I'm writing to you because this is a very big week for our country. This is the week that Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman in history to become a major political party's nominee for President of the United States. We went to Brooklyn for two days (you have pink hair now!) and we missed the roll call vote when Hillary was officially nominated, so when we got home last night, we watched it on the big screen in our living room. I can't tell you how special it was to me to be able to sit between my daughters and watch a 102-year-old woman, born before women had the right to vote, cast Arizona's votes for woman who will hopefully be the first female president of our country. 

You don't remember a president who wasn't Barack Obama. When Obama won the 2008 election, you were a toddler, too little to go with your dad and me when we flew to DC to stand in the freezing cold with hundreds of thousands of people and watched him take the oath of office. However, if Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman president, you will remember that day. And hopefully you'll remember a little bit of last night, even though you are thankfully young enough not to realize how ground-breaking it was, even though you rolled your eyes when I asked you stay in the room and watch it with me. You probably didn't notice that I was crying. I'm pretty sure you thought I was being a little silly. 

But even though I don't think you fully understood the significance of the roll call vote, I know you understand the importance of this election. And that's why I'm writing to you about it right now and not in November when we'll know the outcome and be either ecstatic or devastated. I'm writing to let you know that while we were in Brooklyn, you "prank called" people to ask them how they felt about the convention, to ask whether or not they were "with her." I'm writing because I watched you sit outside with a group of adults last week and paint a banner that said I Condemn Anti-Black Police Violence, and then march through our new city with a poster bearing the name of one of the many people of color killed by racist police violence in 2016. I'm writing because you ask our LGBTQ friends questions about their experiences, really listen to their answers, and then incorporate those answers into the way you see the world. I'm writing because you know you're privileged as a middle-class white girl, and you use that privilege to speak truth and stand up for people who don't have the same advantages. I'm writing because you do see race. You saw that your friends in Atlanta often experienced racism. You see the difference between the way white people and people of color are treated in this country. But you don't care about race when it comes to deciding whether someone is a good person, someone you want to be around, someone worthy of love. I'm writing because I'm proud of you. 

Last night, after the roll call vote, we watched a video about mother whose children have been killed because of racist civilian or police action. Even though we had marched for an end of racist police violence last week, I don't think you fully felt the emotional weight until you heard Sandra Bland's mother talking about her love for daughter, saying, "Sandy will continue to speak through me, her mother." You were sitting next to me on the couch and I felt you wipe your face on my arm. I looked over and saw that you were silently crying as you listened to those women speak. When I asked what was wrong, you managed to whisper, "This is just so sad" before you started shaking with sobs. You sat on my lap and we watched the end of their speech before listening to a beautiful song about rising up from hardship. I was so grateful for that song because as your mother in that moment, I didn't know what to say to make you feel better. I just held you as you cried. 

What I should have said was this: You are good for this world. You don't see it right now, but the love and empathy you have for every other person on earth is a remarkable thing. I've never known another child like you, even when I was a child. I've never known a child who automatically accepts every person she meets as person worthy of dignity and respect. And I mean every single person you meet. People don't have to be like you for you to value their experiences. Every life matters to you just by virtue of being a human life. Your kindness, intelligence, and compassion are inspiring not only to me, but to everyone who has a chance to see you in action.

I know you don't think you could possibly have any impact on the mothers we saw speaking at the convention last night, and to a large extent, you're right. One of the most difficult things about growing up is realizing that sometimes bad things happen to people who don't deserve them, and no amount of praying or bargaining can ever undo the wrong that has been done. It's a lesson you learned for the first time when you were five and your uncle-- your favorite person in the world-- was killed in an accident. You felt the pain of that loss, and you watched helplessly as the rest of our family felt it, too. I know that as you watched the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and Jordan Davis speak about losing their children, a part of you was imagining your grandmother. You know all too well that that you cannot "fix" the death of a child. But you can work to fix the circumstances that led to the deaths of those particular children.

I know you think that as a ten-year-old girl, you lack the ability to create any meaningful, positive change in this world. But I am your mother, and as your mother, I have a responsibility to you to correct you when you're wrong. The truth is that people like you-- people who operate solely out of a desire to do good and love others-- are the only people who ever change things for the better. I know it's not always easy to care as much as you do, or to feel as strongly as you feel. I know it can be crushing to want to so badly to reach through the TV screen, hold the hands of grieving mothers, and fix all their problems, erasing racism and bigotry from the earth and bringing their children back to life. I know it doesn't feel like enough that whenever given the opportunity, you choose to speak up for those whose voices have been silenced. I know it doesn't feel like enough to listen and learn from people who have experienced prejudice and hardship. But you've only been around for ten years, and you've already done so much to change this world for the better. You can't see how great you already are, and you can't see how great you're going to be. You can't see what I see. And what I saw, holding you in my lap last night as you cried for the lost lives of people you never met and looked forward to the election of the first woman president, is that you are going to do big things. 

