The Freedom to Transform Forgotten Americans and Americas’ Angry Rhetoric

For more than thirty years, as a free woman, I strove to help make the voices of under-served people heard. I spoke up about child abuse when people thought it was “rare”. I spoke out for victims’ rights. I spent twenty years with teams of researchers and practitioners trying to expand access to mental and physical healthcare for rural and under-served people. I used my freedom to live my life in the way I believed I should. I lived vigorously. I refused to be a bystander and not speak up. I know I made a difference in the lives of the people I encountered.

Nevertheless, the battle was so long and so dark it ate all of the freedom to act that I had. In 2012, I retired sick, old and diminished, having expended all of my power without having made “the big difference.” Victims still struggle. Children are not loved and nurtured as they should be. Rural women are still more likely to die early. Rural men are economically disadvantaged regardless of their age, race or background. Healthcare access in the U.S. is a national tragedy.

Somewhere in the debacle of the 2016 political process, We, as a nation, woke up to the fact that rural and under-served people of all color, gender, creed, age or nationality fare worse than their urban and suburban counterparts. We call “them” the “Forgotten America.” Our national forgetfulness was so powerful it transformed the word urbancentricity from a negative word meaning urban bias against non-urban things to a positive word meaning people loved the things their urban lives provided.

The transformation of urbancentricity to remembering our "forgotten people" makes me relieved that someone finally noticed and cross that and it took mean, explosive politics to illuminate the problem. If there is any hope for freedom hidden in the angry rhetoric of America these days, I am free to hope that others are as weary of it as I and that shared positive change will finally come. If it does, it will heal me, and my Country.