As parents, we mark time in terms of our families because kids are the best things in our lives. My friend, the radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, has a great line: “What’s the most promising ingredient in this messed-up world? A child.” Our families embody our hopes and dreams. Our Founders understood that respecting and honoring a family’s love is the key to being free. Today the fight for my family’s future is the fight for all American families’ futures.
Now there’s a cause “for the children” that I can really support.
Photo Insert
My family spent many afternoons hunting ptarmigan on cross-country skis in the hills of Hatcher Pass. Here, after a successful bird hunt in the winter of 1976, I showed our childhood dog, Rufus, the catch.
(Courtesy of Chuck Heath)
Family vacations always included hiking in Alaska’s wilderness. My mom led us along the Chilkoot Trail between Skagway, Alaska, and Canada during one of our treks in the mid-1970s so we could learn about the 1898 gold rush that helped settle the Last Frontier.
(Courtesy of Chuck Heath)
Taking a break along the gold miners’ path on the Chilkoot Trail, my sisters, Molly and Heather, and my brother, Chuck, were fortunate to have Mom and Dad teach us about the pioneering spirit and work ethic that built America. Here Dad’s backpack, loaded with our family’s week of hiking provisions, represents his desire for us to enjoy our trips and not be overburdened.
(Courtesy of Chuck Heath)
Family and friends gather at an Anchorage campaign rally on September 13, 2008, soon after I had been named as the Republican vice presidential candidate. On the front row of the riser are Todd; Willow and Trig; Piper; Chuck Heath Jr.; Teko and Kier Heath; and my mom, Sally. Other family members are seated behind them.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Touring the 9/11 Tribute WTC Visitor Center adjacent to Ground Zero in New York City in 2008 was a life-changing experience for me. The visit to the hallowed ground was shared with me by the center’s CEO, Jennifer Adams, and Lee Ielpi, president of the September 11th Families’ Association.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Along the presidential campaign trail my daughters and I were thrilled to attend a most favorite pastime—watching hockey. The Flyers played the Rangers in Philly on October 11, 2008. It was Trig’s first professional game.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Todd and I gain strength when we put our faith in the power of prayer, as we do here, backstage at the Road to Victory rally on November 3, 2008, in Dubuque, Iowa. During the 2008 election, and in my years in public office, and especially upon my return to the governor’s office, our prayer times reminded us of what really mattered.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Sharing a laugh with Todd the day before the 2008 presidential election while onstage at a Road to Victory rally at Marietta College, in Marietta, Ohio.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Pausing to greet a crowd outside Sam’s Club on December 3, 2009, while holding Trig, accompanied by my mom, who was shaking hands. The good people of Fayetteville, Arkansas, were warm and welcoming during our Going Rogue book-signing tour!
(© Shealah Craighead)
My daughter Piper appreciates a good assignment, so here she takes photographs as I sign books on the Going Rogue tour in 2009. This stop was an event in Orange Park, Florida, and Piper loved staying busy with the good Southerners she got to meet.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Piper watches me shake hands with a soldier on November 23, 2009, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. We had the honor of visiting military communities on our book tour, including here at the post of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES).
(© Shealah Craighead)
Autographing Captain Christina Valentine’s patch while at Fort Hood in Texas was humbling. Our men and women in uniform—America’s finest—are a source for good in this world, and I’m honored to know many of them.
(© Jack Plunkett/AP Photo)
Todd and I greet a soldier at the PX Exchange at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2008. I always proclaim, “If you love your freedom, you’d better thank a vet.”
(© Bob Daemmrich/Corbis)
Piper takes time to work on third-grade homework assignments in November 2009 while traveling by bus with my aunt Katie Johnson and me. My family traveled across America that month, and Piper kept up with her Cottonwood Creek classmates via correspondence assignments. It helped to have my brother and my dad, both teachers, pitch in to assist with the curriculum.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Piper (left) and Willow join me on a carousel for a People magazine photo shoot in Bryant Park, New York City, at the start of our Going Rogue book tour.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Two handsome guys, Todd and Trig, take a bottle break in New York City before we hit the trail again together on November 16, 2009.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Bristol’s son, Tripp Easton Mitchell, digs into his first birthday cake in the Palin kitchen. During the party, my friends Juanita Fuller (right) and Barb Adams help Bristol with ice cream and treats for the birthday boy’s celebration in January 2010. We’ve always made a pretty big deal out of birthdays—no doubt our family’s collective sweet tooth has something to do with that.
(© Shealah Craighead)
I play with nineteen-month-old Trig while Bristol supports her one-year-old son, Tripp, on his toy elephant during Tripp’s birthday party in our Wasilla home.
