My grandmother, who passed away at the beginning of November, had a core adage in her life that life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you. She recently had been cajoling me and challenging me to do more with my life. To lead more of a purposefully public life.

My parents were very firm about me always getting my homework done.

When we look at that jingoism and the sexism and the racism and the homophobia, that's not who we are, and that's not the country that I want my daughter to grow up in.

For most of my life, I deliberately led a private life in the public eye.

We need women who are at the head of a boardroom, like at the head of the White House, at the head of kind of major scientific enterprises so that little girls everywhere can then think, you know what? I can do that, I want to do that, I will do that.

It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents?

That's not what I want my children to hear. That's not representative of the country that I want my children to grow up in. And so that actually I found far more upsetting as a mom, as a woman, as an American, and even as my mother's daughter than anything they said about my mom.