This is not just a vote for my daughters
November 5, 2024
A lot of us are talking about voting for our daughters this presidential election because, of course. There’s nothing less than their bodies, their autonomy, their freedoms, their entire futures on the line.
(In the voting booth this year, I let Sage fill in the YES circle on New York’s Prop One to ensure that abortion restrictions amount to unconstitutional discrimination in medical care. “I can’t have kids anymore,” I said. “So this one’s for you.”)
But this election, my vote for Kamala Harris is also for my mom.
My mom who taught me I had a voice when she helped me mail my letter to the editors of Ms. Magazine in fifth grade.
My mom who met me in DC at my first pro-choice rally in the late 80s, when we could already see the Republicans in power chipping away at abortion rights.
My mom who invited me to join her in Sarajevo in 1999 and 2000 to work with women who had become refugees — some in their own home country — so that I could understand that yes, it can happen “here” and that it can happen fast.
My mom who stood in the freezing cold in January, 2009, trying to get a faint cell signal so she could text me how not-close-at-all she was to the National Mall where President Obama was being inaugurated.
My mom who sobbed with me for weeks in November 2016. Then, two months later, marched with me and my daughters through the streets of Washington D.C. — and didn’t stop there.
Family separation. Demonization of immigrants. Even more erosions of our rights to control our own bodies. Too many school shootings, and not enough people in the GOP who seem to care. It felt like every month there was another thing to protest.
I voted for my mom, who shows up for everyone in need, all the time, and doesn’t even tell anyone about it.
Last night, my mom was my first and only +1 choice to hear the closing words of Vice President Kamala Harris in person.
We swayed, we cried, we laughed, we sang. (Even if she made up some of the lyrics to Don’t Stop Believing) We held hands 50 yards from the stage in Philly — a few miles from the house where she grew up, in the very city where her mother’s mother immigrated from Kiev to give her family a chance at a better life.
It felt like a circle closing.
It felt like the start of something new and good for all of us, mothers or not.
May it be so.
Every piece of writing I am reading today is making me tear up. This was beautiful, thank you for sharing your writing with us. I voted for my mom too.
Girls, maidens, women,
guardians of the human seeds.
Matrix of this world.
...
Mothers, grandmothers,
humus for the young seedlings.
Force of the people.
...
Caregivers, teachers,
godmothers, healers, leaders.
Light in the dark night.