Amber, I feel ALL of this. The moms being ripped away from their children gut me and make me panic. I want to keep my kids in our little home bubble and never let them out of my sight after watching those videos.
My husband and I just shake our heads together after the kids go to bed. Where the f*** are we living and why are so many people OK WITH THIS?
I started a new part-time job at my kids' school this week. It happened fast and I'm so glad I was approached for the position. It's a great fit. I see my kids in school every day now. I get hugs from them and other kids. I'm eyes and ears for one of our most vulnerable groups, many in our district are economically disadvantaged. I am happy to be there to make sure they get food in their bellies and are safe on the playground. This is my new purpose in the mess. And I'm going to channel all of my fear and anger into making sure our kids are taken care of for a few hours each day.
Again, not a "let go." It's a channeling. Amber, I'm with you. 100%. We're all in this together. 🩷
My children were adopted from India at 3 months old in the early 1980’s. I now have beautiful granddaughters who are biracial. My wonderful son in law is a proud black man who explained “the talk” his father had with him in his childhood.
I could only respond that I’m sorry he had that fear growing up of being arrested or unlawfully detained by white police and explained being a lesbian parent with a partner pre same gender marriage was also fraught with landmines if anyone simply called social services because they were anti LGBTQ.
I fear for my 40 year old daughters being disappeared even though they are naturalized. I lay awake worried my grandchildren will be shot by police during a traffic stop because they are biracial.
I am tentative about my rainbow bumper sticker in this Trumpian reign of terror.
I’m in my 70’s now but have protested diligently without compunction since I was 15 yrs old.
I’m raging inside and angry as hell and despise my circuitous thoughts about how idiotic this entire situation is.
I have to remind myself to breathe….to muster hope we all of us together can stop this madness.
I continue to believe we are going together towards sanity by still resisting and pushing back.
Every night I take a deep breath and calm down.
I’m reminded of how many years we’ve struggled against the patriarch misogynistic ad nauseam list of hate and breathe again.
As a non-American, the answer here is really simple: Because Biden mass imported foreigners, while most people weren't in favor of it. Trump's election, support for Trump's deportations, and for that matter, gallup poll on topic of immigration which shows that most people want immigration reduced, including legal immigration, demonstrates this point.
It's pretty sad, for sure, but the reason these appeals don't work is because similar appeals didn't work when people talked about wanting less immigration, about being concerned for their loved ones, about their loved ones being victimized by foreigners, etc. Actions have consequences; Biden's actions have led to the present. If it wasn't for mass immigration under his reign, it's a very good chance that Trump wouldn't have won.
As a great grandmother, I appreciate you Amber. You tell it like it is. I am also in fear what they will use or do to the children. In our state, they are now allowed to come into anybody's home at any time and do a welfare check on children and the elderly, with out notice. Our freedom is gone... Yes, I too, am mad as hell. Thank you for the honest truth.
This week my husband Peter and I got the good news that the woman who is our surrogate who had two of our embryos transferred last week is pregnant. It’s been sixteen years of IVF first myself and then with surrogates. And this is the first pregnancy test that’s been positive. I know it’s waaaaay too early to tell people but as soon as I heard I wrote a Sustack piece in honor of Cecile Richards’ mother’s bestie the who Cecile quoted on her book tour at Vanderbilt- Molly Ivins- “You lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.”
I’m celebrating this win. No matter how small the pregnancy is. No matter what the outcome. And I’m letting go of the “What if’s.” Here today in this beautiful springtime good things are coming.
Thank you Karen. I’m still in disbelief. But the Surrogate’s HCG was 97 and it was supposed to 50 which is fantastic. My husband Peter liked both my of my name ideas Zsa Zsa- (I love the vibe of rich and trashy) and Sandrine- I have a friend Sandrine married to David Letterman’s band member Will Lee- and Sandrine and my mutual friend Cassie who died of breast cancer in 2020- and Cassie always called her SanDream or SanDreamy. We’re assuming it’ll be a girl. I love looking at names. And console myself that half the kids these days change their names anyway. And she’ll get my last name!
