For women, being female is the heart and essence of your legacy and your story. Our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers sacrificed so our lives would be different than theirs.
In the 1920s my grandfather served as a Republican congressman. My grandmother — a physicist and mathematician— mentored Asian women seeking higher education. She wore herself out. She had two massive strokes and spent the last years of her life in a hospital ward filled with groaning stroke survivors.
We lack a workable model for what it is to be healthy and female, so we try to do and be it all, undermining our mental, emotional and spiritual health.
This November, we are confronted with myriad political candidates who presume to tell women how they should live, who aspire to legislate their regressive attitudes.
My sisters and I became Democrats. A lifelong Republican and WWII vet, my father voted Democrat in the elections before his death. Already, eight years ago, the values of the Republican Party were not in alignment with his.
What world do you want for your daughters and granddaughters? Vote like our future as American women depends on it. Because it does.
Virginia Caplette
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 10/9/20