Passing on Our Values: The Legacy of Freedom

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day this 4th of July, we are witness to people dying for freedom in Iran and around the globe. What value could be more important than freedom?

The purpose of ethical wills (legacy letters) is to communicate and preserve our values to guide future generations.

Many of us seem satisfied to live our legacies, and don't realize that if we don't put pen to paper, our life-lessons will be lost forever. In America it's easy to take our freedoms for granted. Our daughters and granddaughters, texting and twittering, can't imagine a world before computers, or television, a world when American women didn't have the freedom to vote. Do we remember the legacy of freedom left us by Alice Paul, who was pivotal in winning the freedom to vote for all American women?

In the winter of 1917, a group of women began protesting outside the White House. The police responded by arresting suffragists on charges of obstructing traffic. The women kept picketing.

To break their spirit, the police arrested their leader, Alice Paul. She was tried, sentenced to prison, and placed in solitary confinement. For two weeks she was fed only bread and water. Weak and unable to walk, she was taken to the prison hospital. There she began a hunger strike. In response, prison doctors put Alice in a psychiatric ward. They threatened to send her to an insane asylum. She continued to refuse to eat. Afraid she would die, doctors forced a tube down her throat and poured liquids into her stomach. Paul refused to end the hunger strike -- or her fight for the vote.

In 1919 by a one-vote Senate margin, the amendment passed. By 1920, 36 states had ratified and the 19th Amendment became law.

What a story! What a commitment to freedom. Of course Alice Paul was not alone. There were many who fought alongside her, each with her story of courage that might have been transmitted to their children and grandchildren in a legacy letter.

Our contributions may not be as dramatic or as public as Alice Paul's and the other suffragettes. Nonetheless they should not be forgotten. We too yearn to make a positive difference in the world.

When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row. - Alice Paul

We too have acted on our values. They will only be remembered gifts to the future if we communicate and preserve them. What better time to reflect on the value of freedom in our lives than as we celebrate our national Independence Day, 2009.

As agents of socialization responsible for passing on cultural traditions to the next generation, women are the keepers and reproducers of culture. - Tova Hartman-Harbertal

Some suggestions/action steps:
1. Reflect about what freedom means to you. What are you free from and what are you free to live? Of what value has freedom been in your life? How have you fought to protect it in your own life? Let your memory take you back to the first time you experienced being free or that your freedom was challenged. Realize how freedom or the lack of it has shaped your life.
2. Take no more than 15 minutes to write one of your stories about how freedom or the lack of it has shaped you.
3. Use your story as the body of a legacy letter. Write a short introductory paragraph to provide the local and historical context. Write a blessing to the future to close your letter.
4. Share it in this season of freedom with someone(s) you care about, so they can treasure it and be blessed by it.

May we all be blessed by freedom;
May we experience gratitude for the freedoms we have in the United States of America;
May we not abuse others' freedoms;
May we take seriously the responsibility to pass on our beliefs in the value of freedom.

- Rachael Freed

Visit www.Life-Legacies.com to learn more about writing legacy letters/spiritual-ethical wills.

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