Dear President Obama,
In this last hour of your presidency, I’m overwhelmed with so many feelings. Big emotions. Good and bad. Some fearful, some hopeful.
But nothing compares to the gratitude I feel for you, for your tireless and undaunted commitment to making life better, more just and more promising for all people — regardless of who they are, what challenges they face or how they vote.
In your good-bye letter to the American people, you said we made you a better man. I don’t doubt that, because that’s the kind of leader you are. Someone who embraces the value of every lesson learned, whether in victory or defeat, as an opportunity to deepen your understanding of the great problems of our time and keep forging ahead to solve them.
Thank you for setting such a profoundly positive example of the grit it takes to be a leader.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about grit lately. I had to summon a more of it than I ever thought I had in me during my fight against breast cancer. (Spoiler alert: I won.)
Curious about the source(s) of strength that got me through the toughest year of my life, I recently listened to Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance while training for my first half marathon, which I ran eight months after wrapping up my treatment.
Chapter by chapter, Angela Duckworth fascinated me with her insights about grittiness. Each time I listened during one of my long runs, the wisdom resonated with me so powerfully, it felt like she was my very own mind-reading therapist.
On my first run after the 2016 election, in the “Culture of Grit” chapter, she tells the story of the research she did shadowing Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks in the days after their epic loss in Super Bowl XLIX. She wanted to learn “how a culture of grit continues not just in the afterglow of success, but in the aftermath of failure.”
When I heard these words that Pete’s fond of sharing, quoting idol John Wooden (quoting Winston Churchill), a dismal wave of anxiety faded away.
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
Your days in the Oval Office may be over, but I’m grateful as ever for the eight years you spent in it, and for the grit that I know will continue to guide you.
Thank you for being a leader who has the audacity to hope — even when all hope seems lost.
Thank you, Mr. President. For everything.
Yours truly,
Liz Murtaugh Gillespie
P.S. I’m posting this letter on my blog WRITE ON: Writing through life’s twists and turns with grit and gratitude.
P.P.S. Your final speech as president inspired my last post: “You never really understand a person …”