You’re gonna love this story- so when I was 19- I came to Iowa City to visit my friend who was having a baby and she lived with a single mom who teaches ESL- and she and her 8 year old daughter had just gotten back from her teaching English in Japan for five years. Somehow this Mom and I had exchanged letters and then she found me on LinkedIn in 2006/ and we’d stayed in touch for 27 years. And I have to go through these egg donor banks- and I hate picking some random person- and on an off handed chance ask this woman if her daughter who’s gay and lives in NYC and plays violin in three orchestras might be our egg donor- she says Yes! She’s never wanted children but always wanted to be an egg donor. So husband Peter flies to NYC and meets them and stays in her tiny one bedroom apt in Queens and they make the embryos at a fertility place by Central Park- and our friend who was our donor her Aunt Kathleen has a dream that all of their ancestors from five generations back to Eastern Europe- people she’d never met- are gathered in the Embryology lab in white coats and they’ve come from the other side to help shepherd the souls of the embryos to the other side and they tell Aunt Kathleen with their hands clasped “We have work to do!”
And I told our donor’s mother the day of the embryos being transferred “It’s like Aunt Kathleen’s dream. They have work to do from the other side.” They did the work!
Thank you Amber you put a lot of my thoughts into words. A lot of my friends are just seemingly ok with all this and it infuriates me. Where is the outrage? There is no action. I will put forth my absolute anger of living in a red state and having 2 Dump endorsed senators who are MIA but happily putting forth his policies that will hurt friends and family. On top of all that? They call themselves Catholic and that hypocrisy has been getting a lot of my attention when I make my 5 calls this week.
I have been in tears of rage and frustration and so often these past few days, and the video you wrote about here, I saw that (and so many others!). I felt my heart race, my anger and rage build, and tears of frustration and compassion for these women being attacked and abducted while their neighbors screamed, tried to stop it, and couldn’t. Families being torn apart, the fears of my friends who are Native or not quite white enough not daring to leave home without a passport and birth certificate, as if that would do any good. And one of my best friends, married to a native man, now living in Maine, fearful that if they don’t go out together, he’ll be taken and she won’t have a clue what happened.
I’m losing track of time because this is so never-ending and so horrific, it’s impossible to wrap my mind and heart around what we have become. But a few evenings or weeks ago, while trying to simply quiet my mind, I had a vision of the Statue of Liberty. She was wrapped in a black shroud, all except her face, and her eyes witnessed everything happening now. The next thing I saw was she was being wrapped in barbed wire and blood was poured over her head. I did not want to see this, it is what I was shown. I know the Statue is not “alive” but over the many years since she was gifted to us, she has stood for what this country is supposed to be about. Many of my ancestors have been here since before the Revolutionary War. But my mother’s father came here from Greece in the early 1900s, and one day I decided to see if I could find his name on the website - and there it was! Along with two other family members I don’t ever remember meeting.
The vision I had that night, of Lady Liberty swathed in black, bound in barbed wire, covered in blood, is hard to shake. But it’s our reality right now. What are the children supposed to think now? How can we come back from this regime? WILL we come back? I’m 73. Will I live to see it or will my last years be a nightmare of witnessing everything my ancestors, who fought in the Revolutionary War, and then the Civil War, and then the world wars, destroyed? I’m actually surprised the regime hasn’t already taken down the plaque and even Lady Liberty. All my years of activism, since my youngest was born in 1981, any good we accomplished for people or Earth is now being destroyed. I’m waiting for the masses, especially of women, to explode and become the Medusa, to wreck vengeance on the destroyers. I know that isn’t kind, or “nice”, but it’s how I feel. Raging love.
I first read the term “raging love” in one of Starhawk’s first books. Way, way back. LOL It totally resonated with me then, and it does even more so now.
1. Fact vs. opinion - just because you think something, does not make it fact. (Text evidence skills)
2. Promises made should mean promises kept. Even in politics.
3. “Watch what they DO, not what they SAY” - (stolen from Maddow)
I can’t help but wonder about how these time will be recorded and the new terms that might arise or become altered. We are living through a Twilight Zone episode, or some egregious Mandela Effect, where the media-illiterate folks insist they are right and correct simply because they say so. This is such a faulty movement though. It cannot last, but obviously the damage that will ensue in the meantime is horrifying. So….until then…Keep up the good fight! Good riddance!
