Senior Momentum - A Letter to Melania - by Zoe Tummillo - April 2018

Dear Melania,

I have wanted to write to you for some time now. But, each time I begin, something else happens that makes me hesitate just to see what will come of the newest outrage, how it must impact you, and how it would again influence what I want to say to you.

Regardless of our differing personalities, economic status, marital status, politics and other defining features – under it all – we have in common that we are women. Many of us are or have been wives (some of us more than once). And we also are daughters, sisters, aunties, cousins, friends and.... mothers.

Melania...do you know that there are women in our country – political persuasions aside – who care about you in the face of all that is coming at you from almost every direction? Indeed, and in fact, do you know that many of us can actually personally relate to some of the dilemmas that must be upon you currently?

In the relatively few times when you have been visible, I have studied your face for signs. I have noticed your body language in an effort to divine what you might be feeling as you go through the motions of what many expect from you. I must confess that I have found myself wishing I could know what was going through your mind when you were going through the motions.

I do not focus here on the baffling complexities of why we women choose to love the ones we do! (I’m too old not to have learned it’s a mystery!) I do focus on something I believe we all share – sometimes as a virtue and sometimes as a curse. It is the fine line we all walk that holds our own personal loyalty and integrity in crucial balance as we walk along with love.

Melania, for each of us as women there is a bit of “unique” and a whole lot of “same as, same as.” So, if you can look past your “unique,” and consider the “same as,” you could see that you are not alone and that you have many sisters.

I often wonder about how profoundly alone you must feel in the midst of the particular chaos and humiliations that you have inherited by default (with your child looking on). (Surely you may have heard about Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon and Hillary Clinton...to name just a few -- your sisters under the skin? ...with all the wrong things getting under the skin?)

I also often speculate about the very beginning of all of this for you – at those moments when you seemed to be quite hopeful, appeared to be excited about the good you could do, might have begun to think about what mark you could leave from the honored posture of First Lady for my beloved United States of America! Did those dreams or plans even have a chance to get off the ground – you being forced into that big shadow and all?

I remember the few strong words you spoke (back then) about the focus you intended to place on the causes about which you felt strongly! (The causes that “circumstances” have managed to insult and elevate to the level of a national embarrassment...)

With all the layers of insulation that I know are in place, I hold no illusions that you will see my words! It’s more a matter of my need to say them out loud. When one woman is disrespected (especially from the largest bully pulpit in the free world), we all are. Just remember that you are not alone.

Respectfully,

Zoe Tummillo