Every morning I can remember in the 1980s and early 1990s, my father would have the Los Angeles Times front page opened at the breakfast table before taking us to school. We heard our parents discuss headlines covering immigration and healthcare, and remember seeing photographs of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton after their victories at that breakfast table.

My father, an Indian-American born in the state of Gujarat, India, hails from a traditional and conservative Jain family, where gender roles were largely defined by our Indian and Jain culture. In the Indian culture, women and girls were seen as liabilities because of the dowry system. In his 20’s, my father moved to the United States when our country was in need of pharmacists. After my parents wed, my mother followed.

About a year later, they had me. The first of their three children — and a girl. Someone who couldn’t carry on his name or legacy, at least not in the traditional, patriarchal culture he grew up with. A few years later, my parents had another child — another girl. I know he heard some disappointment when he announced the arrival of my sister to his family in India.

A couple of months later, my father would read about Geraldine Ferraro being selected to be on the ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate for the Democratic party.

He told us that when he witnessed this moment, he truly believed that his daughters could achieve anything.

And then, my parents were blessed with their third child . . . another girl. And I am certain, there was disappointment from my father’s family in India, but for my father, because of Geraldine Ferraro’s nomination, there was overwhelming hope.

Hope that the country he had taken a chance on, moved to leaving his entire family behind, and become a citizen of — the United States of America — would allow his daughters the same opportunities as it would have a son.

And with that backdrop, my parents, the owners of a small neighborhood pharmacy in Southern California, raised their three daughters. They tried to give us every opportunity they could afford, took advantage of the local library programs, and enrolled us in weekly classes offered by the city, so that we could reach our individual potentials.

Last year, upon accepting Legal Momentum‘s Women of Achievement award with my parents in the audience, I shared this story about what Geraldine Ferraro’s nomination had meant to my father, and how organizations like Legal Momentum had paved the way to give my father the hope that his daughters could achieve their potential.

Because Hillary Clinton hadn’t become our first female president, in my view, Legal Momentum’s work became even more important:

Seeing women hold positions of power is one of the ways we change our culture to include those who have not traditionally held that power.

Perhaps, then, it was entirely appropriate that only seconds after Presidential Nominee Joe Biden announced his VP pick, my sisters and I received a text from my dad:

“Kamala Harris it is.”

My heart jumped. My parents, who deeply believe in America’s ability to become a more and more perfect union, one they imagined would include their American children too, were the first in our family to witness Senator Kamala Harris, a biracial woman with Indian ethnicity, be chosen as the Vice Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

After the election of Donald Trump, I vividly remember the conversations with my parents highlighting that their very own patients seemed to believe in our new President’s rhetoric. These same Californians had been patients of my father for decades and were speaking ill of immigrants to him. Somehow, he was currently accepted as an American, but the person he was 40 years ago, a recent immigrant, was not.

This saddened my parents in a way that I didn’t expect. Their belief in America and its greatness had not been rattled for all these years raising us — even when our local city mayor and high school teacher had “joked” about “our people” attacking America on 9/11 to my younger sister — they firmly continued to believe in America’s promise. But the idea that so many of their longtime patients, people who they had grown to care for and love, agreed with Donald Trump’s rhetoric had shaken them to their core.

36 years and 30 days ago, my father read the headline about Geraldine Ferraro and had big dreams for his daughters as women in America. It has come full circle. Tomorrow’s headline will read Senator Kamala Devi Harris will join the Democratic ticket, and his belief in America will be one step closer to being proven right. The excitement and pride in my parents’ voice today is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. It was a reminder that representation matters.

Representation matters.

It mattered in how my father viewed the potential of his daughters. It matters in how husbands and brothers view their wives and sisters. It matters in how male colleagues view the potential of their female colleagues. And it matters to how women view themselves.

Originally published on Medium. Kamala Harris is now the Vice-President-Elect.