Like many this week, I reflect on the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
I was sitting on the couch after a long week of virtual teaching, when I opened the News app to catch up. My gasp was so loud that my husband came in from the other room, thinking I had hurt myself.
We lost an icon in RBG. Not one who expected to be a household name, but who became one nonetheless. She unapologetically fought for equality and freedom, allowing her ideals to guide her. Her legacy is one of feminism and strength.
For women who do not fit the typical mold, those who refuse to exist in the stereotypes created for them — women like me — she was a warrior. I look at her life’s work, at the way she eroded the misogyny and inequality that existed, and I am floored that one person, one woman, was able to affect such change.
Her voice of dissent, the one for which she earned her notorious name, rang clear and true.
We lost a sister, a mother, a warrior, a friend.
But this is not where it ends. She shouldered this burden for so long and has earned this rest. It is on the rest of us to pick up and carry on with this fight.
We fight for the right to be free. We fight for the right to be equal. We fight for the right to be exactly as we are, amidst the pressure to exist otherwise.
For Ruth, we fight.