Secretary Clinton, I will remember you. I’ll remember the lessons I’ve learned from you, and will always be thankful to you for teaching me and so many others by example, by inclusion, by grace, by strength, by perseverance.
I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t really give a damn about the emails. Maybe not the only one whose eyes narrow with suspicion toward James Comey and the damage done to Secretary Clinton’s campaign with Comey’s vague but curiously-timed October 28th letter to Congress, and the November 7th clarification that nothing had changed since the investigation in July, which seemed to “clear” Clinton but with some harsh asides about “extreme carelessness.”
The email “scandal” was never (to me) of any real importance until Comey’s partisan blunder. He added fuel to a fire that he had already determined had no merit and had been extinguished. (Now that’s extreme carelessness, or would be without the shifting targets and their agendas as we’re learning). With his surprise appearance in late October, the decline of Clinton’s campaign began in earnest.
But this isn’t about Comey. It’s not about email. Not about the damaging whisper campaigns or the open contempt of “LOCK HER UP!” at Trump’s rallies. This is bigger than any one factor or one person.
Hillary Clinton took all the baggage thrown at her over the past thirty years and carried on. That’s what I’ll remember going forward. She never stopped. She never gave up. Despite the mud-slinging and daily denigration, she rejected the negativity and fought even harder. She fought even when she was so ill with pneumonia and dehydration that she fainted at a September 11 memorial observance.
My grandfather used to say someone had “grit” when speaking of people who were down on their luck but continued to fight and eventually triumphed. Grit is believing in yourself and your determination to make a difference in the face of obstacles, of intolerance, in gossip and sketchy, breathless first-hand accounts designed to demolish you. It’s standing in your own truth and never quitting on yourself.
Hillary Clinton has more grit than almost anyone. She had to have it to survive the endless “scandals” that meant Republicans all up in her business for over 30 years. She drew strength from inside after her husband betrayed her and lots of women disliked her for not leaving him. I was one of them, and too young and immature to realize that you don’t always quit because your husband betrayed you and humiliated you. No one decision fits all relationships. If you value what you have together, you don’t give up. You fight harder to hold on. Quitting is an easy way out. Hillary doesn’t do anything the easy way. I learned as I grew up and became a woman that there’s no honor in taking your toys and going home. Hillary Clinton taught me this.
Imagine if you can a day of waking up Hillary. I don’t think too many 69-year-old women with chronic sleep deprivation and a physically punishing year and a half of campaigning tend to wake up and focus and get right back to work. Overcoming physical exhaustion and emotional draining never slowed her down. She got up and she ran, sometimes in three or four states a day. She’s smarter than just about anyone and she knows the dark clouds are never far away and the daggers are out every day, but none of those things slowed her down. There wasn’t much time for her to have anything like a personal life, sleeping in, staying indoors in her bathrobe, or taking time to enjoy her grandchildren and her lovely daughter, Chelsea. Why? Because she put us first. She never stopped working for us.
Hillary Clinton proved to me that the best is yet to come for women. She radiated grace and serenity in the face of a man who menaced her on a debate stage, and who threatened to put her in jail. She didn’t fear him. Fear would slow her down from the fierce urgency of now, the devotion I saw every day in her of working for equal rights, for families, for children, for fairness. She never stopped believing that if we worked hard enough, our children’s lives would better and safer than our own.
Equal rights had no stronger advocate than Hillary Clinton. She dismissed the scorn, the hatred, the constant calls of “liar,” and stood with us and for us.
Until almost the end, I didn't realize how much she has sacrificed, how many times in her life she fought for us and was ridiculed, slandered, defeated by a man, but got back up and back to work. I didn’t realize my “tolerance” of Hillary Clinton had become gratitude and inspiration, even as I voted for her and canvassed for her, determined to do whatever necessary to push back her opponent.
After a long, sleepless night like so many of you had also, I’m forced to accept an outcome that I never imagined possible. But I want to take a quick moment to say thank you to this most amazing and graceful woman who gave her all and would have been a wonderful president.
Thank you, Secretary Clinton. The graciousness and inherent goodness that radiate from you have made me believe with all my heart that love really does Trump hate. Today is a horrible disappointment and I’m sorry for you but so inspired by you.
You’ve empowered so many of us. You’ve given far more than you received. The fight isn’t over. It’s just beginning. Your lessons are valuable tools and your strength has inspired me to go forward with gratitude for you until the day we have equality in our country.
UPDATE, 7:55 p.m. ET: Rec list? I’m shocked . . . and very thankful to y’all for this, and for your comments. I was trying not to cry when I wrote this piece, but still . . . I believe in you and I believe in us. Together, there’s nothing we cannot do.