What I hope the Women’s March taught my daughter.

My daughter, who as I write this is asleep in her warm, comfortable bedroom that is littered with multi-colored stuffed animals, “Wimpy Kid” books and discarded hoodies, has a much different life than I did at her age.

A room of my own is what I longed for most of all when I was a kid. I wanted a place where I could go, slip my walkman on and drown out my young, irresponsible, addicted parents fighting and yelling. My daughter likes her room, with its purple dutch door and framed Batman painting, just fine, but to her, it is just that – a bedroom. It is not her sanctuary from the chaotic whirlwind outside.

The fact that she sees her room as nothing more than what it is makes me incredibly happy and proud. It shows that I have overcome my past and broken the cycles of addiction, abuse and poverty and because of that, my daughter enjoys a happy, secure childhood filled with everything she needs and most of the things that she wants.

However, it is of the utmost importance to me that my daughter knows her life is one of privilege. To borrow a phrase my friend, Yasmine Jeffers, often tells her sons – just because something isn’t happening to her, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening to someone.

For many years, I was a big part of the “it isn’t happening to me” problem. I was puffed-up with “pull myself up by the bootstraps” pride because I had made it. I beat the statistics that told me that I would most likely be a teen mom with a drug addiction and an abusive partner because of my family’s past.

However, just because history didn’t repeat itself with me, didn’t mean that I wasn’t totally full of self-adulating sh*t. I failed to see all the sacrifices that so many people made for me. I didn’t acknowledge all the help that I had along the way and I certainly didn’t think that I may have had a leg up just by being born white (hint: I did).

Last Saturday, I took my daughter to the Charlotte Women’s March because she goes to sleep with a full belly in a room of her own and because her mother was once too full of her own hype. I also took her because I want her to always know the beauty and power in being a woman.

It was a special day for both of us. I hope that as she gets older she will continue to march and speak and fight for what she believes in.

After all, just because:

-you’ve never been objectified or made to feel less than, doesn’t mean that there aren’t some men who really do think it is okay to grab you by the p***y.

-you think that you’ve never made less money for the same job as your male counterpart, doesn’t mean that a four-time Academy Award nominee didn’t make eight times less than the guy from “Transformers.”

-your daughter wasn’t offered Princess Camp, instead of Scientist Camp, doesn’t mean that mine wash’t.

-you’ve had access to birth control or enough money for an abortion, doesn’t mean that your 17-year-old pregnant barista did.

-you feel like your voice is heard, doesn’t mean that many groups of people don’t feel as if they’ve been muted.

-you’ve never been sexually assaulted and then had to talk about how many drinks you had or how short your skirt was, doesn’t mean that a college freshman isn’t starting to think that maybe it was her fault.

-I support your right to be pro-life, doesn’t mean that you get to tell me what to do with my body.

-you’ve never been thrown through a plate glass window by an abusive spouse, doesn’t mean that my mom wasn’t.

-you feel that you control your body, doesn’t mean that a mom isn’t skipping her annual pap or a mammogram to pay for her kid’s field trip or basketball shoes.

-I will probably have to deal with vile, trollish comments about this article, doesn’t mean that I will be silenced (I watched my mom get arrested by federal agents when I was 15 years old, cowards who hide behind their computers and phones don’t scare me).

-you’re free to worship where you would like, doesn’t mean that a mosque or a synagogue isn’t being vandalized or threatened right now.

-women have endured harassment and assault for decades, doesn’t mean that now #timesup.

-you think protestors who destroy a window should be shot dead, doesn’t mean that this country wasn’t started by people dumping someone else’s property into the ocean.

-you have the right to vote, doesn’t mean that your great-grandmothers weren’t beaten and jailed to give you that beautiful privilege.

-you don’t see your privilege, doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be checked.

-you are sometimes surrounded by darkness, doesn’t mean that a new day isn’t on the horizon.

-you don’t see the point in a march where the participants wear silly hats and carry signs that you deem offensive, doesn’t mean that its point isn’t getting across.

-we’ve been silenced for so long, doesn’t mean that we’ve forgotten how to roar.

We marched because I want that magical, tender-hearted, gap-toothed, rock ’n roll loving creature, that I was so lucky to bring into the world, to know that we’re all in this together. I never want her and all the other little girls, those like her and those very unlike her, to ever forget that they are worth so much more than 70 cents on the dollar.

Photo: Charlotte Observer file

This story was originally published January 22, 2018 at 10:00 PM with the headline "What I hope the Women’s March taught my daughter.."