Local Moms Run for Office: Why They’re Qualified like No One Else
The average person doesn’t care squat about politics—yet we should. Why? Because people elected to positions affect policy decisions and policy decisions affect the people. The person on the street wants to make an honest living, safely raise & educate their kids, and feed their family. They want to safely and securely live their lives in the way they choose.
I recently got word from my daughter’s school that gunshots were fired around the corner from her. She’s basically at Cole and Armstrong and there are two schools and two churches within half of a block of the incident, not to mention tons of pedestrians, foot traffic, restaurants, and new developments.
I have lived in this town since I was four years old and I have always felt safe here. Always. However, that is changing at a rapid pace and I’ve been asking myself why? Obviously growth plays a role, but there is one true answer: leadership. Guess what happens when there’s strong, decisive leadership at the top that filters throughout the entire system? Humans fall in line. Not only do I have a masters degree in clinical psychology, where I focused on the convergence of brain health, personality theory, and family systems within human beings, but I’m in real estate where the patterns of human behavior are fascinating & very consistent. But even more than any credentials, licenses, or higher education, I’m a MOM.
There Won’t Be a Shire Anymore
There’s a line in the final Lord of the Rings where the Hobbit, Pippin, is in essence telling his brother Hobbit, Merry, “Maybe we should just give up fighting and go back to the Shire. We’re just hobbits, we’re not built to fight in big wars against evil. How can we make a difference?” Merry looks at him with tears in his eyes and says, “Don’t you get it Pippin? There won’t be a Shire anymore.” That realization causes Pippin to have an idea that singlehandedly changes the tide of the entire war. *BOOMshakalaka!* Queue powerful game-changing-music.
Last year, I was willing to reorder my entire world to run for a local school board seat. I’m a working wife & mom. To say the days are busy is an understatement. So why on earth would I ever do such a thing? Because our city needs us to engage. Mom’s are always in the trenches of society and uniquely equipped to govern. So why are Mom’s rising up all over the nation? Because they understand something very fundamental in all our cities and Dallas County is no different: If the good people don’t rise up & put their beautiful gifts and abilities to work for the good of the city, we won’t have a city worth living in. There won’t be a shire anymore.
We’ve been juggling family, work, volunteering at schools and in the community, and now it’s time for us to shift our massive influence, knowledge, skills, and ability to the city. Our cities need us.
Local Governments Are Broken
Once I stepped into the local political realm, I saw just how bankrupt, out of gas, and wonky our local governments are and we’re beyond the tipping point. We’ve got a mess to clean up and MOMs know how to clean up messes.
In business or home life, something is either effective or it’s not. And if it’s not effective and you don’t adjust or change it, you die. Period. But for some odd reason, this doesn’t apply in local governance.
I’ve observed abysmal, defunct decisions and policies be nursed along and continue even to the detriment of the people and the city. Let me be clear—not everyone in local governance is bad. That is unequivocally NOT true. There are lots of good people in city government.
Complacency Kills
In systems, over time, they grow stale and complacent: effectively on auto-pilot (and often bad auto-pilot). Humans are habit machines and we get in cycles and ways of doing things and it’s hard to get out of them. That’s why an injection of fresh energy, excitement, strategy, and “can do attitude” can make all the difference in the world. As a mom, it doesn’t do me any good to beat up myself or my people for making mistakes or getting into bad habits. Such is life—so what? You deal with it, make the proper changes and move on. Besides, mistakes are our greatest teachers. Moms know how to garner the strength and the will within the system to rise up and take action. We want to MOTIVATE and INSPIRE from within because we know that when the good in our people rises up and overcomes the bad, magical things happen. ALL fall short, it’s what we do with the opportunity to improve that matters.
Moms Are an Answer
So what do Moms, especially working moms, have to offer this city?
We Know How to Negotiate
I can negotiate multimillion dollar deals & tricky inspection periods all day long, but negotiating my way with my daughter and my husband for the peace and proper function of my home takes serious skills that cannot be taught other than by simply living life.
We Function Well Even Under Strong Emotions
This is a big one. Running a city or being in a leadership position means you have to be able to keep your cool in the midst of very intense situations. If you can’t, your body has embedded in it a biochemical response that literally shuts down your frontal lobe—the very part of your brain you need to exercise higher order thinking. If you are not practiced in the art of making decisions in the midst of intensity, your body physiologically begins a process that shuts you down. Too much of that and your body goes into that maladaptive bad-habit phase. Many know it as fight or flight. It’s primal and evolutionary and was very helpful when you needed to run from lions, but in modern society it’s wreaking havoc—especially in our leadership. It takes a minimum of 20 minutes for those chemicals to recede in your body and that’s IF you know to get up and walk around, throw water on your face and neck, etc to get back to homeostasis. Guess who knows how to operate properly in situations like this in spades, on a visceral level? MOMS!
We Get to the Bottom of Things
And we do so quickly, too! This is because we have to: we don’t have time to pussyfoot around. Time and energy are our greatest commodities. If something in our world isn’t functioning properly, we don’t let it slide. The entire ecosystem depends on proper function.
We Know How to Prioritize
There are too many battles to fight. You cannot possibly fight them all. We know how to quickly hone in on the biggest priorities and focus there to get the job done.
We Know How to Properly Delegate
If we don’t we die. Everyone in the ecosystem must do their part or they’re in trouble and they know it. It’s the fear of God (and I really mean God Himself working in and through the Moms!) in them that if they don’t pull their weight, they’ll have to MESS WITH MEEEE and no one wants to mess with me. Seriously. I have only had to demonstrate my wrath a couple of times to my child. Doesn’t take much and they fall in line. Truth is, humans want clear and proper boundaries. They want to know there’s wrath—because that means that if anyone comes against them, that wrath will come out in protection over them.
As a child of this beautiful city, I feel very protective of her. I feel like a Mama panther ready to pounce on anyone hurting her or destroying her. She is beautiful, full of resources, ideas and life that the whole world needs. Dallas needs to contribute her part to the world and she can’t do so if she’s under improper leadership.
Rise Up
Time for MOM-Hobbits to rise up far and wide…after all, it was the common, everyday hobbits that threw the evil Ring of Power into the molten lava to destroy it. Why? Because there was a purity to who they were and because of how they were made, they were the only ones who could even get into the place where the ring needed to be destroyed. Everyone else had other jobs to help make it happen, but it was the Hobbits who had to go into the fires of Mordor. By the end, they were beat up, dirty, their clothes were falling apart but they didn’t care—they had a job to do. I can’t tell you how many times as a mom, I have pushed through, with hair a mess, makeup sliding off my face, and exhaustion in every bone in my body. But I knew I had to persevere to finish the task for my family. I know no one on the planet more worthy of going into the fires to fight for our children, jobs, economy, husbands, families, and city than MOMS.