Passing the Torch: What Gloria Steinem's Death Taught Me About My Own Quiet Revolution

The passing of the invincible Gloria Steinem fills me with sadness, but also with so many memories of my younger years and inspiration for this new season of life.

How I Discovered Gloria Steinem

I didn't know who Gloria Steinem was until my freshman year at Pomona College. I went to a predominantly Latino high school that was very Catholic and conservative-leaning when it came to gender roles. I first remember identifying as a feminist in middle school, and I proudly carried that label into high school. In classes or social conversations when gender inequities came up, I would become infuriated when my female peers would say, "I believe in equality, but I'm not a feminist." In that environment, feminism was a dirty word, and it broke my heart that negative propaganda around the movement was controlling the narrative at my school.

Fast forward to college and the full realization of myself as a FEMINIST. It was in my first sociology class that I was officially introduced to Steinem, Susan Faludi, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, Audre Lorde, Dolores Huerta, and Simone de Beauvoir, to name just a few. I consumed their writing, learning about their work, their struggle, and understanding my own place in the movement. Back then I was fierce and sharp with my words. I wanted to make change through my art, my writing, my voice.

From Activist to Exhausted Adult

Then college ended, and I had to become a full-fledged adult woman with a job. Economic survival became my guiding drive as I was forced to pay rent and bills with no outside support. I never abandoned my feminist values or ideals, but I fell into a gradual depression, and my days of voicing my beliefs through writing and art slipped away.

Then came marriage and children, a mortgage, and more work. Capitalistic patriarchy got me and kept pushing me further and further underwater. It's not that I didn't recognize what was happening, it's that I was too exhausted to handle daily life and continue being a driving force in the feminist movement. I tried. I attended meetings sporadically. And then, eventually, I traded my Riot Grrrl Dr. Martens for a seat on the PTA Board.

Lighting Other Women's Torches

I admire that Steinem had the fuel to fight the good fight until the very end of her life. I wasn't out there publicly the way I was in college, but reflecting now, I realize I fought the good fight in a different way. In one interview, Steinem was asked about passing her torch to the next generation. Her response: she wasn't going to pass her torch, she was going to keep it, and use it to light other women's torches instead. She explained that it's better for all of us to keep lighting each other's torches, so that light fills every space. I love this. And that's when I understood how I had helped make change from home.

Raising the Next Generation of Feminists

As a mother of three, two sons and a daughter, I have used my torch to light theirs. All three of my children have been raised in a feminist household, embracing feminist ideals. They're all active in social movements. I've encouraged them to use their voices for justice and peace. My contribution to the movement was raising three humans who will fight for change, quietly or loudly, depending on the season of life they're in.

As has become a theme in my writing this year: I'm in a new season of life, with adult children, so my quiet advocacy finally has the space and energy to again grow into a roar. Gloria Steinem's death reminded me that the young woman I used to be is still very much alive. And with so much in the world that needs fixing, it's up to us women to start cleaning house and get shit done. We are strong, and united, we are invincible. Rest in Power Gloria Steinem.

Joining the Movement Again

I've returned to working with the women's movement, joining a chapter in San Bernardino County to address local concerns. If you're interested in attending our first meeting in October, please DM me or email jmiura@miuramedia.net. It will be in persona and zoom, intergenerational, all welcome.

Happy 91st Birthday, Dad: What Forgiveness Taught Me About Love After Loss

Today my father would have turned 91.

He died in 2021, and in the five years since, something unexpected has happened: my relationship with him has only gotten better. Not "better" in the way we usually mean it. There have been no new conversations, no apologies. But, somehow, we are closer now than we were for most of the years he was alive.

This is the story of how that happened.

A Complicated Kind of Love

My father Ruben and I had a complicated relationship. He was equally proud of and unsettled by my independence, my stubbornness, my feminism. He was born in Mexico in 1935, and the woman he had in mind for a daughter was a wife and a mother, supportive, steady, quiet. I was outspoken and strong, just like him. I always sensed that he was secretly proud of that except when my fierce independence collided with his need to control me. Then it was just an explosion of tempers and wills.

That was the shape of us for a long time: pride and friction, love and control, tangled together so tightly I couldn't always tell one from the other.

The Question I Couldn't Ask Him

A few months ago, I was doing some work on generational trauma, reading It Didn't Start With You. One of the exercises had me sit with a question I'd carried for years: why did my father never talk about his mother?

She died when he was 12. Whenever I asked about her, he would start crying, and eventually I learned to stop asking. Because of that, my grandmother, a woman named Clementina, is almost entirely a mystery to me. I know her name and little else. I wonder, sometimes, if she was strong and independent like my father and me. If she was a nurturer. If she was creative, or artistic, or funny. I will probably never know. There's a particular kind of grief in losing someone before you ever got the chance to know them at all, a grief for a person, and for every question you'll never get to ask.

But there was one thing my father did end up communicating to me, and how it reached me is the part of this story I still find hard to fully explain.

An Answer, Delivered a Strange Way

Out of respect for my father's privacy, I won't share the specific question about my grandmother I was sitting with. What I will share is what happened after I asked it.

I did the exercise, accepted that I would probably never get an answer, and let it go.

The next day, my mother told me she'd had the strangest dream. "Your father came to me," she said, "and told me this about your grandmother." And then she gave me the answer to the exact question I had been asking myself the day before.

I was shocked! I was in disbelief. I hadn't discussed any of this with my mother. She didn't even know I was doing generational trauma work. She didn't know I'd asked my father anything at all. But somehow, the answer came through her.