You're already my hero, and you've only just begun.

Merry Christmas, Zach

The Christmas my little brother turned ten, I got up to go to the bathroom at around three in the morning and found him sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the couch in the dark, just staring at the glow of our tree. Our parents had a rule that their four children had to at least try to wait until 6:00 a.m. before we woke them up to open presents, but there Zach sat, a big smile on his face and his full-to-bursting stocking sitting between his crossed legs."Go back to sleep, dork," I said, and he didn't even acknowledge me. He was in a meditative state, lulled into a profound contentment by the bright lights and the array of packages.

 I went back to bed, and when I woke up three hours later, I found him sitting in the same position on the couch, staring at my parents with laser eyes as they puttered back and forth between the kitchen and the family room to make their coffee and put the traditional breakfast casserole in the oven. I wasn't surprised. Despite the fact that we had two younger sisters, Zach was always the first to wake up Christmas morning. Way past the point when most kids his age opted for an extra couple hours of sleep over opening presents at the crack of dawn, he was the one to run into my bedroom and shout, "Wake up! It's Christmas!" in my ear. 

It wasn't abut the presents for him. Not really. He was the least materialistic person I've ever met, even as a kid. With the one noted exception of his second Christmas, when he asked for a blue car and had a total meltdown when Santa brought him a red one, I don't remember him having a super emotional reaction to any particular gift. What he liked was the ritual of it, the spectacle, the fact that no matter what, every year ended with a magic we all worked together to create. He was always broke, but he never let that stand in the way of spreading Christmas cheer. In high school, he and his band created an album of original Christmas songs, which is one of my most cherished possessions. When I had children and he became an uncle, he may not have been able to afford gifts for the whole family, but he always made sure the kids had something great to open. On his last Christmas, a week after his twenty-third birthday, he drove three hours to surprise his girlfriend at her parents' house on Christmas Eve, and then back to our parents' house on Christmas day to open presents and play with my kids. He wanted to experience everyone's magic, to make everyone's Christmas better and brighter, and he never failed.

My brother only had twenty-three Christmases. He died in a hiking accident in September, 2011. And three short months later, a week after he would have (should have) celebrated his 24th birthday, it was Christmastime again. 

The first December without my brother, I cried every single day. Every song reminded me of him. Every tree. Every bright colored light. Every holiday movie or Hallmark commercial or Christmas pageant or nativity scene made made me feel like the the bottom of my heart had dropped out. I tortured myself by listening to his homemade Christmas album on my drives to and from work, trying to cry myself out of tears before I got home to my kids. I banned the songs "Frosty the Snowman," "All I Want for Christmas is you," and "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" from my house as long as my husband and children were home, but would listen to them on repeat and cry when I was by myself. I didn't want commemorate his birthday or celebrate Christmas. But I wasn't the only person in my family. I had a two-year-old and a five-year-old who my brother had loved to the moon and back. And Zach wouldn't have wanted them to miss out.

So we decorated the tree. We went to the Christmas festivals. We drove around the city looking at lights. We went to the Christmas parade. We threw an oyster roast on Zach's birthday and filled the house with his music. I decorated my cubicle with Christmas lights and wore antlers on my head to make my kids laugh. We took road trips to celebrate the holidays with friends, and I recorded a video of my children struggling through the Spanish of "Feliz Navidad" and posted it on Facebook with the message, "Merry Christmas from our family to yours." And on Christmas Eve, exactly a year after I had snapped at Zach for talking during the sermon and singing in a silly voice, I went to church, sang the songs, and cried for the thousandth time in three months. Only this time, there was a tiny spark of happiness in the tears, because for the first time since he died, I felt like I was with my brother.

Look, I'm not a very religious person. My husband and I are Unitarian Universalists, and as far as I know, my brother was agnostic. And I know that Christmas has become as much a symbol of our consumerist culture as it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus. I also know that it would be very easy for me to check out during the whole month of December, to make a nest of blankets and stay in bed listening to sad music and reading novels with tragic endings. But every year, the day after Thanksgiving, I take a long look in the mirror and tell myself to buck up. Because I don't know how many Christmases I'll have with my family, and I don't want to waste them. 

So this year, we're driving up to the mountains and my husband is indulging me by cutting down the tree of our choosing. We're going to the Christmas parade. We're taking the kids to see The Nutcracker. I'm buying them a ton of presents I know they don't need and decorating the outside of our house with all the bright lights money can buy.We're going to go Christmas caroling with our neighbors and visit a nursing home to bring Christmas cheer to the residents. Just like every year since 2011, I am going to mourn another year of life that my brother has had to miss. I'll cry when we put the ornaments on the tree. I'll feel a deep ache as my children open their presents. I'll cry as I drive through a dark night lit up with the twinkling magic of Christmas. But this year when "Frosty the Snowman" comes on, I'll sing along through the tears, and I'll be singing for my brother.

Zach and me, probably Christmas 1995