#11: I Drove All Day and Marched for You
A Redemption Story (sort of)
January 1996 …
I was a 22 year old college drop out back in the spare bedroom of my parents’ house in Orlando, Florida. I’d just left my husband too.
Mom and dad welcomed me home, but my “rent” was getting back into the swing of things and getting a job. If I stayed idle for too long, I’d fall into another depression and grow into an old lady before my 23rd birthday!
Job Interview #1: Paging Kelley
I interviewed with a temp agency who scored another interview with a paging company aka a “beeper” company. I was hired on the spot as $17,000 / year billing assistant. I would collect payments that arrived by mail, open them, and post the amounts in the system. Not rocket science, but honest work.
I decked out my small cubicle, wore a business suit from Casual Corner each day - full shoulder pads in place, always - and clipped my company-assigned pager on my hip.
I was bored stiff, but I’d been redeemed, at least for a while.
When I wasn’t working the 9 to 5, I was glued to Washington Journal on C-Span. I didn’t grow up in a particularly political household*, so to feel the energy of our nation’s capitol through what was, in retrospect, a pretty benign and plain vanilla program, was invigorating. If nothing else, it gave me hope there was a bigger world for me to explore than the four walls of my parent’s house and a gig as a billing clerk. I caught the Washington bug, but didn’t have a clue why or what I would be doing about it.
*Regarding the political household. Mom and dad voted and all 4 kids went to the polls with them. Mom even let me pull the lever! We watched presidential debates on TV as a family.
Rewind
A couple of months earlier, I left my husband, my apartment, and my then “hometown” of Erie, PA. I got behind the wheel of my Red 1990 Geo Prizm stuffed with whatever of my life fit in to start a new life, although I had no clue what that looked like. I did know that I’d screwed the one I had up so badly, I wasn’t sure which way to go.
So I drove.
I drove from Erie to Washington, DC on the first day of my trip.
I’d never traveled alone, save a 2 hour plane flight, and I’d never stayed overnight in a hotel by myself. A college friend, and bridesmaid in my wedding, had just moved to Falls Church, VA, a suburb of DC, so my goal was to get to her place before calling it a day. She’d recently married and her husband took a job in the drama department at George Washington University in the city. They were theatre geeks … but the really talented quirky fun kind (are there any others?).
Redemption
While I was taking respite with my friends, I decided to take advantage of what I thought would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - participating in the Pro Life March on Washington, D.C.
This was a couple of weeks before my above-mentioned C-SPAN obsession, but it felt important and momentous to me. I wasn’t an abortion activist, either way, but this felt like something I needed to do.
I’d met my birth mother in person just a year earlier and this felt like a powerful way to say thank you, not just to her, but to all of the birth mothers who’d given their children up for adoption.
They were the ones who’d chosen “planned parenthood” …
They were the ones who decided they weren’t ready for motherhood, so they asked another woman to take her child for her …
They were, interestingly, the ones who exercised the bravest and most powerful choice of all …
Make no mistake, I was still a basket case inside and was struggling with my split identity of feminist v. traditional woman, which certainly complicated my understanding of abortion, but I knew that the 14 year old who birthed me and let me go was braver than anyone I’d ever known.
And, she deserved to be honored for that.
She went through hell to bring me into this world, all the while sustaining the cowardly but venomous shame others spewed on her while doing it.
So, showing up to a Pro Life March, and risking a teeny-tiny bit of ridicule of my own, seemed like nothing in comparison. I also thought that failure to muster enough courage to walk as just one of a crowd of thousands would be dishonoring her in some weird way. She was brave, I could be too.
So I marched.
I marched with other birth mothers and adopted kids, with adoptive mothers and adoptive fathers, and others who loved and supported them.
It was the first time I’d marched since I was a student. But this time I was marching for the other side, the side I used to march against.
I observed several things:
Both sides of the abortion wars are extremely passionate and will not yield one iota on their positions.
