I confess… I was s Hillary Hater. For Years. It’s true. And after Bernie lost, I was heartbroken. I wondered how I could ever support bitch Hillary?
But now I am wholeheartedly with Hillary.
How did this shift happen? Well, back in June, I read several truly nasty reports about Hillary, and I got suspicious. My Bullshit Meter went off. Hillary was being cast as truly evil. And very very few people are truly evil.
So I began to dig. And do research on Hillary. On her life and her work. I read scads of articles. I watched interviews with her and about her. And what I discovered is a woman I admire deeply. She is dramatically different from the evil caricature that the Republican Party wants you to buy. She is a deep thinker with a huge heart.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is one strong, caring #BadassWoman. And you know what?
BADASS WOMEN CHANGE THE WORLD.
☾☽
Moral of my story? Don’t believe everything you hear. Don’t be snowed by propaganda. Do your own digging. Question everything. Search out the truth.
The Republican candidate for President is in trouble for his sexist behavior again. An old tape has surfaced. On the tape, Trump can be heard bragging about how he can grope any woman he wants. He boasts that he is rich, so he can simply grab women “by the pussy.”
When women across America express their disgust and outrage, Trump dismisses his comments as “locker room talk.” According to him, what he said was no big deal – “just words, people.” Trump claims lots of men talk like this. And the most bizarre part? Many men (and even some women) in this country agree with Trump and dismiss his vile comments as simply dirty talk.
1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. Assaulted… But grabbing women by the pussy is apparently no big deal to a lot of people. And if a woman objects to Trump’s comments? Well, she is simply “overreacting.”
Kelly Oxford knows better. She was quite disturbed by Trump’s comments. So she went on Twitter last Friday night and asked women to tweet to her about the first time they were assaulted. “They aren’t just stats. I’ll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my ‘pussy’ and smiles at me, I’m 12,” she wrote. By the next day, Oxford was receiving a flood of first-person accounts of sexual assaults. And by Monday afternoon, nearly 27 million people had responded or visited Oxford’s Twitter page.
(Source: NY Times article by Jonathan Mahler, For Many Women, Trump’s ‘Locker Room Talk’ Brings Memories of Abuse)
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What is a woman to do in the face of this endless stream of sexist abuse? How will this ever stop? And what do I tell my daughter?
Anyone who reads my blog, knows that I am a big proponent of love. I write often about the healing power of love. But what can love do in the face of this aggressive sexist behavior? And what is the best response a woman like me can make in this situation? These are the questions I have been chewing on for the past few days.
Here is where I am at today: Yes, we absolutely need to come from a place of love — this world desperately needs more love. But we must love ourselves first.
We must love ourselves from a place of POWER — a place where we stop minimizing ourselves by apologizing for our own needs, feelings, and opinions. We must love ourselves deeply, and own our power. Then, and only then, will we stop allowing other people to trivialize us.
We matter. Our needs, feelings and opinions matter. It is time for us to embrace how wise and powerful and important we truly are to the world.
Our time has come. We must not be silent any longer. It is time for us to stand up and say NO MORE! This crap is NOT OK. It is time for us to stand in our power and say NO to this type of bullshit. And you know what else? This is exactly what will change the world – woman after woman standing in her power and speaking her truth.
Can we love ourselves enough to stand in our power and DEMAND honor and respect? It is time. We must do this, for ourselves, and for each other.
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
~Dalai Lama
I have been sitting still, watching and listening, for decades. Writers are natural observers and I am no exception. I love watching people and events from the sidelines. But in the past few weeks, it has become more and more difficult for me to simply sit still and observe.
I have been watching and listening for months as Donald Trump encourages his followers to act from a place of hatred and rage. In the beginning, Mr. Trump seemed like a bad joke – a blowhard reality TV star runs for president, really?! But now he has managed to become the Republican nominee for President of the United States, and this ridiculous political side show just got very very scary.
I want to run screaming into the street and stop cars. I want to ask everyone I meet if they have listened carefully to what Mr. Trump says in speech after speech. I want to insist that they follow me home to my living room where I can show them clip after clip of Trump gleefully inciting hatred and racism and divisions between people. And I want to remind them of what McCarthy and other peddlers of hate have done to our country in the past. I want to beg people to not let that happen again.
But I won’t do that. I won’t run into the street and stop strangers. I would be labeled crazy. I won’t make people sit still, watch and LISTEN to what Donald Trump has been saying for months. I wish I could but I cannot.
What I can do is express my deep fear about what Donald Trump may do if he becomes our President. I can voice my concerns to family and friends, and to you, my readers. I can tell you how disturbed I am by all the vitriol and fear that Mr. Trump is selling.
I believe that love is always the answer. And sometimes love requires that we stand up and shout NO, this is NOT OK! Sometime love requires that we step out of our comfort zone and enter the fray.
Mr. Trump’s vision of America is NOT my vision. He does NOT speak for me or the Americans I know and love.
Polite silence is not the answer. Sitting still is not the answer. So I am standing up and shouting NO! every chance I get. I am telling family and friends exactly what I have observed in this man who wants to be my president. And I am doing it in the name of love and unity and compassion.
I hope you will stand up and join me.
“Trump came one breath short of advocating a police state tonight (it is not an accident that David Duke tweeted such great applause)… I pray the better angels of America will rise up and dissolve all the hatred that was spewed into our body politic tonight.”
I attended a writer’s workshop near Seattle last week. I camped in a little tent in the middle of a beautiful forest. I was camping alone, but I didn’t feel lonely. The frogs of the nearby pond serenaded me nightly. I would lie each night in my tent beneath two huge old spruce trees and revel in their chorus. Here’s what I learned about frogs…
Frog timing is impeccable. Each night, one or two tiny frogs begin the frog chant and then another 2 or 3 will join in echoing the melody of the first perfectly. Then a third group joins, echoing the same melody. They join their voices and build a master symphony piece by piece, until their ultimate harmony rises and falls, undulating and echoing off the pond. Each masterpiece only lasts for one moment, maybe two. And then silence. Each serenade abruptly stops as if a maestro has cut the air with his baton to signal cease! Yet there is no maestro conductor on this pond. Only a few tiny green frogs magically harmonizing together.
At times, the nightly frog serenade would get so loud that I would literally have trouble thinking. But I was actually ok with that. Witnessing their creation up close was my compensation. It was fascinating to me that each frog sang out his piece of the symphony so loud and proud. I sensed zero hesitation and not an ounce of shame. One night as I listened to the symphony, I wondered to myself what I might learn from these little frogs. There had to be a reason my tent was positioned on the front row at this frog concert. It was too serendipitous to be an accident.
On my third night in the front row at frog symphony hall, I finally received the lesson frog was offering. I realized that I had been lying in my tent each night, debating with myself about how much of my story to write. I had been debating how much of me it was safe to share with the world. Meanwhile just outside, a tiny little frog sat on the muddy bank of a tiny little pond and bellowed out his song. He bellowed out his offering to the Gods with joy and gusto, night after night with little hesitation, Frog refused to be silent. He just belted out his creations for all the world to hear.
Frog didn’t waste time worrying about who was listening. He didn’t worry about what his audience would think of his song. He just sang his song night after night. He sang it with gusto. Maybe, just maybe I was lying there in a tent next to frog’s pond to receive a lesson in the art of expressing myself with joyful abandon?
Joyful abandon… I love the sound of that. Juicy green joyful abandon! I could definitely use more of that in my life. 🙂
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A·ban·don əˈbandən/ noun – complete lack of inhibition or restraint
