So I have been busy these past few years – changes, loss, grief, joy, pandemic, medical retirement, reconnecting with kwewag, a new baby- now three years old, funerals, weddings, and two more foster kids passed through….
I decided back in 2020 after my last post to take a break from the news / election cycle right before the last election. I did not want to contribute more to the mass hysteria over the election and divide in our country then. People who were not MAGA hat wearing were scared, and still are, about losing American democracy to fascism. I had to take a break from the news cycle and constant presidential tweets, like many others – for my own sanity.
It is now 2023, we are on the cusp of the midterm elections and most of the fear and loathing in this country has continued. My husband and I started an Apple podcast called Red State Blues this year to talk turkey about everything including politics from our rural Michigan viewpoint. We started it to be able to talk about everything almost like a weekly therapy session from living in our rural area and being liberal in these times. Hey do you all feel it too? It feels surreal to watch everything that has happened since Jan 6th – the day of the attempted coup at the capital in D.C. But real it is. The fights at school board meetings over book bans and arguments over Critical Race Theory being taught in the schools, fights over masking and not masking its a bare knuckle free for all.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has went and overturned Roe V Wade and now women are sentenced to not having control over their own bodies yet again in this country. The pandemic already hit women in the face because of school and daycare closures knocked so many out of the workforce, now an extra smack down in that you now have to have a baby or die in the process of birth or botched home abortion and face murder charges in some states if you do abort. Michigan got enough petition signatures to get on the ballot to make the Roe provisions law in our state to protect women. I guess we will see how that comes out after the election next month.
I am feeling very nihilistic this evening after watching a YouTube clip on new scientific data on how severe and quick climate change is going to reshape our world and that of our kids. I am watching all of these people trying to shove us back to the 1800’s on the news with every story: capitalism choking everyone with their gas and oil and plastic pollution, food shortages, and outrageous class warfare price gouging, striking workers, war in Ukraine, North Korea shooting misses at South Korea, and Facebook inventing a Meta verse so the rest of the populace can shove their heads in a VR helmet and not notice when all of the investment bankers, billionaires, and politicians fly off to Mars and let the world burn. Am I on a rant or what? Ha he uhm,
Yeah… so, we just had another death in our family our cousin passed on suddenly, she was in her \mid thirties and we have had so many young people leaving. My husband and I have elder parents we are trying to take care of and also have a 3 and 7yr old… it gets tough. It is difficult to keep your head up some days and continue walking forward knowing this life can be over so quick and losing people you love and you just have to keep going and try to focus on teaching your kids how to love and lose – and remember. So many hundreds of thousands of families have been going through the great pandemic losses, all of us trying to make sense of such great numbers of people just gone…. Trying to remember to be mindful and not get caught up in all of this BS. Especially all of the small stuff, and all of the big things we cannot control. Our earth and our own human fate is in a small amount of hands- not our own.
As I sit here and ramble on into the night with my coffee, after everyone is asleep, I can’t help feeling the exhaustion. So many things have happened in such a short time personally and internationally that it is hard to absorb. It will take more than one meandering blog post to unravel it all.
Are you all as exhausted? Leave me a comment! How have you been holding up?
Bama api gi waabamin – see you later~
Dadibaadjimowikwe 