By Betsy Biesenbach
On Tuesday, I got up, put on a pantsuit, and went to vote, sure that 24 hours later, for the first time ever, the president of the United States would be someone like me — a wife, a mother, a worker, a woman. That night I turned off the TV before all the returns were in and cried myself to sleep, comforting myself with the idea that sometimes, breaking a glass ceiling takes more than one blow.
I was behind Kamala Harris the moment she announced. Once again, I felt the thrill of the possibly of someone who knew what it was to live my life becoming the leader of the free world. I couldn’t conceive of an undereducated, racist, misogynist, felonious, bumbling fool beating out someone as educated and experienced as she was, and who, being Black and South Asian, was proof of the old adage that says she has to be twice as good just to compete.
In the early hours of the morning after the election, I woke up and listened to the news. When I heard the results, I cried out, and my husband came to check on me. But the unimaginable had happened, and he had no comfort to offer.
In the wake of her loss, the pundits have blamed everything and everyone, including Harris herself. She just wasn’t enough, they said. And — even for just a moment — she likely believed that herself.
I thought about a friend who seems to easily weather the storms of life who recently admitted that she often lies in bed and thinks about the stupid things she’s done, the people she’s let down and what a bad person she is. I smiled, because she was so far off the mark, and because so many other friends have told me the same thing. And I’ve spent plenty of nights in my own bed with the same thoughts running through my mind.
But in the morning, I wake up and I decide I’m an ordinary person with strengths and flaws, and if I really were awful, I wouldn’t have so many good people around me. In the light of morning, I can tell myself: I Am Enough.
In nearly every human culture, women are the primary caregivers for everyone, not just our own young, whom we are expected to nurture. We’ll go the extra mile for others, sometimes at the cost of our own health and well-being. You’d think that would make us feel good about ourselves, but we have been taught to feel that no matter what we do, we are still Not Enough.
And it’s no wonder.
We feel we are Not Enough when we go to school and raise children while working a job, and we still can’t get ahead because of our gender, or race, or the credit we ruined investing in our future.
We feel we are Not Enough when we are ill, and we are not listened to.
We feel we are Not Enough when we take care of elders who don’t remember who we are and take their anger and fears out on us.
We feel we are Not Enough when we raise our children to be independent, and are surprised when we find ourselves such a small part of their lives.
We feel we are Not Enough when someone touches us in ways we don’t want them to, and we are powerless to stop them.
We feel we are Not Enough when our children are senselessly murdered and the murderers are not brought to justice.
We feel we are Not Enough when lawmakers decide what we can do with our health and our bodies without asking us.
We feel we are Not Enough when we try to care for ourselves by not “doing enough.”
We feel we are Not Enough when one of us runs for president, and she’s not a liar or an adulterer or a criminal or an insurrectionist, and yet she loses a race to someone who is.
And so we try to do everything, hoping we can stop feeling like we’re Not Enough. But no one can be that much, and no one should have to be. The things we can do — they are enough. We are enough. And next time you lie in your bed and tell yourself you’re Not Enough, remind yourself that yes, you are.
You are Enough.
And you, Kamala Devi Harris, you, too, are Enough. Even if so many people couldn’t see it.
Betsy Biesenbach is a Roanoke writer, historian and retired real estate title examiner. She is the author of “Say My Name: The Story of Amanda Jeffers, Roanoke County, 1864.”