(© Shealah Craighead)
A pleasant Alaskan summer afternoon warmed Trig and me while we chatted out on the lawn in July 2010. Trig’s an expert communicator with his sign language, and our hearts will leap when he says his first word someday. I’m betting it will be “dog.”
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
After an interview near the Statue of Liberty, Glenn Beck and I pose for Fox News on January 13, 2009. Glenn and I share an appreciation for Lady Liberty. America’s most famous symbol for freedom-loving immigrants serves as an inspiration to all: America, continue to be exceptional, hard-working, faithful, and free.
(© Shealah Craighead)
The Reverend Billy Graham offers me words of wisdom and encouragement on a Sunday afternoon, November 22, 2009. This time of prayer and a shared meal at this prayer warrior’s mountainside home in Montreat, North Carolina, is a highlight of my life. Reverend Graham is a giant in this world, and he will surely hear “well done” in the next. His faith has touched and been accepted by millions.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Feeling right at home with NASCAR fans at the Daytona 500 on Valentine’s Day 2010! After speaking to the motorhead-filled crowd before the flag dropped, I was honored to shake hands with our troops who were there loving this all-American pastime!
(© J Pat Carter/AP Photo)
During a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in December 2009, I had the privilege of meeting staff members before Todd and I visited wounded warriors. The staff’s dedication to healing body and soul is so commendable, and our courageous military makes me proud to be American.
(© Shealah Craighead)
Tea Party Americans are standing up and speaking out for time-tested truths in America! It’s an honor to meet proud, concerned “we’ve had it up to here” patriots at rallies like this one, where I took the podium on April 14, 2010, on Boston Common, in Massachusetts. Sharing with them a vision for America that’s founded on our Constitution has been exhilarating these past couple of years.
(© Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Todd is my right-hand man and production “crew” as he helps adjust my television earpiece before an interview with Sean Hannity on one of the nation’s highest-rated news shows, Hannity. Todd bu
ilt an airplane hangar for his Piper Super Cub and included within it a spot for me to broadcast live around the world. It’s usually a two-person show—Todd and me—when we interview from home.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
Summertime 2010, catching up on the news in our living room before I head out the door for a run. Piper and her cousin McKinley are wrapping gifts to send to an Alaskan logging camp.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
My dad and brother, Chuck Sr. and Chuck Jr., wait for me to cook the eggs early one July 2010 morning on a remote sandbar where we had set up camp the night before. Nearly fifty years in Alaska and our most thrilling entertainment still revolves around the great outdoors. Sport fishing was on that day’s agenda in the Talkeetna Mountains.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
I had to adjust a new firearm before a fall hunt in 2010, so I visited the gun range in Chugiak, Alaska, to target practice.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
My dad and I visit with our buddies, the Wallis family, at their locally owned sporting goods store, Chimo Guns. The guys at this Wasilla establishment gave me good advice on firepower before my fall caribou hunt in September 2010. And it worked! I filled half the freezer with wild game a few weeks after this visit.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
I eat, therefore I hunt! In autumn 2010, after two days of hiking the tundra near ANWR (the flat, desolate, uninhabited land that warehouses billions of barrels of American oil—which we should be tapping), I finally got a caribou. Feeding my kids healthy, clean, organic, wild protein that we harvest ourselves is part of being Alaskan. I often explain that the meat we eat is wrapped in fur instead of the cellophane that customers purchase in grocery stores, so it’s important that we’re managing our fish and wildlife resources for abundance in the Last Frontier.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
Piper and I flew to the Punchbowl Glacier outside Anchorage in July 2010. We spent the day on the snowy mountain with our friends, Iditarod champions Mitch Seavey (left), Martin Buser (far right), and their dog handler. We loved dogsledding in the epic landscape.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
The Restoring Honor rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall on August 28, 2010, in Washington, D.C., drew an estimated five hundred thousand people. Glenn Beck headlined the peaceful patriot celebration on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The words King spoke forty-seven years earlier changed the course of civil rights in America for the better. His niece Dr. Alveda King graced us with her presence at our rally that warm Washington day.
