This weekend was hard. After all we’ve been through this year, losing Ruth Bader Ginsburg felt like the bottom of possibility falling out. I pride myself on being able to resurrect every setback into something commanding, something better. But this weekend did feel like defeat. It felt unscalable. I couldn’t deny it, even to myself. I resolved that there were others in the world with worse problems and that I had to learn to accept that all the tomorrows would be worse. Yesterday afternoon, I moped and slumped in my chair and waited for the day to be over.
But today I woke up angry. Disappointed again, but this time at myself. How dare I. How dare I resolve that we’ve lost and fathom we have the potential to lose all the ground that she worked so hard to attain for us? She dedicated her life to elevating our platform. And now here we stand, again, but now starting from a base that would have otherwise likely taken us many (who knows how many) generations to achieve.
So we know we’re once again looking into the eyes of a force that is thrilled at our now compromised position. A force that is licking its lips, waiting for our inadvertent lack of effort that will send us slinking back into the oppressing shadows we came from. Unheard from and irrelevant. Unable to bring the magic, the quiet, the beauty. All the balance and glow that we’re capable of. All the deafening fairness that we require and demand for others. Gone.
No. I say NO. I say, Hell No! It’s time to step up, my friends. It’s time to realize our part in this saga and create a new platform from what RBG gifted us. It’s time to gratefully, collectively, receive the torch from her and grow into what she intended for us. She never meant to hang around and hold our hands forever. No, it didn’t go how we hoped, although she gave more than we ever would have imagined asking. But here we are. And perhaps it’s of great design. We’re being called on to step in.
We’re being called on to invent. We’re being called on today to begin. Because what it’s going to take to maintain our rights now, the things that some of us grew up with and took for granted are now on a platter before us. On a delicate platter that we never imagined was so fragile. We don’t have the knowing, power grip that RBG did. Not by our sole effort. But a little secret that occurred to me: Collectively we do. Truth be told, it’s no secret at all. We know it. We just haven’t needed to put in the effort.
But, as all good schools require... it’s time to graduate from this reality. It’s time to be appreciative of all we’ve experienced, all the days we’ve had to let someone else do the heavy lifting and worrying and fighting. It’s time to move across the stage and shift our tassel and feel proud and empowered by all we know and have seen. We know history. We know that effort and fighting works. We saw it in action. And now we move into our new role. The role of leaders. The role of having a voice. The role of being a game-changer and an advocate.
But it’s going to take something altogether different. That’s where our newness, our freshness, our vigor now comes in. It’s time to give a solid wake-up shake to all we know that we’re capable of. Because now it’s time to start the work with our neighbors and our friends. Our grocers and our mail-folk. It’s going to take a solidified effort of community that I have never understood quite so intensely as I do today. And now I’m excited. Now I know what to do. Or I should more accurately say, I know where to start.
This is more than a women’s issue. RBG has slingshotted us way passed that. It’s a humanitarian issue. I call on you, my sisters of every age, race, belief, gender. I call on you, my brothers, of every age, race, and gender. We can do this. Because one set of hands grasping at water will lose the most of it. But if there’s a set of hands behind those, and some behind those, and some behind those, and continuing, we will together keep all the drops.
RBG left a legacy, which doesn’t stop at her history. Yes there’s that... but what she also left behind is us. Us. Her prodigies. We can honor and celebrate all she did for us by taking her torch and lighting each other’s. Creating so much damn light that she can see it from wherever she is. And then she’ll be proud. She’ll know that her meandering graduates will go on to have an amazing future after all.
And we can all watch those predatory eyes lose their hope. And slink into the background, irrelevant, with a voice unheard.
Please share this. Let’s start a thing. Actually, let’s continue a thing. And make it even brighter.
#friendsofRBG