I Stand All Amazed

In the year 1998, I was 22 years old. I had been in my first big career-altering job for just over a year and I was in Atlanta on business. The young man who drove me back to the airport was a young African-American college student who was roughly my same age. We were having an in-depth discussion about the state of our country, about social change, and about the scars our nation bares from the mistakes of our fore fathers. At the end of the conversation we both asked ourselves if we would ever see a Black president in our lifetime, and both agreed that, YES, we would see the day when our country would move forward and begin to heal the hurt of 400 years of oppression.

Last night, I witnessed the mighty change. I cried tears of joy for the better part of an hour. I felt, and still feel, the pride of knowing we can do better as a nation, that we can look beyond petty differences for the greater good.

I know that my vote counted. Since I was 18, I have always understood the importance of my vote. I know that I stand on the shoulders of the women who came before me. And now, the daughter of parents who came of age in the 1960s, parents who helped make social change in our country then, parents who continued that change in the way they chose to raise their children, parents who taught me and my siblings to stand up for what is right and to make a change in the world when we could see that something was wrong. Me; I helped make that change, with my parents and my brother and sisters.

I have never been so proud to be an American. I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to help move our country in the direction that my parents' generation fought so hard to make possible. I truly hope that those who are joyous, as well as those who are disappointed, with the outcome of this race, can appreciate the significance of what has happened, and that we can come together as one nation to make the necessary course corrections that our country so desperately needs at this time.

I truly stand all amazed at the magnitude of the vision our fore fathers had to create a government that could change with us, to include all of us, to be for us and by us. We are truly blessed as a nation and I am so thankful to be an American.