My husband Grant stood on the stairs holding my laptop. I was already late for university after spending the weekend working on my biology dissertation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then he \u201cdropped\u201d it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The laptop hit the stairs and died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I confronted him, he simply smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMaybe now you\u2019ll stop wasting everybody\u2019s time. Women aren\u2019t supposed to be smart. Go make me breakfast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What he didn\u2019t realize was that our 8-year-old daughter, Ellie, had heard everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few minutes later, she came downstairs carrying her school project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across the top were the words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE LIKE MY MOM.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Underneath, she had written:<\/p>\n\n\n\n She studies cells.<\/em> Then Ellie looked at her father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her teacher had asked: \u201cWhat should your hero do when someone says they can\u2019t do something?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ellie looked at Grant and said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou said girls aren\u2019t supposed to be smart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grant froze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat was a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ellie shook her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMom was crying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later, when Grant asked me to help with his own work, I finally said no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy studying matters too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That night, I took Ellie and left for my sister\u2019s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For years, I had made my education as invisible as possible so my family wouldn\u2019t feel inconvenienced by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But my daughter had already understood something I hadn’t:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn’t need permission to be smart.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And the broken laptop wasn’t the thing that finally changed everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was the moment my daughter realized her mother deserved to be treated like a hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My husband Grant stood on the stairs holding my laptop. I was already late for university after spending the weekend working on my biology dissertation. Then he \u201cdropped\u201d it. The laptop hit the stairs and died. When I confronted him, he simply smiled. \u201cMaybe now you\u2019ll stop wasting everybody\u2019s time. Women aren\u2019t supposed to be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21892,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889\/revisions\/21892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
She works really hard.<\/em>
She helps me when I don\u2019t understand stuff.<\/em>
She says questions make you smarter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n