Valentine's Day and Galentine's Day

It's that time of year again where you see hearts in all forms everywhere you look: retail stores, doctor's offices, business offices, grocery stores, spiritual shops where gorgeous crystals are carved into hearts... you get the picture. Valentine's Day means different things to different people. There are happy couples, long marriages, new love, those who desire to be single, and those of us who are single and would like a good love match. There is also Galentine's Day and it is coined for a reason: Women friends have a tight and loving bond with gal-friends that inspires us and keeps us strong. I am fortunate to have friends for nearly a lifetime. My friends are my family. We have seen one another through all of life's ups and downs.

I do think of all those I've loved and lost beginning as a toddler: Parents, friends, lovers, and pets. I carry them in my heart, which reminds me of a favored poem:

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

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We are living in very distressing, dangerous, and disturbing times. I LOVE and cherish

Democracy, which is now threatened daily by a corrupt autocracy and oligarchy takeover. It is not in me to say, "oh, well." I do what I can, stay informed, and then step away for the sake of my mental and physical health. I dearly hope that people wake up and become highly informed on facts so this country can prepare for a big turnaround. It makes me think of beloved (scholar of the constitution), President Obama's one of many brilliant statements, "If we want democracy to flourish, we will have to fight for it. We’ll have to nurture it. And we will have to demonstrate its value, again and again, in improving the lives of ordinary people."

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