Both sides believe that abortion is a life and death matter. The pro-choice side focuses on the life or death of the mother only, the pro-life side focuses on protecting the life of the mother and preventing the death of the unborn baby she is carrying. Both sides believe in justice and mercy, just for different people.
There is no use in talking about abortion with someone of opposite views unless and until you agree on the goal of the conversation before it starts and you honor the terms of engagement throughout. Ask yourselves, are you sharing or persuading? These are two very different things and require very different strategies and skillsets. Note: Posting about abortion on a social media platform is an invitation for those with opposing views to comment. Don’t be shocked when you’re offended.
The women I knew in college (professors and students alike) were much angrier than the women I met on that January day. Anger and passion are opposite sides of the same coin. I was definitely angry and very confused, but I couldn’t tell you why.
Like many things in life, I had this incredible, but seemingly one-off, experience and then promptly shoved it in a jar and packed it away.
It stayed put for 26 years.
Job Interview #2: The Call of the Potomac
A few weeks after I started my professional life as a billing assistant, my friend from Virginia called to tell me she found the perfect jobs for us. A recently retired law professor at GW had spun up a small IP law firm and chartered a non-profit think tank - the National Intellectual Property Law Institute (no longer active) - to work on new and important intellectual property issues facing the United States in the mid-1990s. I had no idea what intellectual property was, but it definitely sounded more interesting than living with my parents.
This professor was looking for an Executive Secretary and an Executive Assistant to support his post-teaching work. We decided to apply as a duo.
My friend was close by so she went into DC for the interview and got the job. I was still in Orlando, so I had to fly up to Washington for my interview.
By the time I’d landed in DC, my friend had resigned her position. She urged me not to follow through and go back home to Orlando. But I was desperate to “get out of dodge” and begin a new life.
I didn’t listen to her. I should have, but I didn’t.
I don’t know if I made the right decision or not, but I did make the decision and I did work for the retired law professor just shy of 8 years. That season of my life would shape my career, my choice of husband (the second time), my views, and my perception of America from the inside and out.
My boss was 57 and black, I was 22 and white. I traveled the world as his Executive Assistant, to the great envy of many in his circle. And, not good envy, mean envy.
If those office walls could talk … they would have a tale to tell. But that’s just a sidebar for now.
Coming of Age in Washington
I was a very young woman when I moved to DC in 1996, scared of her own shadow and starstruck by the magnitude of it all. Auguste buildings full of important people, beautifully landscaped parks and exquisite marble monuments, and protective fortresses for our nation’s founding documents. It was awe inducing and perpetually inspiring.
I was a mature woman when I left DC in 2010. I was also an attorney, remarried, and a little less wet behind the ears.
I had come of age … right?
—
As I write these stories, memories flood my mind and I begin to view things through a different and more refined framework, one that gives us the benefits of hindsight and the distance of space and time.
During my formative years, professionally speaking, I learned more than I thought was available to know, I learned that anything was possible if you worked long enough and hard enough, and I learned that time waits for no one. You seize it, or you catch the next train.
But, perhaps more poignantly, I learned many bad, destructive habits that would dog me until the summer of 2022 when I finally confronted them and faced the consequences of what had been a very long season of bad decisions. With my husband by my side, I confronted the truth of my life.
This was also 26 years after I marched for life.
I don’t write about seeking and finding truth because I am special, I write about my path to finding truth because I’ve been eating truth pie for so long I finally got sick to my stomach and decided I’d had enough. If I’d just accept it and get a grip, things would get better.
And, oh my friends, have they!
—
I won’t leave you waiting for the next story for too long. It will be hard to tell, but I know it will encourage many who, like me, struggle with addiction.
Back soon to dish the details!
Appreciate you …
xoxo,
Kelley
P.S. There’s been a big update in abortion law so I’m going to explain that and send it out under The Dobbs Digest shortly.