Some call it indoctrination. I call it illumination.

 

I grew up sixth-generation on my family’s cattle farm. My parents were leaders in our Presbyterian church. My mom was a Sunday school teacher. I was a Girl Scout. My brother was an Eagle Scout who grew up to retire as a member of the U.S. Air Force.

My maternal grandfather was a retired chief of police. My dad was a Marine Corps fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran. While many relatives on my mom's side were Democrats, most of my dad's side - those I spent the most time with - voted Republican, so it was the party I chose when registering to vote shortly after my 18th birthday.

I've worked for Catholic nuns in a monastery for more two decades. My husband and I sent our son to private Catholic school for 10 years.

And we’re not even Catholic.

So I understand why people think I should fit in a certain box. And then they get confused when I speak up for the marginalized. When I ask for empathy for the poor.

But the Republican Party of my youth is not the Republican Party of today. Did it change? Or did I?

***

Many of us go through a metamorphosis as we age. Some get more conservative. Some get more liberal. Life shapes and reshapes us as we move through the decades of young adulthood, middle age and beyond. As I reflect on my own life, I think there’s something to be said about that. But maybe it isn’t just our own experiences that shape us, but also those of others.

I grew up in a two-parent home in a small Missouri town that was probably 99.9 percent white. My parents went to all my soccer games, piano recitals and band concerts. My mom was my troop's Girl Scout leader. My dad helped me with my homework at the table after dinner. We always had food, clothing and reliable transportation. We took vacations every year to see the country.

As my mom, who grew up outside New York City, was fond of saying, “Small town doesn’t have to mean small minded.”

Our parents made sure my brother and I had experiences in big cities and beyond. We went to museums and the theater, saw the Grand Canyon and the Pacific Ocean, went clam fishing on our grandparents' boat in the Atlantic and stood on the National Mall in Washington DC.

Even though he grew up in a farm family with parents who had high school diplomas, my dad and his four siblings ALL went to college. I don't know how many rural families in the 1960s and '70s can claim that feat. Probably not many.

Our home was a safe one where we felt secure and very loved. Many of my friends grew up in similar homes with similar experiences.

It’s what I call emotional generational wealth. It’s not money in a stock portfolio, but it’s just as valuable.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I met people whose lives weren’t like mine. Whose experiences were not like mine.

Students from divorced or single-parent homes. Students who had never been on an airplane or beyond the border of their home state. Some who grew up in inner cities and lost friends to gang violence. Some who had been sexually assaulted. Students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Students whose parents battled addiction - and some who battled it themselves. Students who were bilingual. Students of different religions like Judaism and Hinduism. Teachers who taught beyond historical facts and challenged us to find context. And for the first time, I (knowingly) had gay friends.

It all blew the mind of a little farm girl from northern Missouri.

Some want to call that indoctrination. I call it illumination.

***

And as I continued to move through life, living and working in a big city, then moving back to my college town to enjoy small-town life once again, I realized that it’s not just my own experiences that reshaped my brain and my heart.

It was the vast experiences of all those I met, shared meals with, worked with, spent time with.

Cried with.

It was in those moments that I learned empathy at its core - why some folks need a hand up, why taking care of the environment matters, why Black parents have to teach their Black sons what to do during a traffic stop, why campaign finance reform is crucial to returning to fair and balanced elections, why education is vital for breaking the cycle of poverty, why programs to battle domestic and sexual violence are important to ending generational terror.

Because not everyone’s life is the same.

With the political climate of today, I’m not surprised that many of those same family members and I have shifted political affiliations to Independent or Democrat. I know and love many folks who continue to support the GOP and who desperately would like a return to a more balanced agenda from their political leaders. It is something I, too, hope for. Because the polarization we have today isn’t sustainable or healthy.

I believe we are capable of more than division. We are capable of listening, of learning and of growing beyond the boxes we were born into. If my own life has taught me anything, it’s that empathy is not weakness - it’s the bridge that can span the divide and heal.