On a drizzly December evening in Washington, D.C., Kimberly Mata-Rubio marched from Union Station to Capitol Hill with dozens of other families from Uvalde, Texas. Her 10-year-old daughter Lexi Rubio was murdered in the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24. Mata-Rubio had never been on a plane before the shooting, but this was now her seventh trip to Washington in as many months to pressure lawmakers to pass restrictions on assault weapons. When the march ended, Mata-Rubio, 33, was weeping.
This is not the vocation that Mata-Rubio envisioned for herself, but it is now her future. While she’s taking on the legislative battles, she is also navigating her complicated and painful grief. She is mourning
