Nature has been my spiritual practice. I've wanted to believe that being one who seeks beauty will continually provide a way to step over the highest hurdles, which I have done time and again. But the hurdles have become too high and it feels as though the sun has set on values and morals in a
country that was known for this throughout the world. Maybe someone can tell me how to hide my head in the sand or cease to be truthful for the sake of getting along. I'm feeling invisible just as morals have become invisible in a big population of the US. But if you're 100% yourself, how do we cope when circumstances goes against every sacred thing we believe in? That said, we're in the month of gratitude so these are this things I am grateful for:
Being informed on facts
Authenticity
My compassion and passionate spirit
Beauty in all its forms
Close friends
A roof over my head
An ocean-island view
Colorful leaves and crisp air
Power walks by the sea
The ballet
Italian espresso
My therapy cat, Lucia
A 10th essay, "Cornflower Blue" from my book was just published on 11/18. (Link below)
November is also election month and unless I have a labotomy to disassociate and ignore the wretched results, I'm feeling enormously anxious and disturbed. I also feel saddened by a deep loss of faith in far too much of humanity.
This applies today: "One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in
such times another reflex is the longing for an authority figure selling certainty, claiming the fist to be a helping hand. It is a touchingly human impulse, primal and pacifying — children turn to the parent to remove the overwhelm and uncertainty of a world they don’t yet understand and cannot carry. It is also a dangerous impulse, for it pulsates beneath every war and every reign of terror in the history of the world." Leonard Cohen
"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." Leo Tolstoy
"Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material" Susan Sontag
Women and men who voted for trump voted against women. Although the fact that women are dying from not having access to emergency health care when miscarrying or carrying an unviable pregnancy, there's the fact that their chosen orange-faced one is a convicted rapist. As a victim of sexual assault, I find this most offensive. But sexual predators have become normalized, just like lying, corruption, and dark rhetoric inspiring violence has. The MAGA run SCOTUS has two known sexual predators and trump is easily filling his cabinet with sexual predators. Pete Hegseth and a Gaetz hopeful. Is it a mere coincidence that Gaetz resigned from congress the day before the ethics committee was to present their report with guilty evidence of him participating in drug and sex parties, as well as having sex with minrors? Nope.And everyone of the Republican Senators voted against the ethics committee releasing it. Where did their ethics go?
What is even more frightening is how many millions of people are misinformed in this country. I've talked to them. One educated woman was unaware of women dying because of the abortion ban when in need of emergency care. She didn't believe it even though it's documented. Others unaware of all the cases against trump that include three convictions for corruption and fraud in New York, rapist and defamation in E. Jean Carroll case, and a felon (although called the Stormy Daniels case, it was election interference.) The pending federal cases he so obviously guilty of will disappear now. I could fill pages with facts about the orange-faced criminal, racist,authoritarian, and traitor, but it doesn't matter. People didn't pay close attention to the flashing red warning signs.
As a woman of a certain age, I'm not interested in being pushed into a Handmaiden. And as a breast cancer survivor, I relied on Medicare disability and Medical during a six-year ordeal of nine surgeries and complications. Women have complicated health care needs. We all have the right to medical care and social security, among many other things that risk being gutted.
Were you aware that the top rated search on Google the day before the election was, "Is Biden still in the race?" and the top rated search in Google the day after the election was, "Can I change my vote?" This is what happens when people don't pay attention to real danger. Personally, I'm frightened and not sure how to process it. I doubt that I'm alone in this. It is a time to be authentic and unapolegetically yourself. ❤️
This is what I'd like to do for the next four years but I would have to be Sleeping Beauty who never ages. Maybe some of you can relate.
What are you currently grateful for? Wishing you and yours well. Happy Thanksgiving. 🍂
Keep on swimming through life,
Valerie Anne