(© Shealah Craighead)
A gorgeous day near Homer, Alaska, in August 2010 let me lead Piper (in orange rain pants) and my nephews, Teko and Kier Heath, along a muddy beach in search of clams that we would dig for dinner. Clam digging is one of the most kid-friendly outdoor activities we have in the 49th State. It’s always on our low-tide to-do list, and it should be on everyone’s bucket list.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
A rare moment captured of the Palin crew—we’re all together, at home! Near our dock outside our front door in August 2010 are Track, Piper, Willow, Bristol, me and Trig, Tripp, and Todd. It’s really hard not to notice God’s hand in the creation that is all around us. We’re blessed to wake up to this view and breathe in this air.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
Working overtime—sort of. Todd and I had to wait for weather to clear, so we hunkered down in the garage of Talkeetna’s Alaska Mountaineering School in July 2010 before leaving for a climbing adventure on Mt. McKinley. We worked the BlackBerrys before our small airplane could take off for the Ruth Glacier, where we’d change into hiking gear and traverse crevasses, ice slides, and rock to get a spectacular view of North America’s highest peak, which is in nearby Denali Park.
(© 2010 One Three, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographer Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)
Five
The Rise of the Mama Grizzlies
In Alaska, the only thing we take more seriously than a grizzly bear is a mama grizzly with cubs to protect. Some misguided souls—particularly in the Lower 48—are determined to portray these bears as cute and cuddly. We call this “bear propaganda.” Grizzly bears—mamas or otherwise—are beautiful, ferocious, serious-as-a-heart-attack creatures. When you come upon one, you don’t give her a hug. You tread lightly. Because when the ones she loves are threatened, she rises up.
So it’s with only a little bit of overstatement that I call so many of the new generation of American women leaders—many of whom I’ve met on the campaign trail and in the towns and cities of America—mama grizzlies. These are tough, serious, formidable women like Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and Carly Fiorina of California. These women are at the forefront of a new wave of strong, confident American women who are positively affecting not just the Republican Party, but America itself. They’re building businesses, managing charities, leading men and women in government—and, while they’re at it, raising families.
Michele Bachmann is a congresswoman from the sixth district of Minnesota, the first Republican woman elected to the House from her state. She’s a small-government, low-tax, pro–energy independence phenomenon who’s also a small-business owner and a mother of five. Nikki Haley has captured the nation’s attention as an Indian American woman who’s also a pro-family, commonsense constitutional conservative eager to take back her country. She’s a sister, as is Carly Fiorina, a pro-life, fiscal conservative knocking down barriers in blue-state California. Susana Martinez is a veteran district attorney and a Republican who wins elections in a county in which Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one.
Some people are calling the emergence of these successful conservative female leaders a new phenomenon in America—as if we’d just invented smart, capable women who also believe in the Constitution, the sanctity of life, and American exceptionalism. Truth is, mama grizzlies have been with us for a long time. These are the same women who settled the frontier, drove the wagons, ploughed the fields, ran cattle, taught their kids, raised their families—and fought for women’s rights. These women are like America itself: strong and self-sufficient. Not bound by what society says they should do and be, but determined to create their own destinies.
No, mama grizzlies aren’t a new phenomenon in America. What is new is our determination to rise up and take our country back before it’s too late. All across this great country, women are standing up and speaking out for commonsense solutions to the problems we face. In other times, most women with small children to take care of and bills to pay—women like South Dakota’s Kristi Noem (three kids) or New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte (a five-year-old and a two-year-old)—may have thought they should leave politics to others. But these days, the stakes are so high—the future we want for our kids and grandkids is so threatened—that we feel we have no choice but to get involved.
That’s certainly how I felt when, as a young mother in Wasilla, I got involved in local politics for the first time. All I wanted to do was lend a hand in my community, trying to help solve some day-to-day problems that directly affected my family, friends, and neighbors. Little did I know where that first step would lead me. I suspect the same is true of many of the younger conservative women who are taking
their first steps in politics today.
It makes sense that moms would be at the forefront of the great American awakening we’re experiencing. Moms can be counted on to fight for their children’s future. And when politicians start handing our kids the bill for their cronyism and irresponsibility—when they engage in generational theft—moms rise up. We shouldn’t have to work for government; our government should work for us.
When I was tapped for the Republican vice-presidential nomination I got a lot of, quite frankly, sexist criticism for pursuing the White House while I had a family with small children. Some of it came from conservatives who didn’t think a woman had any business being on the campaign trail with young children. I’m used to that; I’ve heard it since I first entered politics two decades ago. But most of it came from liberals who claimed to believe that women should pursue careers outside the home. Because they couldn’t very well criticize me for running for vice-president, they resorted to another low form of left-wing criticism: calling me a hypocrite. They said I was being hypocritical about running for office while I had small children because conservatives supposedly had rules about that kind of thing. (This is why, by the way, liberals love to accuse conservatives of being hypocrites. After all, you have to have standards to be accused of violating them!) Problem was, there was nothing in anything I advocated then (or since) that isn’t empowering to women and doesn’t encourage them to be all they can be.