By the time this article posts, I’ll have traveled to D.C. to the Women’s March on Washington with a hundred or so other OWU students, marched for a day, then traveled back to Ohio and completed my homework after a long nap. I am incredibly grateful the opportunity for me to travel back to the place I call home arose through my school, but I’m even more grateful that I’ll be marching with my mom.

My mom is one of the strongest women I know. She was born in Glendive, Montana, the youngest of her three sisters and her brother. She was the first in her family to attend college, in another state entirely. In five years, she received her master’s in speech. She did all of this while having a rare syndrome called Ehlers-Danlo. Ehlers-Danlo Syndrome alters the biology of collagen, which is what holds bodies together. My mom has always had knee problems, but that didn’t stop her from marching for what she believed in. She worked up to marching over three days for the Avon March for Breast Cancer in 2009, and is taking my younger brother to the March on Washington.

All of her sisters and brother live close to her mom, and I so often forget that the place I’m from is vastly different from where my mom is from. She’s living far from her family and has done an amazing job at creating family in the friends and neighbors we have for my brothers and I to have growing up.

She’s braved so much. With my dad, they’ve gone through hard-hitting losses and shared the struggles of living so far from their family and childhood homes, something I’m finding myself struggling with now – and I’m only here for another 2 years! They’ve juggled serious and scary medical complications in the family, and when hell hits, they stayed through it and worked together to maintain our family.

It’s upsetting that this is the way it’s happened, but I’ve found that the growing tensions of the presidential election was something that brought my mom and I closer. When I posted my fears and sorrow of the election results to be met with criticisms, she defended me. I watch her share videos of Donald Trump addressing his own daughter, and I know that she’s thinking of me in Ivanka’s position each time she watches footage like that. It’s so upsetting that it’s with the election of an accused child rapist and xenophobic nazi-enabler that I am filled with appreciation for the champion that is my mother. She has always fought for my brothers and I to have the best life we can, and has never stopped supporting us in what we love. She has taught me so much about being kind while still being firm in what you believe in, and about never backing down from what’s right. I am so thankful for her, and I am so honored and blessed that the first protest I am attending is one where I’ll be by her side.