This page, for the most part, isn’t particularly political, and I don’t intend for it to be now, but I really am having a hard time these past few weeks with politics and wanted to share how I put my complicated feelings into words… This feeling is not based on Party or Policy or anything else you may feel the need to argue with me about. Please, be kind. I am tired.

I find myself, more than anything, tired. I am tired of the disappointment, the fight, the lack of fruition. I feel like my generation was lied to – we were told we could do anything we wanted, that whatever boys can do girls can do, too – but it’s not true. Not yet. Not for some time, probably. I’m 35 now and I was told when I was 8 and wanted to be President when I grew up, that it was possible. No one questioned me when I answered “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with “President of the United States.”

They didn’t prepare us for this kind of fatigue, this kind of betrayal as yet again (our entire lives thus far) three old, white, men lead the charge (two left in the Democratic Primary and the current POTUS as the GOP nominee). I feel like something has been stolen from us.

This isn’t an impassioned anti-Boomer argument (my parents were both born in ’57 and are smack dab in the Baby Boom generation – they are also two of the most progressive, understanding, caring, and thoughtful people I’ve ever met). I don’t even blame them for telling us what they did when we were children, for getting our hopes up. My parents really believed a girl could grow up to be President. Or an astronaut. Or a CEO. They still want to believe that. I’m sure my mother is feeling just as disappointed at 62 as I am at 35, probably even more than I am. She has hoped for this for much longer than I have. We have worked toward this goal – volunteering, voting – for so long, both of us. We went together to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She was so proud to vote for a woman for President. I was, too, and it was a moment we savored together.

But if the Boomers aren’t to blame for this, who is? If we feel lied to, who do we blame? Not the parents who gave us that hope, not the women who ran and failed… It partly feels like we should blame ourselves for believing, but I will never regret hoping and working for a better America. I will never feel my time was wasted as I worked for a more equal world, a world of better opportunity and fewer glass ceilings.

But I do feel tired. I feel burnt out. I feel disappointed and sad and small. I know I’m not alone in that. But I still have hope. I always will. After all, that’s how I was raised.