Since my last post:
Countless people have been slaughtered by guns.
Roe was overturned.
On a personal note, 3 out of 4 of my household came down with COVID. All are well today, but every day it feels like the walls are closing in.
I spend a considerable amount of spare online time crowdfunding for Abortion funds, I feel like it's the most I have to give right now. When my kids are older I'll likely train to be an abortion fund warm-line volunteer.
I have a full-time job that demands so much, a toddler and a teenager who need so much, while I hurtle closer to menopause each day. I also joined the Board of my tiny little welcoming congregation, we're in a transition period where we're trying to figure out how to stay afloat.
I don't think I have the bandwidth to describe what it feels like to watch your kids learn to navigate a world that is so cruel. That wants to steal their safety at every turn.
My day to day life is one of comfort that's unimaginable to so many people. I have stable income, a comfortable house. A leafy green back yard to breathe in. Yet. I don't think I've felt so much anxiety since Celine. Maybe it's ptsd. Maybe it's living in a historical moment where you actively disassociate from your feelings because your trauma is no longer some hypothetical political exercise. You're watching the slowest largest wave of disaster unfold, as it swallows person after person.
One of the wisest organizers I have ever encountered has said something along the lines of the following: Hope is a discipline.
It is not a natural impulse to feel hope right now, to connect to optimism. I have to work my ass off each day to find a shred of it. But my commitment to my loved ones is that I will actively seek it.
