What every daughter needs to know

before they steal her tomorrow

Here's what happens when you're right: Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to hear it when you're wrong either, but being right is worse, especially when you're a woman. Especially when you've been saying the same thing for seventy-three years—through the Equal Rights Amendment's failure, through Roe and its fall, through every "first woman to" headline that should have come decades earlier.

I've been Cassandra* in stilettos, prophesying doom while reapplying my red lipstick. "The sky is falling," I'd say, and they'd pat my hand and tell me I was being hysterical. Hysterical—from the Greek hystera, meaning uterus. Because apparently having a uterus makes you unreliable, except when they need someone to birth their babies or clean up their messes or hold an entire country together with nothing but bobby pins and rage.

And now here we are, standing in the ruins of what they said couldn't happen, shouldn't happen, wouldn't happen, yet it has happened. Like Ida B. Wells** before me, I've been documenting the lynching of truth itself, watching as justice is strung up on the tree of ignorance while "good people" look away and mutter about "both sides."

The sky didn't just fall—it crashed, it shattered, it's lying in pieces around our feet like a Waterford crystal vase that nobody wanted to believe was sitting too close to the edge of the table. I've graduated from crying into my morning coffee (no sugar, splash of half-and-half, dash of existential dread) to screaming "I TOLD YOU SO" at my television. The media doesn't care. The television, the media never cares. They just keep showing me people in expensive suits telling me to have hope, to join the resistance, to keep fighting.

Let me tell you something about resistance: We invented it. We perfected it. Like Sojourner Truth*** speaking truth to power with "Ain't I a Woman?", I have been resisting since before these men knew how to tie their own shoelaces. I've been resisting while scratching my way through life, cleaning up after dinner and paying bills and explaining to my wife why the dishwasher needs to be loaded a certain way (it just does, trust me on this). I've been resisting while watching almost fifty percent of white women vote against their own interests because apparently internalized misogyny is more powerful than self-preservation.

But here's what nobody tells you about resistance: it's exhausting. It's like being the only person at a party who knows the house is on fire, but everyone keeps telling you to lighten up and have another cocktail. "Try the canapés," they say, while smoke curls around their ankles. "Why are you always so negative?" Like Mary Seacole****, who had to build her own damn hospital when they wouldn't let her help, we're expected to save everyone while they question our qualifications.

Now they want me to join their resistance? Their resistance? That's like being invited to join your own damn book club. I don't need to join anything—I need reinforcements. I need women of all ages, the fierce, bold, scared, tired, weary women, the women who were born knowing what I had to learn: that being called bossy is a compliment, that being "too much" is exactly enough, that the country is a dumpster fire behind a Waffle House at 3am and the men who lit the match are still holding the matches.

To these women—and I mean all women, whether they were born female or chose to be female or rejected the whole damn binary altogether—I say: Take it. Take it all. The DNC, the PTA, the NYSE, the USA, the whole damn alphabet soup of power. Take it and run. Don't ask permission. Don't say please. Don't worry about being nice. Nice never got us anywhere except exactly where we are now. Like Emma Goldman***** dancing at the revolution, we can fight and find joy simultaneously.

And where are we now? We are fractured. Splintered into a thousand glittering pieces. But here's the thing about being broken: we can finally stop pretending we were ever whole. At least we can stop smiling and nodding and saying "That's interesting" when men explain our own ideas back to us. At least we can get down to the business of finding a way to stop the shattering of the rest of our lives, which is what women have always done, whether anyone was watching or not.

Not because they should have to. Not because it's fair. But because they can, and they will, and because somebody has to clean up this mess, and it's certainly not going to be the people who made it.

The sky really has fallen. We're wrecked. But we're still here and sometimes that's enough. Sometimes that has to be enough for today.

And somewhere—maybe in heaven, maybe in whatever cosmic green room the universe reserves for its fiercest warriors—Sojourner Truth is watching. Sojourner, and all those other magnificent women: the female spies who outsmarted the Nazis while wearing seamed stockings, the resistance fighters who carried messages in their hat pins, the suffragettes who went to jail so I could vote (and so that other women could choose not to, which I'm still trying to process, but that's another essay entirely).

I imagine Sojourner up there, her head held high with that unshakeable dignity that helped her shake the conscience of a nation, watching us scramble around like contestants in some cosmic reality show called "How to Save Democracy Without Really Trying." I'm hoping she doesn't have any heavy object within reach, because when I get up there—and this is assuming I make it to wherever the warriors for justice go when they die—I don't want to face that penetrating gaze of hers while she asks "Sweet Baby Jesus, gal, what were you thinking? After everything we did for you?"

And right behind her, because mothers are everywhere, even in the great beyond, will be my own mother, ready with that look. You know the one. The "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed" look that makes you wish she were angry instead. "What were you thinking?" she'll ask, and I'll have to say, "Well, that's just it, Mother. We weren't. Not enough of us were."

But until then, we're here, and I am Going to Be Watching so multi-generations of women better be trying, and maybe that's what Sojourner and all the others would understand. That women are going to be doing our best with what we've got, which isn't much except determination and spite and an absolutely iron-clad unwillingness to let the bastards win. Like Grace Hopper****** who told us to ask forgiveness rather than permission, we'll do what needs to be done and sort out the consequences later.

In the meantime, pass the coffee or the Wild Turkey. Hold the hope. Women have work to do. Be the woman they should have listened to. Be the storm they should have seen coming.

* Cassandra: In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan priestess cursed by Apollo to utter true prophecies that no one would believe. Her name has become synonymous with valid warnings that go unheeded.

** Ida B. Wells (1862-1931): An investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the American South, championed women's suffrage, and co-founded the NAACP, all while facing death threats and exile for speaking truth to power.

*** Sojourner Truth (c.1797-1883): Born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree, she became one of the most powerful voices for abolition and women's rights. Her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, remains one of the most eloquent arguments for intersectional feminism ever delivered.

**** Mary Seacole (1805-1881): A Jamaican-born nurse who, after being rejected by Florence Nightingale's nursing corps due to racial prejudice, self-funded her journey to Crimea and established the "British Hotel" behind the lines, treating wounded soldiers from both sides.

***** Emma Goldman (1869-1940): Anarchist political activist and writer who championed women's equality, free speech, and workers' rights. Famous for allegedly saying, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

****** Grace Hopper (1906-1992): Computer science pioneer and US Navy rear admiral who invented one of the first linkers and popularized machine-independent programming languages. Known for saying "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" and for her unconventional approach to problem-solving.