Amber, I want to address your heartfelt post. The kidnapping of our citizens legal or no is the worst offense of this administration. Citizens of this country should be safe. The law should protect us and serve us not kidnap us from our homes, churches, hospitals, schools, court houses on the streets under cover of darkness hidden in masks or in broad daylight. This is a travesty among many travesties being perpetrated upon us by Mr Trump and his associates. Judges, children, the press, colleges, former or current federal workers and moms dads and grandparents are all being threatened and even imprisoned if they displease his majesty the Trump in one form or another. Everyone should read Judge Luttig’s essay in the Atlantic to get the scope of Trump’s unconstitutional grabs in his first 100 days. It is truly nothing short of astonishing the cruelty and Gaul of his ever so scummy actions and beliefs. I know we have been writing, calling, protesting, talking with anyone who will listen in an effort to help us out of this horror. But I have come to believe that we must find a way as the citizens of our once great democracy to oust this want to be King. We must do it peacefully and legally because we can never become what we hate. But we must be brave and do it. So I’m letting go of Mr Trump’s kingship this week. Anyone else?♥️🇺🇸🙏🏻
Cosign with all of this Rage. We know everything they do is designed to evoke our rage and distract us from what they are really doing. I wish for a nationwide walkout that doesn't end until he is removed from office. I don't know how this would work or how people would survive except I know we would turn more to each other for support and deepen our communities. (I have signed up for disability advocate training in my community to put my anger to work there). They lose when we come together and they know it. I know there are more of us than them, even though somedays it does not feel that way. They want us hopeless. I refuse to be hopeless. They have already stolen our data but they can't steal our souls. So this week I am holding on to my gratitude tightly to help process this rage. I am grateful for the Pope and the Boss and for Amber for using their platforms to tell the truth in the face of the Grift Facade embedded in white supremacy and misogyny.
Sigh. Y'all are egging each other on in your permanent outrage, while othering those who see things differently. Where was your outrage when under Biden hundreds of thousands of migrating kids disappeared into custody of who-knows-who-they were without follow-up?
And now you think if you throw a permanent temper tantrum you'll get Trump removed from power, cuz that's who democracy should work?!!! Geez, ladies.
Wow, not quite sure where to start with this but will just say I have been protesting abuse of power whenever and wherever I have seen it. My entire life. Dems have definitely made mistakes working within a flawed system but Dems are not actively promoting White Supremacy and Misogyny. Trump created this divisiveness to line his pockets (and play puppet to Putin). He does not care about anything but his gold bathroom and the rest of his followers are licking his heals and picking up the scraps. He is defying the constitution every single day and people will continue to die and be hurt as a result. That is why he should be removed from power. Biden followed the law. I wish you well and I encourage you to turn off Fox News.
I am so sorry you feel othered. I fully support your right to voice your views without fear of recrimination. I do not believe the same can be said for opponents of this administration. I will continue to call out hypocrisy when I see it and stand up for those with less resources and privilege than myself. There is so much gray and trauma and we all have to choose our lines that cannot be crossed. I wish you the best however you choose yours.
Is that a fake apology? Haha. "I am sorry that you... " -- how tedious. Real apologies, at least in my world, start with "I am sorry that I..." Call me crazy? ;-)
I don't feel othered. I object to your othering people you disagree with. Let me see... in your words, they are... white supremacists, misogynists, divisionists, bootlickers, constitution-wreckers... uh huh. I am sure you could keep going with the ad hominems until the cows come home, eh? But you are not othering, oh nooooo! Whatever was I thinking...? [Edit: And I forgot "Putin puppets"!]
And then you have the gall to pretend you "wish me the best"?! If you wished me the best wouldn't you be a graceful loser, and accept that in democracy, each side plays the fiddle for a time? It used to be no big deal, in the days when I came to America. Now if those you disagree with come into power, it's an unending crisis and "litterally Hitler" and they must be removed. WTF?
I hear you. Thank you for this feedback. Thinking I was in a safe space, I used the word ‘They’ a lot in my description of the behaviors I believe are unacceptable by this administration and I can see how that has triggered connotations of ‘othering’. I will keep this in mind as I express myself in the future as I am much more interested in building bridges than feeding division. While my opinions about the intentions of this administration remain the same, I have the room to consider your feelings. I understand that my feelings and beliefs are hard for you to accept.
Some years ago, I sent an email to my Emotional Support Canadian explaining that I had become a zombie. I do not recall what prompted me to write it, but I adapted it as a satirical letter to Elon Musk explaining why I could not document five things I did over the past work week. I had been mulling it over for awhile, so it is no longer timely, but this past week I moved the writing of it from "Contemplating" to "Done."
This. I was telling my girlfriend that I have always been the kind of last line of Anne Frank believer that people are really good at heart. But right now, that feels close to impossible. This isn't ok.
