Just weeks before the election, little Lucy joined the world 5 weeks early and weighing in at less than 5 pounds.
She is my first grandchild — a granddaughter. Lucy was named after my great grandmother — a fierce warrior of a woman responsible for saving my young father and his mother from the Holocaust that murdered millions of Jews. Lucy means light. And little Lucy is mine.
Little Lucy celebrated her first ever Halloween in the NICU last week. My daughter and her wife dressed Lucy up in a pale blue onesie and crafted her a huge purple crayon.
They posed with her as “Lucy and the Purple Crayon” in a nod to the children’s storybook Harold and the Purple Crayon. This is a story of a little boy who literally draws the world he wants to see as he navigates through the night.
The election last night broke my heart and head. I’m certain there are many of you out there who feel similarly dizzied by the results.
I know how stung and confused you are. Please know you’re not alone. And please also know this is not the end of our journey and fight. The arc of the universe is long.
I know how hard so many of us in Pennsylvania and the rest of the country worked to help get Kamala Harris elected so that she might be able to continue working on all of our behalf on the progress and promise of our nation. I know how much it meant to us all.
I know how stung and confused you are. Please know you’re not alone. And please also know this is not the end of our journey and fight. The arc of the universe is long.
We will continue to work to advance the common agenda of this great and generous nation because it’s universal, important and just. And we will do this knowing that there will be setbacks and huge disappointments such as this.
But we will do this for little Lucy and the light that she and her generation bring into this world. We will do this so that she and others who are just now born and who are not yet born will be able to draw their worlds.
So, allow yourselves the time to grieve and to question. And take care of yourself and those around you who are doubtless hurting now. But then, get up, brush yourself off, pick up your crayon and get back at it. We need you. Lucy needs you. We have a world to draw.
U.S. Representative Chrissy Houlahan was elected to Congress in 2018 alongside a historic number of women, flipping her district from red to blue. She is the first woman to represent Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District. Houlahan serves on President Biden’s 2024 national advisory board and lives in Chester County with her husband.
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