I have never been so frustrated with my voice as I have been today, trying to record something of great personal importance to me and hearing how short my voice falls of the power and presence this speech deserves.

But my voice is, and always will be, no matter how many years I spend away, painfully American.

When I was a little girl, my mother told me about how amazing the 200th anniversary Fourth of July had been, and I was sad that I wasn't born yet. I realized that the next big anniversary would be the 250th, and I would be 38. How incredibly far off it seemed.

And how that joy and anticipation has crumbled to bitter ashes.

I am crying on the other side of the world, in the country where I was born, for the country that raised me and then rejected me.