A Dying Dream

Four years ago, after the presidential election, my then 12-year-old daughter Lucia and I wrote thank you letters to Hillary Clinton. When Clinton lost the presidential race, writing to Hillary was my first instinct. I needed to tell her what her running for president had meant to me. I also needed to find a way for my 12-year-old daughter to process her grief about the loss. I didn’t know four years ago what a profound, devastating experience Hillary Clinton’s loss would be, not just for me and Lucia, but for our entire country, for the world. 

When Hillary Clinton ran for president, a new level of hope and excitement unfurled for me. I was raised by feminist parents. My father, even back then, was the Board President of Planned Parenthood in Northwest Indiana. He taught my sisters and me to play football and encouraged us to start a team at our school. My mother worked tirelessly for accessible health services for low-income women and helped us write letters of concern and complaint about nuclear arms to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Even with these activist, feminist roots, I never believed, could never imagine that a woman could be president. Sure, I fantasized, I hoped, but I didn’t really believe it. A woman would make so much difference. A woman would truly would change the world. But actually having a woman as President of the United States felt like a pipe dream. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton looked like she was getting close. I let myself believe. The unimaginable became thinkable. My daughter was my proxy. I shadowed her enthusiasm, tentatively watching her true belief, trying to actually experience it for myself. So many years of doubt had left me standing on the sidelines of really buying into the idea that a woman could be our nation’s commander in chief. But for those few weeks before the election I stepped over the line to stand with my daughter in the land of believing.

And then Hillary Clinton lost. The electoral college declared Voldemort our leader, and my heart broke. The night of the elections, after gearing up for a thrilling victory, my partner Nancy and I watched Lucia sob over the horrific results. We helplessly watched her cry teenage tears of disillusionment and disappointment. And my heart broke a little bit more. The next morning when the dust had settled a little bit, I told my family that I was going to write to Hillary and tell her what her running for president had meant to me. I invited Lucia to do the same. It took weeks to get the letters done. They were difficult to write because the blow of the loss had been so painful. Writing the disappointment was almost too much to bear.

And now here we are, a few days before Voldemort, the little shell of a man who’s selfishly wreaked havoc across our country finally leaves the White House. For four years, he has carried the torch of destruction, like a toxic Olympic flame, across this land, tainting it, state by state, with his narcissistic interests along with a deadly virus, to this final point where we are now — -engulfed in flames of violence, destruction, and despair.

Looking back on these last four years, I feel affirmed. I feel righteous. Hillary Clinton was the right choice. And I feel angry. What if Hillary Clinton had been the one leading this country over the last four years? Would unemployment and hunger be ravaging our country? Would Celebrity Wheel of Fortune have Drew Carey playing for the food bank in Cleveland? Would people be hoarding toilet paper and chastising each other for wearing or not wearing masks? 

The possibility for healing this country with a new administration, one that includes a WOMAN, leaves my heart racing with excitement and joy. But I’m not all in. I’ve dropped back into the shadows, not sure this dream can come true. And this time I fear Lucia is lurking in the shadows with me. In the last four years I fear that she has lost the vision, the dream, the pureness of believing in something impossible becoming possible.

For the next four years, we will have a new administration. We will have a woman in the White House. Kamala Harris. A powerful, intelligent, confident woman. In the rubble of this destruction that Mr. Man-baby, Temper-tantrum, Spoiled-brat Donald Trump has left us, we need a woman. I find myself tentatively hopeful, like I was that night four years ago when I dipped my toes into the pool of believing that America could support a woman for president. But my hope is tainted. It’s damaged by thousands of tiny blows from the last four years.

Those of us who wanted to believe in possibilities four years ago are shattered. During Trump’s presidency, we’ve travelled so far away from our vision of goodness, of greatness, of true change, that we need to start from scratch. We’re too exhausted to fantasize, to dream, even to truly hope. We simply want safety. The bigger things — equality, equity, empathy — still seem far away. 

My heart breaks again for my daughter, for all the young women and girls who dreamed the dream of Hillary Clinton four years ago. What they’ve learned in these last four years is that their dream isn’t possible. My hope is that maybe, little by slowly, day by day, one small repair at a time, Vice President Kamala Harris can help rebuild the dream of possibility for so many of us.