Letter to My Mother

PREFACE: I wrote this letter to my mom while procrastinating working on my final project.  My friend, who, like me, is a smart, beautiful capable person fed up with male mediocrity, insisted I share this letter to the whole world.  I told her that I'd publish it on my blog later but she was having none of it.  She told me to post it now.  So, what the heck?  No time like the present.  Life is too short.


Elizabeth Edwards died two days ago.  And I feel horrible that such an accomplished woman died overshadowed by scandal.


She believed in her husband, championed his cause, raised his children.  And how did her husband pay her back?  He had an a tawdry affair, fathered a child, and denied it.  While his wife had cancer.

Imagine if the roles were switched.  What would people say about Elizabeth if she had an affair and ran for president while her husband had cancer?

Will she be remembered for her intelligence, her career, her eloquence, or her passion for her causes?  Nope.  She will be remembered as the wife of a failed presidential candidate.  As the caricature "Saint Elizabeth".  As a monster who screeched at her aides and at her unfaithful husband.

Her life, one full of potential, has been reduced to a Page Six blurb.  All because of her stupid husband.

I'm realizing how unbelievably unfair our society is.  A few weeks ago I went shopping with Marta.  She needed to buy a camera and I provided company and interpretation services.  We were in a department store looking at creams and makeup and diamond rings.  The entire floor was devoted to women's beauty products, and they were quite expensive.  Most floors in department stores are filled with products for women.  And yet, women make 77 cents for every dollar men make in the U. S.  How is that?

If I have to spend the rest of my life alone, I'm prepared to do it.  Days like today I don't know why I'm working so hard to acquire a skill set and understand myself, but I know that it will be worth it one day.  If I have to work three times as hard as a man to get any recognition, then so be it.  If no man meets my standards right now because I'm too busy busting my a** to make something of myself, then so be it.  Let them call me a b***.  Let them call me heartless.  But I will not die under the burden of someone else's failures.