09/05/2026
🇺🇸 Happy Labor Day! 50 Years Ago, I Was a 10-Year-Old Girl Waving the American Flag… ❤️🤍💙
🇺🇸 **AMERICA AT 250: I STILL BELIEVE IN FREEDOM** 🇺🇸
It was **May 1976**. I was 10 years old, and America was preparing to celebrate its **200th birthday**.
I had been chosen to be part of the banner and streamer team representing the 3rd- and 4th-graders at my elementary school in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
I remember the excitement. ❤️🤍💙
America was turning 200.
I was graduating from elementary school.
My mother was expecting a new baby girl.
And even the Patriots were having a winning season!
For the first time in my young life, I felt a deep sense of **national pride.** 🇺🇸
Growing up in New England, the history of the Pilgrims and the sacrifices involved in building a new nation suddenly felt real to me.
But there is another memory from that day that has stayed with me for 50 years.
💨 **The wind was whipping across the field.**
Our banners, flags, and streamers kept twisting and tangling. No matter how hard we tried, we had to keep fighting the wind to let them fly freely.
Looking back, that day became a metaphor for my life.
My own journey toward freedom would become tangled many times.
By the end of the 1980s, I had:
💔 Failed in high school.
👶 Become a teen mother.
💰 Experienced deep poverty.
💔 Lived through domestic violence.
🖤 Become a widow with two small children.
🏠 Lived in a homeless shelter.
Eventually, a housing certificate gave me something incredibly precious:
**A home of my own where I could set my own rules.**
America has long been called **“the land of the free and the home of the brave.”**
I didn't always feel the freedom others seemed to have.
But I could aspire to be **BRAVE.**
And I did.
📚 I went to college.
🍎 I earned a teaching certificate.
👩🏫 I became a preschool teacher.
✝️ And I discovered new freedom through my relationship with God.
Over the decades, I have watched America wrestle with its own conflicting ideals.
We spoke about freedom while many women remained marginalized.
We spoke about liberty while poverty sometimes determined which opportunities people could actually reach.
But I have also watched things **change.**
Today, I am a **great-grandmother.**
And as America approaches **250 years**, I can look back over half a century and rejoice at how many barriers women have overcome.
I know a young woman in her early twenties who is becoming a **licensed electrician.** 👷♀️⚡
When that 10-year-old girl stood on a field waving her streamers in 1976, I could hardly have imagined it.
🇺🇸 **So yes, I celebrate how far we have come.**
And I also wonder about where we are going.
I wonder how electronics, social media, and our rapidly changing culture will shape America's children and grandchildren.
But after 50 years—through poverty, motherhood, loss, education, faith, struggle, and freedom—something inside me remains the same.
❤️🤍💙 **My heart still sings when I wave an American flag or streamer and hear our national anthem.**
That little 10-year-old girl is still somewhere inside this great-grandmother.
Still waving her streamer.
Still believing freedom is worth fighting for.
Still choosing to be brave.
🇺🇸 **God bless America.**
As we approach America's 250th birthday, I would love to hear from you:
**What does freedom mean to YOU?** 🇺🇸
