Dear Parents & Professionals:
How are you all responding to Michelle Obama's powerful speech? How are you holding up hearing all the women talking about we have experienced? In general as well as in relation to Donald Trump and Bill Clinton?
I've been so deeply rattled and disturbed. But not, at first.
It took me hearing Michelle Obama's speech to get honest and clear and to allow tears and outrage.
And also to do some serious self-reflection.
I had my fourteen year old listen to Michelle Obama's speech because it's important and because she deserves to hear the clear, insistence about what's intolerable. And because of my own experiences, sometimes I lose that clarity.
Does anyone else struggle with this as a person and as a parent?
I'm about the same age as Michelle Obama but I feel nurtured and inspired and healed even by her words. I'm curious about your thoughts and feelings too. As parents. As professionals.
This is how I responded to Michelle Obama's speech. But even if you do or don't read it I'd love to know your thoughts, feelings and perspectives.
"And I told them, I told them that they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. And I told them that they should disregard anyone who demeans or devalues them and that they should make their voices heard in the world."
This is the part of Michelle Obama's speech that killed me.
If a sexual predator is a parent or coach or neighbor how does a child disregard them?
I didn't. I couldn't. So I did something else instead.
I learned to tolerate, live with and make excuses for the way I was treated.
It's hard to admit this but when I heard what Donald Trump said on that video 11 years ago, my actual first thought was this:
"That's it? That's what the breaking news is? That's all."
I minimized Trump's words, not because they are "locker talk" but because they were car talk, dinner table talk. They were not said or done in secret but out in the open.
I minimized his words and his way not because it was not offensive but because it was so familiar.
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