I’m sipping my morning coffee while looking out my writing room window at the auburn trees set in patchwork design against a soft blue sky. And I can feel it. I can feel the beating hearts all across America as we wait for the election results to be announced officially, even as we know exactly what they are.
President Biden. Vice President Harris. This we know.
And just to type those words together sends a current of heat and comfort all through my being. The amount of anxiety, damage, and depression the last five years have caused us as individuals and as a collective society has been immeasurable.
We tried our best to soldier through it. It was not easy. It has been traumatizing and terrifying to watch and experience every. single. fucking. day. You cannot imagine it. Only living through it can teach you what it is like to realize how very much you have to lose and to feel helpless as you watch it being taken brutally, monstrously, intentionally, indifferently, cruelly.
But we turned toward each other. We found each other. We the ones who believe in decency, dignity, compassion, justice, equality, liberty.
We came together and we turned our pain into action and we voted out the insidious evil. It will not be enough, of course. There is still much deep soulful, ugly, and difficult work to be done. An activist I adore said it this way: we have cut off the head of the Hydra, but we need to get to the heart.
For me, I have become so much more clear. Much more aware of the trouble we face as a nation and a world, and also aware of what it will take to fix it. We are the leaders we need. We are the healers. We are the spirit and the answer.
But for this moment in time, as we hold each other at the dawning of a new day, a new season of hope, I am feeling so many things at once. Relief. Gratitude. Overwhelming gratitude for the kind and decent and hardworking citizens of our nation who made sure the election was executed smoothly, methodically, safely.
But the biggest thing I am feeling now is love. Love for all of the people in my life who rallied and worked to secure this major epic victory. Love for a country which is broken but trying like hell to heal.
And you feel it even deeper still when you know you earned it. Chose it. Fought day after day after excruciating day for it. Together. Just like we will have to keep doing, forever.
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Photo by Jakob Owens