The laughter.
No one laughed in carpool that morning.
After about 40 minutes, we arrived at our drop-off, this time the requisite “have a good day” extended with shared resolve.
Nina Totenberg described Dr. Ford as “shaky as a leaf.” I didn’t like that imagery. It made her sound fragile, breakable. But that’s exactly what I was for the rest of the day at work. I struggled to engage in small talk and get through meetings. I cried twice, holed up in conference rooms with female colleagues.
Dr. Ford’s experience and Judge Kavanaugh’s demeanor, they're all too familiar to me, and to many of the women I know and do not know.
Whether we have been pinned down, groped, muted or laughed at. Whether we have buried secrets for days or for decades. Whether we came of age 27 years ago and have seen this show before or watched for the first time - our wounds raw, exposed.
Most of us relate to Dr. Ford.
We believed Anita before her.
We understand the emotion of the moment.
After confronting Senator Flake, Ana Maria Archila said, “I saw in his face that he could not escape the emotion.”
We have all been trained to escape emotion. Women and men. But we are never going to get out of this mess without harnessing our emotion.
It may be painful, it may be uncomfortable and it may be scary.
But it is necessary.
With a Perspective, I’m Karina Moreno.
Karina Moreno works for a San Francisco-based non-profit that fights poverty in the Bay Area.
