So for some exciting but ~bittersweet~ personal news: after nearly five years on Capitol Hill, today was my last day as a congressional staffer.
If you’ll indulge me, I have a few thoughts:
If you’ll indulge me, I have a few thoughts:
First, it has been the honor of a lifetime to work for @clairecmc & the state of MO, alongside the incredible folks in @McCaskillOffice & @SenateHSGACDems. I’ve never met a more dedicated & determined group of people, & I’ll be forever grateful to have been a part of this family. 
Capitol Hill is equal parts surreal, humbling, frustrating, and awe-inspiring, and often times it’s all those things at once. But I wish from the bottom of my heart, that more people had the chance to see what I’ve had the pleasure to see these past few years...
And that’s a community of people—of all political stripes—who care with every fiber of their beings. People who want to help other people, and who want to make government better and our country stronger.
I wish more people could be in an elevator with an elected official of the other party, and watch as they’re kind and generous to perfect strangers, and swap proud stories of kids and grandkids with anyone who will listen.
I wish I could shout from a rooftop about the time a U.S. Senator I’d never met saw me struggling on crutches days after breaking my ankle, and came over to carry my bag and escort me to my office ~just because.~
I wish I could put into words how I felt riding an elevator with a Member who’d been shot at at the congressional baseball game practice, just two days after it happened, and trying to come up with the right way to say, “I’m so glad you’re ok,” but feeling utterly inadequate.
I wish I could share the overwhelming emotion you feel when you meet a person, a family, whose lives were somehow made better by something that happened here—something that you may have played the tiniest role in. Something that made a real difference to a fellow human being.
I wish I could convey the bond I feel with staffers of both parties as they speak highly and proudly of their bosses, their colleagues, and their work— because I know exactly what that pride feels like.
I wish people could see the good here. Because it’s here. It really, truly, is—and no matter where I go and what I do in life, I will always know that to be true.
To everyone who has been a part of this crazy ride with me—colleagues, staffers, reporters, advocates, random lovely Twitter people—thank you for what you do, because whatever it is, it’s so important and I appreciate it more than i can say. ❤️💙