I had to write about (spew?) my hatred for him yesterday -- and how I hate that he makes me feel this much hate. That was my way of trying to let some of it go, and help others do the same. Did it work? I don't know. But I appreciated the reminder from one reader that feeling this way is an expression of our humanity. I always feel so seen in your words, Amber. Thank you.
I have a Good riddance… for a short time and a troubled heart for something else… both from The same day this week.
A job recruiter gave me the go to come in for a nearly complete work project, with a hard deadline, previously bungled by a careless and thoughtless contractor.
The year had been unkind to me so far. This was good.
The heartbreak involved severing ties to somebody I would have an amazing future with were it not for polarized beliefs. It was physiologically intractable for me. I am sharply bumming about that.
I know when I’ve REALLY been moved when I hear music. A sweeping score building and crescendoing. Independence Day would have benefited from your writing the iconic key speech. 💕 ✍🏼
Rage indeed can’t be tamed, only redirected. Just saying thank you so much - it’s never late to learn the lesson of forming it into a powerful tool for fight and change. I’ll try and let you (all) know how that’ll look for me.
I’m honestly exhausted and can’t see letting go of much beyond that …😂 I’ll simply stand in gratitude that tomorrow I’ll celebrate my Molly’s (my niece’s)) wedding shower and having an amazing simcha to look forward to.🥰
This was a fascinating thread from all of you. I made a conscious decision to read all the way through everyone’s sharing because I wasn’t sure what to say “Good Riddance” to this week.
I am so angry and scared and have never in my life felt such systemic depression. And I felt a bit triggered by some commenta here today as well.
I am stepping into this moment, and breathing and then I’ll tackle the next moment. And so I’m releasing hopelessness and embracing, humanity, community, and connection.
Amber, I feel ALL of this. The moms being ripped away from their children gut me and make me panic. I want to keep my kids in our little home bubble and never let them out of my sight after watching those videos.
My husband and I just shake our heads together after the kids go to bed. Where the f*** are we living and why are so many people OK WITH THIS?
I started a new part-time job at my kids' school this week. It happened fast and I'm so glad I was approached for the position. It's a great fit. I see my kids in school every day now. I get hugs from them and other kids. I'm eyes and ears for one of our most vulnerable groups, many in our district are economically disadvantaged. I am happy to be there to make sure they get food in their bellies and are safe on the playground. This is my new purpose in the mess. And I'm going to channel all of my fear and anger into making sure our kids are taken care of for a few hours each day.
Again, not a "let go." It's a channeling. Amber, I'm with you. 100%. We're all in this together. 🩷
My children were adopted from India at 3 months old in the early 1980’s. I now have beautiful granddaughters who are biracial. My wonderful son in law is a proud black man who explained “the talk” his father had with him in his childhood.
I could only respond that I’m sorry he had that fear growing up of being arrested or unlawfully detained by white police and explained being a lesbian parent with a partner pre same gender marriage was also fraught with landmines if anyone simply called social services because they were anti LGBTQ.
I fear for my 40 year old daughters being disappeared even though they are naturalized. I lay awake worried my grandchildren will be shot by police during a traffic stop because they are biracial.
I am tentative about my rainbow bumper sticker in this Trumpian reign of terror.
I’m in my 70’s now but have protested diligently without compunction since I was 15 yrs old.
I’m raging inside and angry as hell and despise my circuitous thoughts about how idiotic this entire situation is.
I have to remind myself to breathe….to muster hope we all of us together can stop this madness.
I continue to believe we are going together towards sanity by still resisting and pushing back.
Every night I take a deep breath and calm down.
I’m reminded of how many years we’ve struggled against the patriarch misogynistic ad nauseam list of hate and breathe again.
Into my dreams the darkness seeps.
"why are so many people OK WITH THIS?"
As a non-American, the answer here is really simple: Because Biden mass imported foreigners, while most people weren't in favor of it. Trump's election, support for Trump's deportations, and for that matter, gallup poll on topic of immigration which shows that most people want immigration reduced, including legal immigration, demonstrates this point.
It's pretty sad, for sure, but the reason these appeals don't work is because similar appeals didn't work when people talked about wanting less immigration, about being concerned for their loved ones, about their loved ones being victimized by foreigners, etc. Actions have consequences; Biden's actions have led to the present. If it wasn't for mass immigration under his reign, it's a very good chance that Trump wouldn't have won.
