In Waterloo, Iowa on Sunday a young woman asked Senator Elizabeth Warren a question for which the Democratic candidate didn’t have a plan. It wasn’t about student loans, the economy, education, climate change or health care. But it’s getting a great deal of attention now that videos of their interaction are spreading quickly (see video below).
“I was wondering if there was ever a time in your life where somebody you really looked up to maybe didn’t accept you as much,” a woman identified by ABC News as Raelyn said with “her voice cracking as she began to cry.”
“And how you dealt with that?” she added.
Senator Warren offered a very personal story, one she has written about in her book, about how her mother wanted her to “marry well.” At 22, when the marriage “just didn’t work out,” Warren says, she called her mother to let her know what was going on.
“There came a day when I had to call her and say, ‘this is over. I can’t make it work.’ And I heard the disappointment in her voice. I knew how she felt about it,” Warren said. ABC adds, “at times losing her voice to tears.”
“But I also knew it was the right thing to do.”
“And sometimes you just gotta do what’s right inside and hope that maybe the rest of the world will come around to it. And maybe they will and maybe they won’t, but the truth is, you gotta take care of yourself first,” Warren told Raelyn. “Give me a hug.”
ABC News reports Raelyn is “a member of the LGBTQ community,” and “told ABC News that conversations with family around Thanksgiving time gave rise to the idea.”
“What got me involved with her was her care for the LGBTQ community,” Raelyn told ABC. “And it’s been a struggle with that, with people close to me. And I just — she’s just, she gives me hope, which is not something that I’ve really had with other politicians, and I’ve followed politics for a while.”
Raelyn cited a part of Warren’s stump speech she repeats often on the campaign trail: that people should have the opportunity to “love who you love and build the family you want to build.”
CNN politics reporter Greg Krieg spoke with Raelyn after the event. he says she told him Senator Warren “was whispering in my ear, ‘We’ve got it. We’re going to be OK. You’re going to get through this. You’re going to be good.'”