America Turns 250

America turns 250 today.

Fifty years ago, when our country celebrated its Bicentennial, I was 11 years old.

I had no idea how much could change in 50 years.

The Bicentennial was one of the happiest days of my childhood. The world, or at least my little corner of it, seemed full of promise.

The year before, I met a grandmother I never knew existed. She bought a house in northeast Baltimore City, and all 7 of us moved in with her. We traded a concrete backyard for a patch of grass. It wasn’t much, but it felt like we’d made it.

My mother had helped a local politician, George Santoni, get elected. She became his campaign manager and business partner. Our fortunes were finally turning around.

On July 4, 1976, I was wearing a peach-colored skort and a sleeveless white T-shirt. I remember it because that was one of the very few outfits I owned that hadn’t belonged to someone else first.

In our little backyard, beneath the only alley tree on the block, a row of aluminum folding chairs was lined up in the shade. My parents sat there with George, talking while we celebrated America’s 200th birthday.

What I remember most was feeling…normal. Maybe for the first time.

Two months later, I’d leave Baltimore City Public Schools and start St. Matthew’s. For an eleven-year-old, it felt like life was moving in the right direction.

Then, just three months later, everything changed.

“George Santoni Indicted” filled the front page of The Baltimore Sun. The stability we thought we’d found disappeared almost overnight.

If someone had told that little girl what the next fifty years would bring, she never would have believed them.

She wouldn’t have believed she’d leave home at eighteen with everything she owned in a white plastic trash bag.

She wouldn’t have believed she’d live out of her car, earn an MBA without finishing high school or college, build venture-backed companies, serve in public office, or spend nineteen years fighting for justice before seeing the man who raped her finally held accountable.

She wouldn’t have believed that some of the hardest chapters would become the foundation for helping other people navigate theirs.

Life didn’t unfold the way I hoped it would. It unfolded in ways I never could have imagined.

As America celebrates 250 years, we’re reminded that progress is rarely a straight line. There are moments of optimism, moments of heartbreak, setbacks that make us question everything, and opportunities we never see coming.

I’ve experienced injustice. I’ve also experienced opportunities beyond anything that eleven-year-old girl could have imagined.

Both things are true.

But my story is only possible because I was born here.

That doesn’t mean success was guaranteed. It wasn’t. Every opportunity had to be earned, and many came only after setbacks that were unimaginable.

Looking back, I realize none of the best chapters of my life seemed possible from where I started.

That’s true for people. And for our country, too.