I love this so much, and this is so inspiring.
As a great grandmother, I appreciate you Amber. You tell it like it is. I am also in fear what they will use or do to the children. In our state, they are now allowed to come into anybody's home at any time and do a welfare check on children and the elderly, with out notice. Our freedom is gone... Yes, I too, am mad as hell. Thank you for the honest truth.
This week my husband Peter and I got the good news that the woman who is our surrogate who had two of our embryos transferred last week is pregnant. It’s been sixteen years of IVF first myself and then with surrogates. And this is the first pregnancy test that’s been positive. I know it’s waaaaay too early to tell people but as soon as I heard I wrote a Sustack piece in honor of Cecile Richards’ mother’s bestie the who Cecile quoted on her book tour at Vanderbilt- Molly Ivins- “You lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.”
I’m celebrating this win. No matter how small the pregnancy is. No matter what the outcome. And I’m letting go of the “What if’s.” Here today in this beautiful springtime good things are coming.
Ida!!! Such wonderful news in dark times— I’ll be thinking of you and Peter through this journey 🙏🏻
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS!!! Oh Ida, BLESSINGS!
Thank you Karen. I’m still in disbelief. But the Surrogate’s HCG was 97 and it was supposed to 50 which is fantastic. My husband Peter liked both my of my name ideas Zsa Zsa- (I love the vibe of rich and trashy) and Sandrine- I have a friend Sandrine married to David Letterman’s band member Will Lee- and Sandrine and my mutual friend Cassie who died of breast cancer in 2020- and Cassie always called her SanDream or SanDreamy. We’re assuming it’ll be a girl. I love looking at names. And console myself that half the kids these days change their names anyway. And she’ll get my last name!
This is so huge- I understand it being hard to wrap yourself around!
I’m also very excited there might be twins because they transferred two embryos. But will be happy either way.
WHAT?!! Omg too fabulous- either way!
You’re gonna love this story- so when I was 19- I came to Iowa City to visit my friend who was having a baby and she lived with a single mom who teaches ESL- and she and her 8 year old daughter had just gotten back from her teaching English in Japan for five years. Somehow this Mom and I had exchanged letters and then she found me on LinkedIn in 2006/ and we’d stayed in touch for 27 years. And I have to go through these egg donor banks- and I hate picking some random person- and on an off handed chance ask this woman if her daughter who’s gay and lives in NYC and plays violin in three orchestras might be our egg donor- she says Yes! She’s never wanted children but always wanted to be an egg donor. So husband Peter flies to NYC and meets them and stays in her tiny one bedroom apt in Queens and they make the embryos at a fertility place by Central Park- and our friend who was our donor her Aunt Kathleen has a dream that all of their ancestors from five generations back to Eastern Europe- people she’d never met- are gathered in the Embryology lab in white coats and they’ve come from the other side to help shepherd the souls of the embryos to the other side and they tell Aunt Kathleen with their hands clasped “We have work to do!”
And I told our donor’s mother the day of the embryos being transferred “It’s like Aunt Kathleen’s dream. They have work to do from the other side.” They did the work!
Thank you Amber you put a lot of my thoughts into words. A lot of my friends are just seemingly ok with all this and it infuriates me. Where is the outrage? There is no action. I will put forth my absolute anger of living in a red state and having 2 Dump endorsed senators who are MIA but happily putting forth his policies that will hurt friends and family. On top of all that? They call themselves Catholic and that hypocrisy has been getting a lot of my attention when I make my 5 calls this week.
I have been in tears of rage and frustration and so often these past few days, and the video you wrote about here, I saw that (and so many others!). I felt my heart race, my anger and rage build, and tears of frustration and compassion for these women being attacked and abducted while their neighbors screamed, tried to stop it, and couldn’t. Families being torn apart, the fears of my friends who are Native or not quite white enough not daring to leave home without a passport and birth certificate, as if that would do any good. And one of my best friends, married to a native man, now living in Maine, fearful that if they don’t go out together, he’ll be taken and she won’t have a clue what happened.
I’m losing track of time because this is so never-ending and so horrific, it’s impossible to wrap my mind and heart around what we have become. But a few evenings or weeks ago, while trying to simply quiet my mind, I had a vision of the Statue of Liberty. She was wrapped in a black shroud, all except her face, and her eyes witnessed everything happening now. The next thing I saw was she was being wrapped in barbed wire and blood was poured over her head. I did not want to see this, it is what I was shown. I know the Statue is not “alive” but over the many years since she was gifted to us, she has stood for what this country is supposed to be about. Many of my ancestors have been here since before the Revolutionary War. But my mother’s father came here from Greece in the early 1900s, and one day I decided to see if I could find his name on the website - and there it was! Along with two other family members I don’t ever remember meeting.
