Letter from Above.

Dear Alice, (or Cindy or Sarah or Melanie, or Woman),

I’m proud of you. You keep stepping forward in your life and toward your dreams.

Let’s take stock of the steps. You overcame your mother’s death.

You’ve fallen in love, moved, and travelled with men you meant to make it work with, and when those relationships deteriorated, you determined to grow forward.

You found your way out and onward without compromising your dignity or destroying those men.

You said goodbye when it was hard and hurt like hell.

You didn’t compromise on your soul. You took stock, acknowledged your role, and learned your lessons. Bravo, brave girl!

You became a woman. Your mother would be proud, for you’ve pursued something she didn’t have the courage to, not really. Not after round two.

Your mom died of a broken heart. You determined not to let loss kill you.

It’s not in the falling; it’s in the rising.

You sought sacred love long before you knew the term. You yearned for authentic communication, courageous emotional intimacy, and truth even while you were served the opposite.

You didn’t cave. Congratulations!

Then, one day, you let life surprise you. You let the Fire melt your walls and warm your heart. You embraced real love and connection, the kind you longed for your whole life.

What’s more, you gave love. You gave truth. You trusted. You accepted your own insecurities without allowing them to be your excuse for less than loving behavior or leaving.

You saw this man as he was–flawed and fabulous and you loved him in the way he wanted and needed. You wanted that, too.

You don’t just want to receive love. You want to be appreciated, understood and cherished and you want to understand, respect and admire the man you’re with. Well done, my dear.

You attracted that. You lived into it. You lost it–not because of something he did or you did, but because life sometimes delivers sh*t sandwiches.

Then, you did the most challenging thing: you allowed yourself to feel the pain. You  resisted society’s impulses: Get up! Get up! Get up!

You didn’t let your ego play a role in your healing. Honey, you had the courage to dive into the dark, sticky, gooey, messy, all-encompassing pain of grief.

Do you know how many people either can’t or refuse to go there?

Not you. You answered the call of your soul. You tended to your broken heart. That’s brave.

That’s always been your style–the phoenix rising. But first, the blaze burning what came before in order to transform you into more. Your life epitomizes the process of transformation.

This is what you were born for. Others don’t do it because they don’t have to, but it’s your path, your destiny. You’re a Scorpio.

How many steps have you taken in the name of transformation and education and becoming a better you? Numerous–and I’ve got news for you darling, news you’re finally ready to hear.

This pain, this loss, this rebuilding, it never stops. You can handle it. In fact, you chose this. You know that even when you want to throw it back.

You chose the challenge just as you raised your hand for the gifts. 

Haven’t you been lucky? Fortunate in love?

Not just love of men (although amen to that, sister!), but love of friends and family and the most fantastic sister, the same one you cussed out before your crossed the border to move to Mexico after your mom died.

There it is again: gifts, growth, transformation, love. It seems to be a theme in your life, wouldn’t you say? Isn’t the pattern as solid as the seasons?

You’ve learned along the way not to cuss winter for being cold, but to curl up with a hot cup of cocoa, build a fire, and find the lovely in the falling snow.

In your youth, you could be shivering (emotionally) and deny winter was going to be wicked.

No more. Not only have you allowed for the depth of pain, you’ve welcomed compassion–not the rhetoric of it, but the person-to-person, face-to-face understanding that we all go through something hard. We all deserve a hand.

We each deserve love–because we’re human. We all came into this world as little girls and boys, happy babies long before we got on our knees and backs on yoga mats, long before the world saddled us with society’s baggage or our own personal sh*t storms.

So, now my dear, now that you understand, you remember. You remember the joy and how life can surprise you, like when you went to Champaign, IL for a summer job and some redhead dude climbed down from his roof. Soon you said to your mom, “I want to share my greatest accomplishment and my deepest disappointments with him.” And you did.

Until you didn’t. Because you weren’t meant to stay, but you’re meant to remember life surprises us with joy.

A friend you’ve known for decades can embody something bigger than you ever dreamed–both in life and in death.

Love lives on. Love returns. Love surprises. Love arrives. You don’t have to do a damn thing. In fact, you can’t. You can’t prepare or predict.

You can only live and love: your sister and the club for two she’s created, your dog dancing as your true companion, green trees swaying against blue skies, learning to cook healthy, and a tribe of women who help you heal scars you forgot you had. And these women allow you to nurture them, hold space, and encourage them to seek their center.

Again, surprises–delivered by life and the rising.

You, my lady, you’re doing just fine. In fact, you’re divine.

Don’t forget it. Own it.

I am my mother’s daughter, as she was her mother’s daughter. In an age when women stayed home, my grandmother took nontraditional jobs like welding.

My mom embodied the fight for women’s rights. She also believed education to be the great equalizer. When I was in elementary school, my mom earned her master’s. While I entered college, she completed her PhD. Her checks read Dr. Sandra D. K. Kelley.

