A woman is running for President as the nominee for the Democratic party!!!
I think that's pretty mind blowing. Long overdue but it really does take my breath away!
It really doesn't matter whether you are a man or a woman...born that way or transgender...Democratic or Republican...Jewish, Christian or whatever...black or white or whatever. The final barrier is down and we have broken through the ceiling.
Today every parent can look into their daughter's crib, carriage, nursery school room, high school, college dorm or apartment and tell her - YOU CAN BE ANYTHING YOU WANT. Even the President of the United States. Whether Hillary Clinton wins or loses this election, she had a huge win and is making history.
I received an email this morning from the most incredible 90-year-old woman in Miami who runs the local support chapter for my charity, the American Friends of ALYN Hospital. She copied me on an email she sent out to her daughter and granddaughter with her reactions. She remembered the path to today's historic change.
It really resonated with me. We all need to remember how we got here.
We were the secretaries; never the bosses.
We were the relief workers during WWII, never on the front lines.
We were the assistants, never the CEO's.
We were the homemakers, never the breadwinners.
There was a time when we didn't have the right to vote and weren't deemed intelligent enough to sit on juries.
It took us 96 years to get here. What do we do now with this game changing turn of the tide? For me, so consumed with my work for ALYN Hospital and always within eyesight of a picture of a severely physically disabled child beating the odds, I hear the constant refrain of our mission: making the impossible possible.
We stand on the shoulders of all the women who came before us. Let's do justice to all their battles and claim the rights our predecessors fought so hard to win. Let's see every woman eligible to vote go out and register and vote on November 8th. Let's insure that all the issues facing women are part of the political dialogue over the next months.
Each of us has their own agenda...I understand that. It is not for me to tell anyone else how to vote in November. But I know how I will vote. Because I am daily grateful for my health and inspired by the examples I see at ALYN Hospital in Jerusalem where even a small step with a walker can be a monumental victory I will be voting for the next President who will best safeguard the rights of all Americans which includes all women and for the President who will best respect and safeguard the rights of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East.
It's 2016. We are secretaries and bosses. We serve in all branches of the military. We are assistants and CEO's. We run homes, raise children and are often the primary earners. Too many of us live in poverty and too few of us are billionaires.
But we all have the right to vote. Exercise it. Together, we are an incredible force for change as we always have been.