The vision I had that night, of Lady Liberty swathed in black, bound in barbed wire, covered in blood, is hard to shake. But it’s our reality right now. What are the children supposed to think now? How can we come back from this regime? WILL we come back? I’m 73. Will I live to see it or will my last years be a nightmare of witnessing everything my ancestors, who fought in the Revolutionary War, and then the Civil War, and then the world wars, destroyed? I’m actually surprised the regime hasn’t already taken down the plaque and even Lady Liberty. All my years of activism, since my youngest was born in 1981, any good we accomplished for people or Earth is now being destroyed. I’m waiting for the masses, especially of women, to explode and become the Medusa, to wreck vengeance on the destroyers. I know that isn’t kind, or “nice”, but it’s how I feel. Raging love.
Ooh. A variation on your last phrase: “rage love”. That captures what I feel.
I first read the term “raging love” in one of Starhawk’s first books. Way, way back. LOL It totally resonated with me then, and it does even more so now.
Nailed it here. It just keeps getting worse.
A few teaching opportunities maybe for kids here:
1. Fact vs. opinion - just because you think something, does not make it fact. (Text evidence skills)
2. Promises made should mean promises kept. Even in politics.
3. “Watch what they DO, not what they SAY” - (stolen from Maddow)
I can’t help but wonder about how these time will be recorded and the new terms that might arise or become altered. We are living through a Twilight Zone episode, or some egregious Mandela Effect, where the media-illiterate folks insist they are right and correct simply because they say so. This is such a faulty movement though. It cannot last, but obviously the damage that will ensue in the meantime is horrifying. So….until then…Keep up the good fight! Good riddance!
Amber, I want to address your heartfelt post. The kidnapping of our citizens legal or no is the worst offense of this administration. Citizens of this country should be safe. The law should protect us and serve us not kidnap us from our homes, churches, hospitals, schools, court houses on the streets under cover of darkness hidden in masks or in broad daylight. This is a travesty among many travesties being perpetrated upon us by Mr Trump and his associates. Judges, children, the press, colleges, former or current federal workers and moms dads and grandparents are all being threatened and even imprisoned if they displease his majesty the Trump in one form or another. Everyone should read Judge Luttig’s essay in the Atlantic to get the scope of Trump’s unconstitutional grabs in his first 100 days. It is truly nothing short of astonishing the cruelty and Gaul of his ever so scummy actions and beliefs. I know we have been writing, calling, protesting, talking with anyone who will listen in an effort to help us out of this horror. But I have come to believe that we must find a way as the citizens of our once great democracy to oust this want to be King. We must do it peacefully and legally because we can never become what we hate. But we must be brave and do it. So I’m letting go of Mr Trump’s kingship this week. Anyone else?♥️🇺🇸🙏🏻
Cosign with all of this Rage. We know everything they do is designed to evoke our rage and distract us from what they are really doing. I wish for a nationwide walkout that doesn't end until he is removed from office. I don't know how this would work or how people would survive except I know we would turn more to each other for support and deepen our communities. (I have signed up for disability advocate training in my community to put my anger to work there). They lose when we come together and they know it. I know there are more of us than them, even though somedays it does not feel that way. They want us hopeless. I refuse to be hopeless. They have already stolen our data but they can't steal our souls. So this week I am holding on to my gratitude tightly to help process this rage. I am grateful for the Pope and the Boss and for Amber for using their platforms to tell the truth in the face of the Grift Facade embedded in white supremacy and misogyny.
Sigh. Y'all are egging each other on in your permanent outrage, while othering those who see things differently. Where was your outrage when under Biden hundreds of thousands of migrating kids disappeared into custody of who-knows-who-they were without follow-up?
And now you think if you throw a permanent temper tantrum you'll get Trump removed from power, cuz that's who democracy should work?!!! Geez, ladies.
