Happy Women’s History Month! Back in 1982, when it first began, they only gave us a week. Women still earn 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, so we’re used to being shortchanged. By the way: that number went down after Donald Trump took office again last year.
How about the recent passage of the SAVE Act in the House, which Roanoke-based Congressman Ben Cline supported. Cline also refused to support a bill outlawing child marriage. And the SAVE Act? That could make it harder for women to vote if they took their husband’s last name at marriage, along with putting up many other barriers to make voting harder. How else to interpret this other than Congress wants to make it harder for women to vote?
In the Southern states outside Virginia, abortion has been severely restricted if not outlawed. In Tennessee, legislators even tried to charge women seeking abortion pills by mail with murder, punishable by death.
Ladies, we got shit to do.
• • •
Speaking of women heroes, when my Mom was 37 her doctor told her she had an ovarian cyst. And so it caught my middle-aged parents by surprise when that cyst turned out to be me. My dad was a World War II veteran who returned home to a life of alcoholism.
Which meant the women in my life were my everything. My Grandma Macy lived next door and served as my own Private Head Start; she taught me to read when I was four. My Mom was a factory worker and my first proofreader.
As feisty as she was frugal, she knew that government cheese made the best grilled cheese sandwiches (white bread, a shmear of mayo, minced onion).
I have stood on the shoulders of strong women my whole life—my Mom, my grandma—who kept us from being homeless because she owned our house—and my big sister, Terry, who helped pay our bills so the “gas man,” as Mom called him, wouldn’t turn off our heat.
And no women’s history month tribute would be complete without thanking the teachers in my life, especially Pam Bullard Mack, my second-grade teacher. She had been the first Black Homecoming Court member in our hometown and the first Black cheerleader. She taught us about Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis, always pointing out that we were more alike than we were different.
“I could’ve been fired for teaching you that,” she said, when I interviewed her for my memoir, Paper Girl.
“You’d be fired today!” I shot back.
• • •
This is an ode to the women in my life. To Jen, my minister friend, who walks up Mill Mountain with me offering sage advice, the most excellent cookies, and a hug when I need it.
To Mere, who introduced me to “binning” at the Goodwill outlet, takes the best pictures, and is a first-class animal whisperer. (Y’all, even my new rescue puppy prefers her to me.)
To Martha, who does yoga with me most mornings via Zoom. She’s my jail-cell call if my husband can’t be reached, even though she lives in Boston, because Martha is the mitzvah queen who never, ever fails to come through for the people in her life.
To Andrea and Carole, my story-doctor sisters—the women who help me figure out how to write about hard things. To my niece Liza and our fellow traveler, Namgyal, a Buddhist nun and a healer extraordinaire.
To Nancy Saunders, my second mom, who changed my life when she let me tell the story of her family for my second book, Truevine, which allowed me to quit my job at the age of 50 and embark on a wholly new career.
To my leadership coaches Jill, Katherine, and Eli, and to the Tuesday night meal-train cooks of Ginger, Elyse, Jen, and Wendy, not to mention Jon Polk, the odd-man-out whose cauliflower-cake recipe has become my go-to favorite meal.
To Morgan, my 25-year-old campaign manager with whom I butt heads on the regular but who works harder than anyone I know.
And to my Kitchen Table Team of volunteers who encouraged me to run for Congress last year, then helped me raise the startup funds to make it possible: Kate, Barbara, Beth, Meg, Mere, Suzanne (and Ben), Sarah, Shannon, and Karen. To date, we have raised more than $1 million from 10,000 donors including not a single corporate PAC.
• • •
At the end of Paper Girl, I wrote a call to action about how to fight the Trump-led descent into authoritarianism and indecency. We needed to protest, I wrote, and we need to act locally to help the people being the most harmed. We also need to run better people for office.
To help overworked local journalists who couldn’t fully cover the cuts fully, I started this Substack to document the effects of Trump’s assault on democratic values, chronicling the harms to trans people and immigrants; the evil cuts to Head Start, school lunches, veterans benefits, and HUD housing—all so he could extend tax cuts to his billionaire friends.
We lost 92,000 jobs last month. Now we have another forever war, all based on Trump’s “gut feeling” and the fact that he lets corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu lead him around by the nose. The price of gas is up 43 cents in a week because of a war its leaders can’t even explain.
While the children of Mr. Bone Spurs will never hear a shot, seven American soldiers have already been sacrificed, along with more than 1,300 Iranians, including 175 Iranian girls-school students. A local immigrant activist is trying desperately to get her parents out of Tehran. A dear couple I know can’t reach their Iranian relatives, who are without power and water and have trouble breathing due to all the smoke from oil fires.
• • •
We need women leaders now more than ever. People like Virginia Del. Lily Franklin, who worked two jobs while she was campaigning and still flipped a seat from red to blue. Like Bedford County farmer Joy Powers, who’s running to unseat Morgan Griffith in CD-9. We need more leaders like Congresswomen Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who runs a car repair shop, and Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, a nurse.
I mean no offense to politicians; I hope to be one! But there are other kinds of skills beyond being a lawyer or a career politician. Over four decades, I’ve listened to thousands of people from across western Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley – you know, in that Appalachian part of Virginia that exists even though many think the state doesn’t extend west of Charlottesville.
I am the only woman running in the CD-6, and I got in pre-redistricting, ready to take on Ben Cline in a ruby-red R+12 district. I’ve spent four decades fighting corporations—factory CEOs and Big Pharma lawyers who tried to tarnish my reputation—while heeding the journalists’ credo of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. I’ve reported in genuinely life-threatening situations, and I have never, ever backed down from a fight.
I wrote Dopesick from my grown kid’s former bedroom while scores of lawyers billing $2,000 an hour tried to intimidate me.
Running for office ain’t kickball. In the four months since I announced my candidacy, I’ve endured death threats, gender slights bordering on sexual harassment, and—my personal favorite—a former politician who accused me of being “too elite” right before she advised me that her best strategy for burning off steam after a tough day on the campaign trail was to saddle up one of her six horses and go for a ride on her estate. And that’s all from Democrats!
When something is broken, you don’t just do the same thing and elect the same kind of leaders. The policies wrought by billionaires are what helped bring us MAGA. We need a reset. Democrats can’t keep showing up to a knife fight carrying a plastic spork.
This is the most significant election in the most corrupt era of our lifetime, brought to you by a coin-operated president and an AI-bot rubber stamp of a Congressman.
We need new leaders in this moment, someone who has known hardship, perseverance, and how to make a mean grilled cheese.
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