A Room without a Roof

I’m thinking most of you know the lyrics to Happy by Pharrell Williams:  “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof. Because I’m happy….” 

Can you feel it?  Every time I dance to this song I imagine a glorious liberating sky.

We are in that space for real now.

The air is circulating in a way that it never has before. Being outside is safer than being inside most buildings. We can see so much further.

We are being reminded “to wear shoes because there are pieces of the glass ceiling all over the floor.”

Yes indeed, approximately 75 million Americans including 45,000,000 women voted to be without limits for our creativity, ambition, caring and collaboration.

For the first time in our nation’s history a woman, a Black, South Asian woman, Senator Kamala Harris has been elected Vice President by an overwhelming majority of the American people.

There has never been a better time to be a woman business owner than right now. We have a woman at the table where all major decisions are made to stop the pandemic, restart the economy, root out crime and corruption and get creative with scientists, scholars and citizens to manage climate change.

“I am Speaking”. Said Senator Kamala Harris in her only Vice Presidential debate. A powerful phrase heard around the country and the world by women who have had men speaking over them for millennia. Think of her when you are negotiating a contract, asking for the business, talking with your landlord, husband, partner or employees.

We are speaking now.

VP-elect Kamala Harris is a new role model for all who are preparing businesses, communities and households for the third wave of the pandemic, vaccine distribution and an economy that needs to be revitalized. She is not asking for permission to be who she is, do what the situation requires and say what she believes. So different from Queen Elizabeth or Hillary Clinton, formal and still, now we have a band leader strutting her stuff, marching in sneakers and tight jeans and a mask just like we do dancing, running, walking and biking our way to power. She got the news about her place as the most powerful woman in American history while out for a run ladies!

Let’s take stock of who we are and how we feel. Now is the time to solve problems, clean house and make products and plans. We don’t need anyone’s permission. Let’s watch her for clues, learn from her and most importantly help her – hold her up, be in dialogue with her as people will surely try mightily to bring her down. Care less about what she wears and her hair and support her move into hall of power where all of our voices belong.

Farmers, health care providers, lingerie makers, lawyers and software developers, women business owners all, let’s each put a piece of that cracking glass ceiling where we can see it and remember the power and persistence it took to believe in ourselves to say, “ I might be the first but I won’t be the last”.

Be for ourselves and be for Harris as we guide and support each other’s creativity, ambition, caring and success.

Let’s rise together.