Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Thank you!

My heart aches. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was way more than a Supreme Court justice. She was hope. She was courage. She was inspiration for a generation of pursuers of a more a fair, equitable, just America, an America where women and all those historically disenfranchised could have a better chance at a truly safe, secure, prosperous future. Specifically in the workplace, she was a leading force in securing women's rights to...

• Start a business without a male co-signer
• Get a credit card without a male co-signer
• Obtain a business loan without a male co-signer
• Obtain a job without gender-based discrimination
• Obtain/retain employment while pregnant
• Receive pension benefits equal to male coworkers

And this, of course, is just a small sampling of an extraordinarily long list of advancements proving her integrity with her own transcendent words:

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

As I talk with our own 17-year old daughter about the RBG's passing and the state of America, the world, our community, and our roles within them, I'm all the more struck by the need for heroes -- not the swoop in to the save-the-day kind, but the kind that lifts you up and inspires courage, compassion, creativity, conviction... energy to do things that might not have otherwise seemed possible. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been a hero to me, and now to my daughter and so many other young women and men in this country. May her legacy inspire all of us to keep fighting for what we care about... and it's my great hope we truly care about one another. May RBG rest is peace. May she rest in power.

When Great Trees Fall

-- by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.

Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance, fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold

caves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.