All day my brain has been whirring like a weather vane on the edges of a hurricane, my fingers desperate to tap the keyboard so fast they become a pale blur, desperate to transfer the emotion in my heart to the voice in my hands.
I just watched Oprah’s speech, the one at the awards, the one where everyone wore black, the one where the red carpet reporters didn’t ask "who are you wearing?" but "why are you wearing?", the speech that saw people in the audience stand and whoop and clap and cheer, the speech that inspired another generation of dreamers that want to prove the constraints put on them wrong, the speech that made me sob uncontrollably.
I’m not a woman, nor have I ever known abuse, so I wasn't really sure why I was crying at first. But then I realised it’s because I’m a human and, not only that, but the daddy of two girls too, and so the notion that the time is almost up for abusive men, the time is almost up for those women who thought their voices would be the catalyst to more abuse, and a new dawn is just a squinted look toward the horizon is absolutely magic.
The world is not full of rainbows. There are tragedies every day and everywhere. Racism, sexism, inequality, abuse of power and worse - much-much worse - and, as a parent, that terrifies me. But what makes me smile is this: if you could pick anytime to be alive, anytime in history, every single one of us would pick now. It may not be perfect, but it is better than it has ever been and that fills me with hope.
"Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up."
If you haven't already, please watch this speech. It maybe too early to say things like this and it's probably just my emotions ruling my tongue yet again, but we may have found the perfect antidote to the Trump presidency.