4 years ago…

This week marked our 1 year anniversary in Singapore. Many thoughts on that, but I will save that post.

Thursday morning we woke up to the news that while we slept, 10,000 miles away from our home country, the Capitol of our beloved home was breached, raided and looted not by a foreign enemy, but by our own citizens. Feelings of anger, shame and sadness have lingered with us ever since. Not just Ryan and I, but our kids too. My heart breaks, especially for Ella and Liam who are old enough to know what is happening, but too young to really fully process it. To them, living in orderly Singapore, watching this chaos is mind-blowing.

What I do want to write about is the Women’s March. 4 years ago, the day AFTER Donald Trump was inaugurated, I participated in the Women’s March in Washington, DC. I was one of 400,000+ people who peacefully marched through the streets of Washington to say that our new president does not represent my ideals or thoughts of how our American democracy works, and that I will do my best to elect leaders that do. For the past 4 years I’ve watched slowly, through the hard work of many and through the votes of citizens like myself that the pledges of that march were slowly coming true. On a local level, I’ve watched AMAZING women bravely throw themselves into the vicious political arena. On the national level, the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was like a sigh of relief from 4 years of hatred and chaos. And it felt like a promise fulfilled from that cold day in January, 4 years ago, marching with friends, promising we would not be complacent with this government, for ourselves and for our kids.

No one needed to storm the Capitol to exercise our first amendment right to protest.

I want to also comment on my thoughts on that. 4 years ago, protesters were not allowed anywhere near the Capitol. In fact, as it was still set up for the inauguration, we were not even allowed to use the port-a-potties that had been placed there for inauguration crowds. So I find it absolutely bewildering that these protestors/terrorists could not only get that close to the building, but breach it while both the house and senate were in session. When we took our children back to visit DC that spring (so they could appreciate the magnificence that is our nations Capitol) we had to have congressional approval to enter the building and take a tour. So along with many, I anxiously await an accounting on how the safeguards of our Capitol fail when a bunch of predominantly white men storm it, but are more than fully staffed when women and BLM march.

Participating in the Women’s March will always be something I am immensely proud of. That cold day 4 years ago, my friends and I mused what damage could be done in 4 years… more than we could have ever guessed…