"Magnificent Things"

As anguishing as this last year or so has been, it has also been thrilling. At least once a month, another heroine is added to my list, and the newest one is Judge Rosemarie Aquilina. She is the amazing judge in the case of the abusive gymnastics doctor, who has spared no words condemning the accused, and given unprecedented space for the women he victimized to speak. She said to one of the women,"Leave your pain here, and go out and do your magnificent things." I mean, this is the tsunami, the wave of truth, right here. Right now.

Perhaps millions of women, this minute, are going through their own personal variations on the theme of naming their pain, facing it as the waves rush to shore, taking their shattered but magnificent selves forward into the world to change it. When I feel overwhelmed, I try to focus on the fact that the momentum of women's influence is finally reaching a tipping point.

This judge brought to mind my own grandmother, Winifred (also spelled Winnifred) Wilton Wilson, who I have mentioned before and who became a pioneering Canadian lawyer one hundred years ago, back when only "persons" could become lawyers, and women were not legally considered persons. Her short law career ended upon her marriage to my grandfather, and unfortunately she died before I was born never having fulfilled her legal potential, but how utterly and completely I see her spirit in Judge Aquilina. 

Winifred was inspired throughout her life by William Ernest Henley's poem, "Invictus," and its slightly archaic words have supported me, too, these recent weeks: "Out of the night that covers me...I thank whatever gods may be/for my unconquerable soul...my head is bloody, but unbowed...I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." We are unconquerable and magnificent.