She could shred me with one look of disappointment and shoot me into unwavering determination with five words: “Honey, you can do it.”

I rose as a national sales trainer just as she lost her job. We lived together in Denver while I travelled for work. She made sure I got to the airport on time and picked me up when I flew in. She took my car in to get the oil changed, ran untold errands, and made the mundane easy for me.

My mom set aside her pride and took jobs that were beneath her, like doing administrative duties on an oil tanker and selling encyclopedias.

Sandra Kelley was a woman warrior, but even warriors succumb to cancer. She died on April 28, 1995 at age 56.

For years, I danced for the affections of a woman now gone from this world.

It took me decades to see what my mother sacrificed in the name of women’s rights: her femininity. She couldn’t afford vulnerability. All that pushing down of emotions—propelling forward when two marriages fell apart and her only son died—ravaged her on the inside.

In many ways, I’ve marched behind my mother—two marriages in my wake, a couple of degrees earned late, and grief that threatened my desire to fulfill my destiny.

I carry my mother’s strength and I’m meant to be, do, and own more. Be more at peace in my own skin. Do what’s right for me, not just to prove my power. Own my feelings and truth.

Own this moment in history—mine and the collective. We’re our mothers’ daughters, but we’re so much more.

A friend of mine told me her mother wasn’t on the front lines of the fight for women’s rights. In fact, she advocated for no change and thought women like my mom were insane for trying to shake things up, jeopardizing the sweet position her mother held at home with the kids. She loved being a housewife. What?

I’d never considered that mindset. I didn’t know this friend when I was a child in the 70s. I believed every woman felt the calling to rise out of her current circumstances.

I also couldn’t fathom that my friend’s mother would feed her scraps of judgement on homosexuality and therefore invite my friend to hide hers—even from herself—until her mid-30s.

We’re our mother’s daughters, but we’re not our mothers.

Every movement, every step of progress, brings challenge.

To compete with and find our place in the workforce dominated by men, we often became like them, never letting them see us sweat or struggle or cry.

That “never send a boy to do a man’s job; send a woman” still implied the job belonged to the man.

We’ve journeyed far enough down the historical line to prove a woman’s place is wherever she wants to be and works her way into.

However, along the way—maybe as backlash to the women’s movement or maybe a salute to Disney’s influence—little girls weren’t told they could be President or queen, but that they were princesses. Pink became the perpetual color of a generation of women who could be my daughters.

Too many either didn’t know or forgot the lessons of our mothers. I heard young women in my own family laughing off flirting bosses and other men who were clearly crossing the line.

I know educated women in their 30s and 40s who chose to vote with their husbands and invested less time researching issues and candidates than researching their next vacation or home decorations. Because their husbands knew better?

Use it or lose it applies to our voices and our votes. Just because you showed up doesn’t mean you voted your conscience or what’s good for your kids, especially your daughters.

The Me Too Movement was born after we individually and collectively tried to brave the worst of circumstances.

Here’s the sickest truth I know: the man who raped me likely raped my mother.

I can’t prove it and since she’s deceased I can’t ask her, but I’ve never seen my mother shaken like I did after the night she went out with him.

She was a woman warrior—the kind who would’ve sworn before that she would make sure a rapist would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Many years prior, she’d won a discrimination law suit in my hometown when a less qualified man was hired into a job she’d applied for with the school system.

In 1988, I continued a friendship with my manager and continued working for him after the night I tried to forget—the night he raped me.

Shortly after my brother died on December 10, 1989, this man—let’s call him Dick—called my mother’s house to speak to me and ended up talking to my mother for over an hour.

I didn’t know then, but I can see it now. Dick began grooming my mom in the way a career criminal and master manipulator grooms a grown woman who’s fresh into the storm of grief over the death of her only son.

I can’t go on with that story because even now I want to deny what I know is true—how my trying to be strong was wrong. I did my best. Still, I think: what have I done?

What have we done? Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too.

Men are the culprits (typically), but have we, at times, been complicit by keeping quiet?

No longer. This is our time. I applaud Andrea Constand, Victoria Valentino, Ashley Judd, and yes, Stormy Daniels.

Because every voice matters. Because truth matters.

Because Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar, Bill Cosby, and other men who abuse their power can’t be taken down by a few women, but the collective rising is a mighty force.

We’re feminine and fierce. We’re vulnerable and strong.

This is our time. We collectively call out the BS so the Me Too Movement can move us into honest, challenging, and courageous conversations that pave the path forward.

Now, we’ll scream if we must. We will be heard. The daughters of future generations will be treated with respect and dignity.

Women have the power to change society. Like the women who came before and the women who came before them.

We say Me Too. We call BS. Enough. No more princesses. Let’s be warriors and queens.