well, hello there. It's been awhile. My last post was nearly a year ago, titled "things I suck at mom-ing". Add "mommy-blogging" to that list, please.
It's been quite a year, hasn't it friends? Feels like an eternity, and the weeks still stretch before us, no doubt filled with a similar combination of soul crushing news, "un-precedented" scandals, political nonsense, cultural nonsense, and the daily fear of is this it? It THIS the thing that will kill us all, or bring down the White House, the government, the who knows what?
I feel like I've been waiting for the other shoe (bomb) to drop for over a year now.
I'm exhausted. Are you?
And yet still, life goes on. My children grow older. We buy a new piece of furniture, we go on vacation, we do laundry, we pay bills... Amazingly, astonishingly, Life continues to move forward. It is relentless - Life's ability to keep going on.
I don't know about you, but there have been many, many days in the past year when I wanted to lie down and just say, ok. Enough. Just stop, World. It is too much. Too much suffering, too much violence, too many lives being cut short for NOTHING.
And yet. And yet. Babies keep being born. People fall in love. Kindergarten kids go to the first day of school with sharped pencils and brand new backpacks.
We hold on to each other, because what else can we do?
We tell our stories, because what else can we do?
If there are glimmers of hope, and I believe that there are, (I must be optimistic, because what is the alternative?), then they are in the stories. The stories finally being told by people long silenced.
By women. All those women who finally brought down serial sexual abusers, harassers, tormentors. (Although not the Harasser-In-Chief. NOT YET.) I have thought, many times in the past 6 months "Is this it? Is this the patriarchy being brought down?" I cried over Oprah's "Times Up" speech. I cried over all the horrid, horrible "me too" stories. I remembered all the me-too moments in my friends and in my own life. All those stupid, ridiculous things we put up with, the lies we told to dates to get home safely, "Oh, my roommate is home sick!" ( I lived alone), the keys we gripped between our fingers while walking home after dark... all of it. Enough.
By people of color. My son (now 11, and a FULL TEENAGER but that is another post), is going to see Black Panther tomorrow with his 1/2 African cousin and his full Ghanaian uncle- who will be wearing royal African garb because it's BLACK PANTHER so. bow. down! Let this movie be the gates to the flood of stories told by, about, and to people of ALL the colors. It's time.
By LGBTQ folk. By immigrants. By victims of violence. By ex-felons. By Muslims.
Yes, to all it. We Americans have been deluded that we share the same story- some silly nonsense about "pulling up our bootstraps" and "chopping down cherry trees." We were taught that only one kind of person mattered (If I hear ONE MORE PUNDIT TALK ABOUT "WHITE WORKING CLASS MALE VOTERS"!)
It's not true. We are a nation of a million stories, and they all matter.
We need to tell our stories. We need to listen to each other. We need to believe each other.
Then, maybe, maybe, we can create the nation in which we ALL can live, in peace.
It's been quite a year, hasn't it friends? Feels like an eternity, and the weeks still stretch before us, no doubt filled with a similar combination of soul crushing news, "un-precedented" scandals, political nonsense, cultural nonsense, and the daily fear of is this it? It THIS the thing that will kill us all, or bring down the White House, the government, the who knows what?
I feel like I've been waiting for the other shoe (bomb) to drop for over a year now.
I'm exhausted. Are you?
And yet still, life goes on. My children grow older. We buy a new piece of furniture, we go on vacation, we do laundry, we pay bills... Amazingly, astonishingly, Life continues to move forward. It is relentless - Life's ability to keep going on.
I don't know about you, but there have been many, many days in the past year when I wanted to lie down and just say, ok. Enough. Just stop, World. It is too much. Too much suffering, too much violence, too many lives being cut short for NOTHING.
And yet. And yet. Babies keep being born. People fall in love. Kindergarten kids go to the first day of school with sharped pencils and brand new backpacks.
We hold on to each other, because what else can we do?
We tell our stories, because what else can we do?
If there are glimmers of hope, and I believe that there are, (I must be optimistic, because what is the alternative?), then they are in the stories. The stories finally being told by people long silenced.
By women. All those women who finally brought down serial sexual abusers, harassers, tormentors. (Although not the Harasser-In-Chief. NOT YET.) I have thought, many times in the past 6 months "Is this it? Is this the patriarchy being brought down?" I cried over Oprah's "Times Up" speech. I cried over all the horrid, horrible "me too" stories. I remembered all the me-too moments in my friends and in my own life. All those stupid, ridiculous things we put up with, the lies we told to dates to get home safely, "Oh, my roommate is home sick!" ( I lived alone), the keys we gripped between our fingers while walking home after dark... all of it. Enough.
By people of color. My son (now 11, and a FULL TEENAGER but that is another post), is going to see Black Panther tomorrow with his 1/2 African cousin and his full Ghanaian uncle- who will be wearing royal African garb because it's BLACK PANTHER so. bow. down! Let this movie be the gates to the flood of stories told by, about, and to people of ALL the colors. It's time.
By LGBTQ folk. By immigrants. By victims of violence. By ex-felons. By Muslims.
Yes, to all it. We Americans have been deluded that we share the same story- some silly nonsense about "pulling up our bootstraps" and "chopping down cherry trees." We were taught that only one kind of person mattered (If I hear ONE MORE PUNDIT TALK ABOUT "WHITE WORKING CLASS MALE VOTERS"!)
It's not true. We are a nation of a million stories, and they all matter.
We need to tell our stories. We need to listen to each other. We need to believe each other.
Then, maybe, maybe, we can create the nation in which we ALL can live, in peace.
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