Dear President Obama,
It is with a truly heavy heart that I say farewell to you and your family today. There are many things I will miss about your leadership of the American people, and because I know that our tendency as human beings, as fickle Americans, is to dwell on all the things that went wrong in a stretch of presidency instead of all the good that came out of it, I want to take the time, today, to say, Thank you. And I mean my thanks with all of my heart.
If one were to ask me what I will miss the most, I would have to say it is this: Your classy interaction with your public and your honorable representation of the American people to the other nations of the world.
You have shown the American people an example of what it means to live in love, in honor and in respect at all times. You have shown us what it means to not take yourself too seriously and have a laugh or two at your mistakes—because we all make them. You have shown us what it means to return ill-spirited, judgment-laden words with kindness and fortitude.
I don’t know much about you, personally speaking. I don’t know much about you, politically speaking, either. I do know that you made it possible, through the Affordable Care Act, for my husband and me to launch our own businesses and still provide good healthcare for our six children. How transformational. I also know that the few times we forgot to send packed lunches with our three school-age children, they had healthy lunch choices in their school cafeteria because of your wife’s desire to save our children’s lives through their diets. How noble.
And I know that your example of family has been a beacon of hope for what family could be. Surely no president of the United States can make it through eight years of leading a nation without significant family tension and stress and conflict. I was not present in the private rooms of the White House, but in your public appearances, you and your family have always exuded adoration, support and deep, abiding love. How beautiful.
Thank you for your tireless efforts, for your constant concern, for your honorable example. Though we, the American people as a whole, do not see it now, and though some of us never will, we are grateful for your efforts on behalf of our well being.
In the eight years you have led us, you gave the American people dignity, because you embodied it. You gave us a higher standard of what it means to be human, because you exemplified it. You gave us love, because you lived it.
I wish you peace, joy, wonder and triumph in all the days hereafter.
Thank you for your faithful service.
In love,
One of the little people.
