I’ve been watching Hillary throughout the years and have had several occasions to meet her up close. And while we haven't had a private conversation or "hung out", I did meet her in situations intimate enough to feel connected.
Here’s what I can tell you: Up close and personal, Hillary is an authentic individual. She’s the real deal - true and genuine with nothing false about her. Brilliant also. Even when we don’t always track with her intellect, she has that gift of bringing things down to an understandable level.
I feel frustrated when I hear people say she’s phony or inauthentic, or that she talks out of both sides of her mouth, or that she flip-flops all over the place. Imagine my struggle to articulate to others what I know to be true: that this is a fully realized individual. This is an individual who can stay in the present and see things as they are while imagining and planning for the way they can be. This is a person who has transformed herself one step at a time, throughout her entire life, noticing and changing behaviors that do not serve, and moving from inflexible positions to those that are fully possible to accomplish in her lifetime.
Her spirituality is grounded in service, in the issues and needs of a planet in a precarious position. She continues to tenaciously ferret out the narrow path to the future that we, progressives, are striving to create. Weak? No. She's fully in her power, walking the narrow path to victory, one foot in the present and one in the future, the eye ever on the prize. She is the true leader as follower, and that is what she has been doing throughout her campaign...talking to individuals, taking in their pain and the realities of their lives, demonstrating her compassion and promising them her very best. Yes, this is what a woman looks like who is fully realized and fully authentic. This is an evolutionary leader.
Maybe this is not a woman we are accustomed to seeing. After all, we want our women to be to be compliant, to smooth the way, to fix our mistakes and make us look good. We want them to be ever gracious, our caregivers. While Hillary honors these women, she told us a long time ago she is not that woman. She has a different path. And she has been treading it one step at a time until she is now ready to be the leader of the free world at a time when it needs her leadership. She is clear about her task. She will do what it takes. And she does not choose the soft path.
I could go on. We have a candidate that is possibly the most qualified individual who has ever sought the democratic nomination for President of the United States. But she is a woman, and that makes it especially difficult. We all have expectations of women that may conflict with who Hillary is. One young woman whom I met at a Hillary fundraiser, a senior manager of a respected company who had recently resigned to be a full-time mom, confided in me that she realized she was projecting the same image onto Hillary that many of her male employees often projected onto her, that of royal bitch. She realized she didn’t even know much about Hillary and had come to the fundraiser to find out. She was pleasantly surprised to find Hillary a gracious individual thankful for the support of the young business community.
I was impressed with this woman’s insight into herself, perhaps easier for her to recognize than for some others since she had experienced such projections herself. We all need to look at ourselves and at our willingness to believe the endless sound bites we hear about Hillary and replace them with the facts of this campaign. We have an opportunity here. We have an individual running for the Democratic nomination who has walked her talk all of her adult life, who has consistently worked for the very principals of progress that are essential for our precarious planet today.
When I asked this woman’s husband why he was at the fundraiser, his answer was perhaps not so insightful as his wife’s but was equally impressive. He laughed, “Well, I’m a fan of experience.” I am too. I’m voting for Hillary.
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