Hey there, my friends!! I hope that this past week has been kind to you and has treated you well. History was made over this weekend and I am so proud to have had the privilege to watch this very proud moment in history. Of course, I am referring to the U.S. 2020 Election. Here is a quick disclaimer for everyone: this post is not meant to be political at all. I personally don’t like talking about topics like politics or religion because somehow someone will very likely get upset or hurt and that is not why I started writing. I started this blog because I want to share more positivity and happiness with the world. For this reason, I ask that we all leave our political opinions at the door and instead talk about how amazing it is that there is a woman who is the Vice President-Elect. As a woman who supports women’s rights, I am so incredibly proud of Kamala Harris. I know the various challenges that I have faced in my life, I can only imagine how proud of herself that Kamala Harris must be. I know that my grandmother would love to see this if she were alive today.
For over the last hundred years, women around the world have been fighting to be heard. I cried a little bit on Saturday afternoon when I heard that Kamala Harris was the Vice President-Elect because this is something that was never heard of when my grandmother was my age. She was born in 1915 when World War I was going on. She grew up in a time when girls were asked why they wanted to continue their education past middle school and they were expected to get married and start families when they were in their teenage years. My grandmother was one of those young women who were written off from their families because she chose to continue her education. Instead of spending her teenage years going to school and her parents being involved in her life, she had moved in with an aunt of hers who was living nearby so that she could go to high school. When she first started going to work, many neighbors would ask her, “Cecelia, why are you going to work? Is something wrong at home? Does your father need help?” My father didn’t grow up knowing one set of his grandparents very well because of this choice that my grandmother had made. I think that it is so sad that it has taken over a hundred years for there to not only be a woman in the Vice President office, but a woman of color who comes from a family of immigrants. At the same time, I am so proud to have the honor of seeing this wonderful moment in history being made. I am certain that other women, like my grandmother, would be so proud to see this moment — this has been a long time coming. I have been thinking about what my grandmother’s life in the San Francisco area must have been like, then I have been comparing that to the opportunities that I have had for most of my life — I have had the opportunity to not only have had gone to high school but to be the first woman in my dad’s family who went to college (on scholarship no less!) and then to have had the career that I have, all without ever being asked any of those same questions that my grandmother had been asked for the majority of her life. I can’t help but feel so honored to be able to know that my life is very different than my grandmother’s life and that it had only taken three generations for these opportunities to exist today.
I really like that Kamala Harris said the above quote and I completely agree with her. If ever I were to have a daughter, I hope that I will have the opportunity to make sure that she gets at least every single opportunity that I ever had, but I would encourage her to have as many ambitions as possible. If she wanted to have goals so high that she is figuratively going for the stars, then I would encourage her to go after them. I would hope that she had looked at my example and encourage other women around her as well and to not be afraid of speaking up for herself and others around her. We all deserve the same opportunities no matter who you are. Unfortunately, for so many reasons it is easy to get distracted along the way to completing your goals (it can be as simple as not having healthier habits or it can be as complicated as somehow not being realistic or possible). When I was in middle school, no one at school knew that I struggled with hunger whenever I was not in school (because I worked in the school cafeteria and they would give me a meal in exchange for the work that I had done). No one would have thought twice about it because they knew that my father was employed, they saw our skin color and did not see the less obvious signs of child abuse, and they had made assumptions of what our lives must have been like when we (my sister and I) were out of school. The point that I am making is that you never know what the challenges are of the person who is standing ahead of you in line at the grocery store. You don’t know if they are having money problems, problems at their work, etc. But it is so easy to assume that they probably have a stable job and to make other assumptions about what their life might be like. My dad used to tell me a phrase when I was a little girl — “when you assume, you make an a** out of u and me.” I really like this saying because it is saying that you need to check the facts, sources, and your own prejudices before accepting it as the truth.
I think that one of the best things that we need to do as a nation is to lift the people around us, whoever they are. We don’t know what challenges we all have to face every single moment of every single day. It costs nothing to show compassion and to be kind. Literally nothing (at least monetarily). I think that is this is so easy for each of us to do individually. Yes, it will take cost some of your time, but that’s it. There is no reason why we can’t take a moment to hold a door open for someone who is coming or going. That takes only a moment of your time and I’m sure that whoever the door is being held open for will appreciate it if not at least smile. If you see someone struggling to reach an item on the shelf while you are at the store, why not offer to help them? Yes, there is a pandemic going on, but I’m sure that the person you are offering to help would at least appreciate that they know that you took the time to notice that they are struggling and that someone offered to help. This is something that could be sorted out within a minute. That’s all that would cost. It costs nothing except a little bit of thoughtfulness and some time. For this reasoning, I think that all of us should strive to help in simple ways in our own communities. There is a lot of healing that will need to be done for a while yet and it will take all of us to help each other get through this.
Thank you so very much for taking the time to read my blog!! I have a challenge for each of you who is reading this blog post. For one week, try to do a random act of kindness every day. I really enjoy giving myself challenges like this each day, even if it is only washing up the pile of dishes that are always in the kitchen sink. All it costs is some time. Please feel free to applaud this blog post (where the hands clap together) and comment down below. I’d love to hear about some of the ways that you plan on doing one random act of kindness each day. I hope that you will have a great week! Stay safe out there! Until next week, my friends! :-) ❤
— Moriah
