Buckle up Buttercups! Here we go.  I’m off to D.C. To make some noise. I have no idea what it will be like to be in the company of 200,000 or so mostly-women determined to stand up for our future. When I read their stories, the issues that compel them to march, I am in awe. So many concerns.  So much passion about having their voices heard. I am honored to be among them. A neophyte, I’ve never done anything quite like this before. I wonder at how I will be changed by the process. How will I be different? What will I learn? I am determined, at the least, to have this first effort not be the last.

When I read that this march was going to take place, long before it had a name or defined goals, I was in. Totally, completely committed. I’d felt so helpless and hopeless after the election. The future ahead looked like an overwhelmingly bleak series of one right after another being rolled back. A party already at war with women had ramped up its rhetoric and determination to look, not forward, but back. Back to an idealized version of the 1950’s, before women and people of color gained many of the rights they’d been denied. Old, white, conservative, wealthy, “Christian” men would once again reign and the future didn’t look pretty. I knew there wouldn’t be a lot I could do to stop that train wreck but this, this marching, would at the least be an effort. A place to raise my voice and to be counted among those who will say “Enough!”

So, here I am. Ticket in hand. Sitting in a bar at the Portland airport, eating crab cakes and drinking something incredibly delicious, waiting to board the red-eye to Baltimore. Ready to step out and step up and make a difference. Ready to be made different in ways I can only now imagine. I’ll keep you posted.