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

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

I take no pleasure in being right. In fact, I hate it.

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.

This is a lesson I learned a long time ago and never forgot. In the summer of 1972, I went door-to-door in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas trying to register new voters for the election between President Richard Nixon and Senator George McGovern. The communities I visited were tight-knit, hardworking, and understandably wary of a twenty-four-year-old blond girl from Chicago who spoke no Spanish. Yet many families opened their homes to me. Mothers and grandmothers who worked long hours for not much money invited me to sit at the kitchen table, drink very strong coffee, and talk. So did college students studying late into the night and union workers up early in the morning. Some of the people I met were immigrants, and some were among the original inhabitants of the area, with ancestors stretching back generations in the valley. Some didn’t know they were eligible to vote or didn’t see why they should. But for many of the people I registered, politics wasn’t a game; it was about making life better for their families. Democracy wasn’t a concept in a civics textbook; it was a promise that had inspired them or their parents to leave behind everything they knew to build a new future in a new land. America wasn’t just a place on a map; it was a dream that was worth working and fighting—and, yes, voting—for.

It’s a beautiful vision of what collective power might look like. But right now in America, power still is held by only a relatively few people, most of them men. And too many of those men (mostly Republican, but not always) love to dismiss childcare and paid leave as “women’s issues” instead of the economic imperatives they are. They dismiss the contributions women make to our economy and ignore the obstacles that prevent us from contributing even more. And that’s bad for everyone, not just women. We can’t build an economy that’s strong and fair if we leave half our talent on the sidelines. Women who want to work should be able to do so without worrying every day about how they’re going to take care of their child or what will happen if a family member gets sick. That’s not a luxury, and it’s not a “women’s issue”—it’s a necessity. It’s a growth strategy. This isn’t complicated: When you shortchange women, you shortchange families. And when you shortchange families, you shortchange America. If the people in power can’t see that, then we need to spread that power around to people who can.

This dark reality is what I feared would eventually happen

when George W. Bush nominated Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court in 2005. O’Connor was a true conservative, appointed by Ronald Reagan, and I disagreed with her about many things—especially her complicity in the truly egregious decision in Bush v. Gore that handed the 2000 election to the Republicans. But O’Connor stood up for civil liberties and fundamental freedoms at key moments, including the right to a safe and legal abortion. By comparison, Alito struck me as an angry, unconstrained ideologue, and as senator from New York I strongly opposed his confirmation. “This nomination could well be the tipping point against constitutionally based freedoms and protections we cherish as individuals and as a nation. I fear that Judge Alito will roll back decades of progress,” I warned on the Senate floor, adding, “Roe v. Wade is at risk; the privacy of Americans is at risk; environmental safeguards; laws that protect workers from abuse or negligence; laws even that keep machine guns off the streets. All these and many others are in peril.” I take no pleasure in having seen what was coming.

Forgiveness—to forgive and to ask for forgiveness—is tough. It is not easy to let go of wounds, slights, and disappointments. It is human nature to look for people to blame—and sometimes they deserve it. It is human nature to blame ourselves. Sometimes we deserve it, too. In Arkansas, I used to teach a Sunday school lesson about forgiving ourselves. We all carry these enormous burdens around. Blame. Anger. Shame. And I’ve found one of the great gifts of faith is being able to let them go. It doesn’t mean that you forget. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to make amends. But if you begin to forgive yourself, then you can begin to forgive others.

Bill has been my greatest champion since the moment we met. He never once asked me to put my career on hold for his. He never resented that I made more money than him or that my work and independence (keeping the name Rodham, for example) sometimes caused him political problems. He never once suggested that I bow to the critics and trim my sails. He always dared me to dream bigger. From the beginning, we’ve been in it together.