I've thought a lot about why it happened that way. If my father had come to me in a dream, I probably would have dismissed it as just my own subconscious, working something out. But because the answer came through my mother, someone with no knowledge of the question, I couldn't explain it away. That's what made me believe, really believe, that my father had reached out to me from wherever he is now.

Learning to Forgive Him

Here's why that moment mattered so much to me: it helped me understand that my father, in his current form, is now pure love. He wasn't able to give me that love in his human form, not the way a child deserves to receive love from a parent. But he is able to guide me now, in a way he couldn't while he was alive.

That understanding is what let me actually forgive him. Not in an obligatory way, but a real letting go of the hurt and pain his human self caused me.

He did the best he could. He lost his mother at 12 and grew up without the guidance he needed. He wasn't emotionally prepared to be a father, so instead he poured his energy into being a provider, a husband and father defined by economic responsibility. I always had a comfortable home and plenty of food. He did that part of the job well, and I'm grateful for it.

Forgiving him for what he couldn't give me, while holding onto gratitude for what he did give me, is what allowed our relationship to keep improving even now, even after he's gone. It keeps improving, a little, every day.

Celebrating Him Today

Today, on his birthday, we'll eat some of his favorite foods and pour some of his favorite drinks in his memory.

I still have a couple of voicemails saved from him I will listen to privately and cry. I wish I could hear his voice today. But I'm grateful that he still finds ways to reach me, still finds ways to share his love with me and my children.

I love you, Dad. Happy birthday.

If you've lost someone you had a complicated relationship with, know this: the relationship doesn't have to end where the person's life did. Forgiveness, real, unforced forgiveness, can keep a relationship growing long after someone is gone. If there's someone you're still holding something against, even someone who's no longer here, it might be worth asking yourself what letting go could open up for you.

Empty Nest Syndrome: The Tears Aren't About the Drop-Off, They're About Who I Am Without It

Driving to work this morning, I was overwhelmed by all the feels about the looming college drop-off date for my baby. I told myself not to cry because I'm wearing mascara. Even now, as I type, I have to deliberately hold back the tears.

What These Tears Are Really Telling Me

What are these tears telling me, showing me? The obvious answer is that my youngest of three is about to be seven hours away from me at UC Santa Cruz. But that's too simple an answer for my brain to accept. I think that behind the obvious sits some very real changes I'm being forced to face, accept, and eventually, hopefully embrace.

As I think about the physical part of my baby moving into the dorms, I'm not filled with sadness or dread. I'm actually happy he's about to start this incredible journey. I had so much fun in college myself, and I can't wait to see the metamorphosis that lies ahead for Jaron.

The First Time Wasn't Easier, Just Different

Akira, our oldest, also went to UC Santa Cruz, and the drive home after dropping him off was awful. James and I drove in silence, on and off crying the entire way. Every time Akira came home, I was ecstatic. Every time he left again, I cried. But each time it got a little easier, especially watching the growth and independence he was building. It confirmed that college was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

With Jaron, though, the sadness runs a little deeper. He's proof that we're entering a new season of life: the season where all of my children are adults and don’t need me like they used to.

Is It the Kids I'll Miss Or Being Needed?

I ask myself: is it that I'll miss having to take care of someone? My other two are older and always busy, so my reason for making dinner, especially on the nights when I was tired, was Jaron. So many little mothering tasks will no longer be required of me.

Am I going to miss being so intimately involved in his day-to-day? Absolutely.

Am I going to miss being anxious when he’s not home on time? Probably that too.

And as sad as I am that my baby is leaving, what he symbolizes in my life is what's actually hard to sit with. I'm getting older. I'm past the midlife mark, moving quickly toward my third act. My youngest leaving symbolizes the transformation of me as a mother, an identity I've carried and loved for 24 years.

When "Mother" Has Been Your Whole Identity

My primary identity has been "mother" for a very long time! Every other part of me has come second. I changed my career, made sacrifices, postponed goals to mother my babies the best I could. And now I'm supposed to switch gears and return to myself? Who am I anymore?

And there it is, the unspoken agony of the empty nest. Yes, it's about our children. But it's just as much about us mothers reclaiming our identities as women first. Whether we want to or not, we're forced to meet the woman that is left inside.

I'm not saying our adult children don't need us. They absolutely do. But it's different. Akira and my middle daughter Jaden don't need me to take care of them the way they used to. They're both capable and independent. They take care of all their needs and schedules. My job now is to walk alongside them, not tell them where to go. I'm here to listen to the grief and remind them the sun will rise tomorrow. I'm here to celebrate every lesson and remind them to stay grounded in their truth. My role has changed.

It's Time to Reclaim Myself

Even while writing this, I caught myself thinking about all the ways I could take care of other people instead of finishing this blog. It's a delay mechanism. Preoccupying myself with other people's priorities has become my specialty. I'm an excellent support person. But now it's time to prioritize myself as uncomfortable and unbearable as that feels right now. It's so much easier to cheer other people on than to force myself to act.

But everything in me tells me I have to start reclaiming the woman I was before children, before husband, before family. The woman with big dreams, who had all the time in the world to make a difference. Where did she go?

It's time for my Fiery Living to take center stage because this life is not a dress rehearsal, and I still have a lot of life left to live.

This is dedicated to all the mothers dropping their children off this Fall semester. I see you. I am you. We’ll get through and hopefully reclaim a part of ourselves we forgot existed.