When I get discouraged about the state of our country, and especially the stark and scary realization that a third of my fellow citizens are solidly behind Trump and his agenda, an agenda I find mostly abhorrent for reasons such as children in detention and unnecessary tax cuts for the super-rich and cuts to healthcare and stripping civil rights and stripping the environment (the list goes on), and also when I realize that some of those same people have been emboldened by the president to be openly racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or just generally phobic, which we know to be our culture’s character flaw, our country’s original sin, and we know at some level that this DNA has always been there, because it really is our DNA, but it had been held in secret because for a time it was shameful to admit that it was there, or maybe we stupidly thought we had cured ourselves of these ills, it’s then that I remind myself that many many more than the “hateful few” have been emboldened too.
We have been emboldened too.
We have been emboldened to stand up to that hate, have been emboldened to demand liberty and justice for all, have been coached and cajoled to use our voice and speak our truth, have been encouraged and welcomed when we stand with Black Lives Matter, have been asked to use our white privilege for good, have been duty-bound to say what Jesus really meant when he said “love your neighbor”, have been humbled and maybe ashamed to admit that we were absent, asleep and oblivious but now we are learning and waking up, we have been inspired by women like Emma Gonzalez, Christine Blasey Ford, LaTosha Brown, Erin Murphy, and Kamala Harris, we have been emboldened to proudly put up that lawn sign, have been encouraged to say “fuck that” for the first time since sometimes that’s the only phrase that fucking works, we have been brave enough to knock on doors for candidates who carry messages of hope for all of us, we have been allowed to say “I’m not a he or a she, I’m a they”, we have been supported in the telling of our #metoo stories, we have been grateful for those who have been awake and fighting for decades, for forever, and we are sorry that for some of us it took forever to know this, and we have been challenged to figure out how not to make our rage look like fear, or our love look like hate.
There are many more of us than the hateful few.
Don’t forget that
we have been emboldened too.
©Rebecca Larson 2018
THE UNREACHABLE ITCH 