What does this inauguration mean to you?

I’m one of those middle-aged, American women who was hoping that in my lifetime, I would be able to celebrate the election of a woman with enough chutzpa to really do the job of president, not just declare candidacy. We got one hell of a contest but, in the end, something even more amazing unfolded, the election of our first Afro-American president who has the diversity of Kansas and Kenya all wrapped up in a Hawaiian mindset. Who could have ever imagined that?

This inauguration, this history-making, stereotype-busting, oh-m’God-can you-believe what-just-happened inauguration means to me a fresh appreciation for what liberty is all about. I am white, female, middle-class, middle-income, well-educated and boringly “ordinary” in the statistics of this amazing country of ours. I have enjoyed every freedom known to man in the latter half of the 20th century. But what this inauguration brings is the fresh, new opportunity to say out loud, in the hearing of politicians and policy-makers alike, the America I know and love, “has no clothes on!”

We, common, ordinary Americans now have a champion about to be sworn into office who doesn’t need to paint himself or his America as perfect. He admits he’ll make mistakes, even before he’s seated and given the chance. He’s seen America’s warts from the shenanigans of Washington to the mean streets of Chicago to the littered beaches of Honolulu. He knows what America is, where America’s been and (thank heaven) where he wants America to go. The liberty to speak the truth is an astounding thing. We finally will have an administration that isn’t all about saving face, but about naming the problems America is facing and getting them solved.

My career spans over 30 years in healthcare. I am full of opinions and ideas about what might make that one sector of America’s troubles better. To date, I have never been moved to speak any of these ideas to anyone in any political party. This reluctance is not born of fear, but of the confidence that no one in office really cared what I thought. Now, I do see myself writing to the former senator, Tom Daschle about what I think, what I know from inside the belly of the beast, and what I think we can do to make Americans safer, healthier and more engaged in protecting their own health. I do see myself standing up in community forums and speaking what is on my mind. I do see myself encouraging others, especially physicians and nurses, to say what we’ve seen and stop pretending we don’t know what’s wrong with the most expensive healthcare system in the world. We do. And now, in this administration, we can say it with confidence that something may be done about it.

After all, what is liberty if it is not the freedom of speech? But liberty with hope is a powerful thing and more Americans than ever before in my lifetime are eager to speak what they know, to speak truth to power and influence the re-emergence of the great American country by the people, for the people; the one we all grew up believing could prevail.