Real Americans #FightLikeAMother

I’ve had enough. Enough of this Civil War the NRA and GOP is pushing on my country. Enough of the lawlessness of the new swamp monsters and the cruelty with which they have built their leader a throne. Enough of the propaganda war on Fox News and Sinclair stations to justify valuing guns over children, separating families at the border, and separating Americans into “real” and somehow fake.

I am a “real American” by any definition.

My family lineage can be traced back to one of the four men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. It can be traced from there through Daniel Boone on through decorated veterans of World Wars and Vietnam. It includes immigrants who fled the Scottish lowlands and a county sheriff who died on a bridge saving citizens from a flood, a cousin who married the son of one of the world’s best known baseball players and the first woman at the copy desk of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram.

I meet other qualifiers for their warped definition of American as well. I’ve been a SAHM and WAHM of blue-eyed blond children, born to the man I’ve been faithfully married to since we graduated college more than two decades ago, and who was also my junior high school sweetheart. I have served as a PTA president and bake excellent chocolate chip cookies for neighborhood potlucks that I’ve often helped organize.

Yet, I don’t support the current party in power or the policies of their leader and so I have been called unAmerican by their ranks. I have been called a murderer because I needed an emergency procedure for ectopic pregnancy that would have ended my life before I even had a chance to have those little blonde babies. I have been called a Libtard, snowflake, and much worse by angry “patriots” online who would prefer that my ancestors had not marched to pass the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

I’m done pretending that those questioning my patriotism have a leg to stand on. I am reclaiming my authority as an American mom to demand honor and decency from my government.

While I was raised to defend your right to say that which I would spend a lifetime arguing against, I do not accept your false narrative that yours is the real American perspective. It most certainly is not. And, every mother who heard the audio of immigrant children’s anguish or who has encountered the wall against sensible gun reform while our children are in danger knows it.

I am a mother and I take that job incredibly seriously. Fiercely, you might say. I took child development classes after my children were born. I have embraced my privilege to work my schedule around theirs so they always had a home cooked breakfast and dinner and never got on or off the school bus alone. And now, I stay home again full time so they can do virtual school because we have determined that is the best option for them in these crazy times when corrupted lawmakers can’t even muster courage to vote to protect children from weapons of war.

My job is to keep my children safe and to prepare them for the world - from overseeing their education to ensuring they eat a well balanced, healthy diet. My job as a mother is also to do everything in my power to create a better world for them to live in. That includes everything from fighting for environmental protection to non-GMO foods. It has also come to mean fighting for the future of the democracy my ancestors fought and died to create and protect.

America has always been a nation of immigrants and a melting pot of ideas meshing to form a more perfect union. It has been a beacon of light to the world showing the power and privilege that comes from living in a land governed by laws, not men. And, I am not letting those ideals go down without a fight.

I am a mother. I am an American. I am a proud Democrat.

I will fight like a mother to protect my children, and yours and theirs. I will fight for my country’s future. It is my duty - both patriotic and parental.

When those who wish to undermine the rule of law and norms of decency go low, I will get very loud.

These are the times that try women’s souls because now is the time for every patriotic woman to come to the aid of her country and its soul.

We are completely up to the task as our foremothers were before us.

We aren’t handing our nation over to those who seek to defile it and hand our children and grandchildren the bill of shame. We heard those immigrant children crying and saw the Parkland kids begging. We are circling the wagons.

It takes a village to raise a child and has taken too many children used as pawns to wake the village. But, the mothers are awake now and we are prepared to do whatever we need to do to raise the rest of our nation.

They wanted to use children as pawns to energize an angry base and build a wall. American moms are about to show them the futility of walls built on sand when the orange and blue waves come.

Fight on, American Warrior Mamas.