Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

I miss a time when truth mattered. I miss fact-based debates about policies to solve problems and improve lives. I miss the clear separation of church and state, once sacrosanct, now breached by culture warriors and Christian nationalists. I miss elections where everyone respects the will of the people, without constant attacks by sore losers and wannabe dictators.

Once, I wasted energy worrying what critics might say or how the media would respond; now I have an easier time brushing all that aside and just doing what feels right and important. Time

Through bad dates, difficult pregnancies, divorces, deaths in the family—all the trials of a full life—I tried to be there for them, with advice or just a sympathetic ear.

It will be impossible to stop a global climate catastrophe if big countries like India and China don’t curb their emissions. And this really is a crisis that threatens us all. About 40 percent of people on Earth live within sixty miles of a coast.

Sometimes that even means barging into closed-door meetings uninvited, as President Obama and I did in Copenhagen, when we found out China was trying to stop, or at least dilute, an agreement we were trying to broker. Chinese guards literally tried to bar the door, to no avail. Newsweek later described us as “a diplomatic version of Starsky and Hutch.”

replacing small diesel engines with solar as the salt farmers were doing.

In the United States, less than 2 percent of all philanthropic giving is to organizations that serve women and girls.

around the world, in the face

of oppression, inequality, and misogyny, women have become resourceful. Women find solutions because we have to. We work together because that’s how we survive.

days they can’t work because of extreme heat. These aren’t substitutes for strong national and global policy changes to limit emissions and make major investments in clean energy. But they’re part of how people are going to survive on a warming planet.

those women shows the rest of the world exactly what’s possible when we stand together and take care of one another and the planet we share.

proposal that would provide universal childcare and incorporated educational, nutritional, and health services. Mondale and Congressman John Brademas, a Democrat from Indiana, rounded up bipartisan support for the bill in both chambers of Congress. Even twenty-four Senate Republicans voted for it, that’s how good the plan was.

it went to President Richard Nixon’s desk. During the 1968 campaign, he had promised to prioritize early childhood

But now, he vetoed the bill. He said the creation of universal childcare would harm families by promoting communal child-raising. He also argued that such a “radical piece of legislatio...

Privately, aides like the young conservative zealot Pat Buchanan had whispered in Nixon’s ear that universal childcare would lead to the Sovietization of American children. A well-coordinated letter-writing campaign by conservative evangelicals and ultra-right-wing groups like the John Birch Society also pressured the president to kill the bill. They claimed government involvement in childcare would threaten the American family and encourage women to enter the workplace instead of staying home.

The United States is the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t require paid leave for new mothers.

Defense Fund (now the National Partnership for Women and Families) wrote the first draft of a proposal to provide guaranteed family and medical leave across America. A federal district court had recently

struck down California’s maternity leave law as sex discrimination against men, and women across the state and around the country were furious. The new proposal would provide unpaid leave to both moms and dads.

It wasn’t until 1991 that the FMLA finally passed Congress with bipartisan support.

Women & Power: A Manifesto, she explores the misogyny that has shaped our world for centuries.

it’s been chilling to watch Republican lawmakers race to propose new state laws to criminalize abortion, sometimes without exception—not for rape or incest or, in some cases, even to save a woman’s life. Never mind that doctors have recounted delivering babies to young girls forced to carry to term, including one who clutched a teddy bear while in labor. Never mind that women with high-risk pregnancies are dying from lack of access to lifesaving abortion care—like Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada

Estrada Glick of Luling, Texas, who died at age twenty-seven from serious, life-threatening complications during pregnancy just weeks after Texas enacted its harsh new abortion ban. Multiple experts who reviewed Yeniifer’s case said that her death was preventable, that an abortion would have likely saved her life, but her doctors denied her medical information and treatment.

Is it any surprise that states with the most restrictive abortions laws also have the least women in statewide and legislative office?

finally, we must stay engaged and informed. It can sometimes feel overwhelming, but it’s more important than ever that we stay focused on anti-democratic efforts in our back yards and across the country

we have come through dark times before. When I was growing up, American women couldn’t open bank accounts in their own name or take legal action against sexual harassment, let alone legally access birth control or abortion. My mother was born before American women could vote.

So if you find yourself tired, or discouraged, or filled with anger, remember: We’re not just fighting against these attacks on our rights. We are fighting for a future where everyone has access to the care they need, to free and fair elections, and to the power and freedom they deserve to determine their futures. That’s a future worth fighting for.

I was struck by how little history of the region most of our students had been exposed to.

(It wasn’t lost on me that the first college presidents being scrutinized most by politicians, the press, and the public were women.)

History matters. Context matters. Especially in such a difficult and complex crisis, where nothing is black and white and enmities go back decades if not millennia.

People who use social media for more than three hours a day are twice as likely to experience loneliness and feelings of social isolation compared with those who use social media for less than thirty minutes a day. The more time we spend online, the

less we interact with each other in person. In recent years, the average time young people spend in person with friends has declined by nearly 70 percent.

Bannon targeted “incels,” or “involuntarily celibate” men because they were easy to manipulate and prone to believing conspiracy theories. “You can activate that army,” Bannon told the Bloomberg journalist Joshua Green. “They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.”

on complex social problems you need the three-legged stool: responsive governments, responsible business leaders, and active civil society. You need grassroots movements of parents, teachers, civic organizations, faith leaders, activists, and advocates all working together.

In his book The Anxious Generation, Haidt offers these four simple suggestions for parents and schools grappling with how to manage technology and support kids: No smartphones before high school. No social media before age sixteen. No phones in schools.

And more independence, free

play, and responsibility in the real world. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer that will be right for every family, bu...

Organizations like Thumbs Down. Speak Up. and the Jed Foundation have tool kits and resources to start important conversations.

sixth graders who went five days without glancing at a smartphone, television, or other digital screen did substantially better at reading human emotions than sixth graders from the same school who continued to spend hours each day looking at their electronic devices.

alternatives—like exercise, socializing in person with friends, and spending time outdoors.

5-for-5 Connection Challenge. He asked his audiences to take one action a day for five days that gives them the experience of connection. “You can either express gratitude to someone, you can extend support to someone, or you can ask for help,” he explained. It’s simple, but the result is meaningful. “There are all of these rays of hope that have just gone out into the world.

only she could get them to stay in school—because,

she explained, education is the biggest social determinant of good health.

The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks and Breakfast with Socrates by Robert Rowland Smith.

And the only way to stop it is by defeating Trump this November so soundly that he can’t steal or bully his way into power.

Progress only comes through persistence and usually in fits and starts. It can be demoralizing.

Here’s my advice for when you start to feel overwhelmed or out of gas: First, put down your phone and go outside. Take a walk.

Be a savvy media consumer. Find journalists you trust who will give you the straight story and pay attention to what they report.

wry congresswoman from Colorado Pat Schroeder used to say, “You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”

history tells us that when our nation faces the greatest perils is when our

people find their greatest strengths. So I’m not giving up, and I hope you won’t, either.