United States’ forward Megan Rapinoe celebrates scoring her team’s first goal during the Women’s World Cup quarter-final match between France and United States, on June 28, 2019, at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris. (Photo by FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images)

Try this, friends, when no one is around…

Stand up, as tall as you are – exactly as tall as you are – no more, no less. Hold your arms aloft, presenting yourself to the world. As if your arms could hold up the world. As if you loved the world with all your heart – and loved yourself in it. As if you felt every ounce of your weight, and your strength – the strength of every part of yourself. I’m 50 years old, I’ve never been an athlete, I’m not winning the World Cup. I’m not sure I’m even winning my life. But I’m channeling Megan Rapinoe – and it might feel as good as anything has ever felt.

It makes me happy that Rapinoe is agitating for equal pay and for respectful treatment of all people, no matter their sexual orientation.

It makes me sad that she doesn’t sing our National Anthem or place her hand over her heart.

Would a suffragette agitating for the right to vote ever have done that? I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe not. I need to read the book of the hour here in Nashville – The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, by Elaine Weiss.

My daughters are 18 and 20, and they are on their own journeys. They love me; they are walking away. Which is as it should be.

If they were 4 and 6? “Let’s try something,” I would say to my girls. And I would teach them how to stand up in the world – with love, and strength, and ferocity – like Megan Rapinoe. Maybe I taught them?

 

 

 

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