Amanda Gorman took my breath away today.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
The full transcript of her poem “The Hill We Climb” is here, but I’d watch the video if you didn’t catch it live at today’s inauguration.
We have a new president today. We have the first women, the first Black woman, the first South Asian women as our vice president today.
I dry sobbed and ate a too-hot hot pocket and watched some history being made in-between work meetings. There is so much work to do that I can’t quite exhale, not really, but I feel hope and victory and full of MLK’s words that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I’m brought to tears every time I remember the 400,000 Americas who’ve died in the pandemic in less than a year. How so many people didn’t and don’t care. How will I frame my spot in this history when I tell my own story someday? How will I explain that people wanted football games more than their neighbors to survive?
In this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
I am thankful for today, no matter how bruised we move forward there is no doubt today is moving forward. I wore my pearls. I see a future where a woman is president at last. On the day I will weep.
With Love,
Natalie