Wow, not quite sure where to start with this but will just say I have been protesting abuse of power whenever and wherever I have seen it. My entire life. Dems have definitely made mistakes working within a flawed system but Dems are not actively promoting White Supremacy and Misogyny. Trump created this divisiveness to line his pockets (and play puppet to Putin). He does not care about anything but his gold bathroom and the rest of his followers are licking his heals and picking up the scraps. He is defying the constitution every single day and people will continue to die and be hurt as a result. That is why he should be removed from power. Biden followed the law. I wish you well and I encourage you to turn off Fox News.
Hey. A great example of othering. Is that what you really really want to be about?
I am so sorry you feel othered. I fully support your right to voice your views without fear of recrimination. I do not believe the same can be said for opponents of this administration. I will continue to call out hypocrisy when I see it and stand up for those with less resources and privilege than myself. There is so much gray and trauma and we all have to choose our lines that cannot be crossed. I wish you the best however you choose yours.
Is that a fake apology? Haha. "I am sorry that you... " -- how tedious. Real apologies, at least in my world, start with "I am sorry that I..." Call me crazy? ;-)
I don't feel othered. I object to your othering people you disagree with. Let me see... in your words, they are... white supremacists, misogynists, divisionists, bootlickers, constitution-wreckers... uh huh. I am sure you could keep going with the ad hominems until the cows come home, eh? But you are not othering, oh nooooo! Whatever was I thinking...? [Edit: And I forgot "Putin puppets"!]
And then you have the gall to pretend you "wish me the best"?! If you wished me the best wouldn't you be a graceful loser, and accept that in democracy, each side plays the fiddle for a time? It used to be no big deal, in the days when I came to America. Now if those you disagree with come into power, it's an unending crisis and "litterally Hitler" and they must be removed. WTF?
I hear you. Thank you for this feedback. Thinking I was in a safe space, I used the word ‘They’ a lot in my description of the behaviors I believe are unacceptable by this administration and I can see how that has triggered connotations of ‘othering’. I will keep this in mind as I express myself in the future as I am much more interested in building bridges than feeding division. While my opinions about the intentions of this administration remain the same, I have the room to consider your feelings. I understand that my feelings and beliefs are hard for you to accept.
Thank you. I feel as if my rage is shared and we're not an outlier but the majority, and across party lines. Fucking ICE-stapo.
Some years ago, I sent an email to my Emotional Support Canadian explaining that I had become a zombie. I do not recall what prompted me to write it, but I adapted it as a satirical letter to Elon Musk explaining why I could not document five things I did over the past work week. I had been mulling it over for awhile, so it is no longer timely, but this past week I moved the writing of it from "Contemplating" to "Done."
This. I was telling my girlfriend that I have always been the kind of last line of Anne Frank believer that people are really good at heart. But right now, that feels close to impossible. This isn't ok.
I had to write about (spew?) my hatred for him yesterday -- and how I hate that he makes me feel this much hate. That was my way of trying to let some of it go, and help others do the same. Did it work? I don't know. But I appreciated the reminder from one reader that feeling this way is an expression of our humanity. I always feel so seen in your words, Amber. Thank you.
There is a lot to think over this.
I have a Good riddance… for a short time and a troubled heart for something else… both from The same day this week.
A job recruiter gave me the go to come in for a nearly complete work project, with a hard deadline, previously bungled by a careless and thoughtless contractor.
The year had been unkind to me so far. This was good.
The heartbreak involved severing ties to somebody I would have an amazing future with were it not for polarized beliefs. It was physiologically intractable for me. I am sharply bumming about that.
I know when I’ve REALLY been moved when I hear music. A sweeping score building and crescendoing. Independence Day would have benefited from your writing the iconic key speech. 💕 ✍🏼
Rage indeed can’t be tamed, only redirected. Just saying thank you so much - it’s never late to learn the lesson of forming it into a powerful tool for fight and change. I’ll try and let you (all) know how that’ll look for me.
I’m honestly exhausted and can’t see letting go of much beyond that …😂 I’ll simply stand in gratitude that tomorrow I’ll celebrate my Molly’s (my niece’s)) wedding shower and having an amazing simcha to look forward to.🥰
Love to you, Amber and LITD Fam.😘
This was a fascinating thread from all of you. I made a conscious decision to read all the way through everyone’s sharing because I wasn’t sure what to say “Good Riddance” to this week.
I am so angry and scared and have never in my life felt such systemic depression. And I felt a bit triggered by some commenta here today as well.
I am stepping into this moment, and breathing and then I’ll tackle the next moment. And so I’m releasing hopelessness and embracing, humanity, community, and connection.