It’s warm outside. The bird song is louder than it should be for November. I try not to let my concerns over the t-shirt weather spiral. We all know the planet is getting warmer.

I haven’t been terribly political in this space. Partially because it is more convenient to keep my politics out of my writing. My art. It’s less vulnerable. I’ve dropped hits here and there, but mostly I write about the ranch and the animals and how I process the things I feel about my life and the world. About my love. About loss. About potatoes.

But today, for the past few days, I’ve been gutted. Heartbroken. I voted enthusiastically for Kamala. Donated to the campaign. I have the hat. All of it. Tuesday I was so hopeful that I was about to witness the historic moment: the election of a woman president.

And instead, I watched as state after state went red.

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I was raised to keep the peace and be polite and feminine. I was raised in the evangelical church, not one specific one, but in and out of many. I was raised with and in the height of purity culture. I attended Christian schools. Was homeschooled with a Christian high school curriculum that taught the threat of Catholicism and Islam in our history textbooks and taught the importance of male headship in families in civics texts. Our science books taught that evolution was a hoax. I attended a Christian University where I took almost enough Biblical Studies Classes to have a minor.

I was devout. I gave ten percent of my income away like clockwork. I believed abortion was murder. That LGBTQ people were going to hell and that “hate the sin; love the sinner” was an acceptable position. If I keep digging, I can unearth uglier and uglier beliefs that I was fed. I was willing to eat them up.

I’m not sure I need to spell all of them out here.

And yet, I was first called a “baby killer” when I was a young teen and told my uncle that I disagreed with one of his environmental positions (drilling in Alaska, I think) because I thought we needed to protect the earth. He used that term again when he emailed me a racist email about Obama (a doctored photo of Airforce One with a minstrel show style, cartoonish President Obama painted on the side eating watermelon) and I told him I didn’t mind political emails but that I didn’t want racist ones. That time he added “libtard” to modify “baby killer.”

I never quite toed the line. But I voted McCain. (I wouldn’t do it now, but I actually don’t regret that one.) I would have voted Obama during his second election cycle, but my mom threatened to kick me out of the house if I did, and I thought she would somehow know. That year marks my only election cycle voting third party.

I married young, to a “good Christian,” wearing white, with all that implies. I followed the script.

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I’m working on a book that details more of this. The whole story. The divorce after his infidelity and lying and nearly breaking myself to save a marriage that I was told was the only one god would ever recognize in my life. The deconstruction. My shattering and rebuilding. Finding my way back into my body after years of being told it was sinful and not to be trusted and of the world. After a lifetime of having it implied, and sometimes even outright stated, that it would belong to someone else when I married, that no one else would want it after it had been touched. That no one would want me.

All here on this ranch with these creatures. It’s a book that may only ever act as therapy, but that I’m telling you about only to say that the story is too long to tell here.

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The rise of MAGA and Trump saw my final and complete break from conservativism and evangelicalism. The best of what I was taught in my church upbringing was Jesus, a radical who was murdered for speaking truth to power and shining a light on the way society failed to protect its most vulnerable. I kept looking for evidence of his command to “love thy neighbor” and wasn’t seeing it. When I questioned Conservative policies during the first Trump presidency, for example my horror at the policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border and keeping those children in cages, I was reminded that “libtards” support killing babies. That my support of them made me a baby killer. I was guilty by association.

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(To be clear, I do believe in a woman’s complete right to her own bodily autonomy. But, again, there’s only so much space in one post.)

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Today, as I write this, I’m sad and scared for the most vulnerable people in our society. I’m scared for women, well aware of those who have already lost their lives to Trump abortion bans. I’m scared for myself.

I’m scared for my queer friends. I’ve listened for several days to close friends who are exploring their options to leave the country. They’re scared that their legal marriages will not only be made illegal, but that the existence of those marriages will put them on a list that confirms their queerness.

I’m scared for Gaza and Ukraine.

I’m scared for the millions of undocumented immigrants who he has been so open about rounding up and deporting on “day one.”

As a former evangelical, I’m far more terrified than most of Project 2025.

I’m in disbelief that half of our voting populace sees no problem with voting for a man who’s been credibly accused of rape 26 times. Who’s most famous audio is a recording of him bragging about getting away with assualt “grab em by the pussy.” Who sent dearly needed Covid supplies to Russia when American hospitals couldn’t get them and Covid deaths here were so rampant that our hospitals had refrigerator trucks outside to stack the bodies. A man whose win was celebrated by the Klan, by literal Nazi’s, by dictators who he considers his close friends.

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(I was about to say that I won’t dwell on all of that in this post, but to many of you I’m sure it feels like I already have. If you’re reading this and want to tell me how disappointed you are in me, maybe just don’t. Maybe just hit unsubscribe.)

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I have spent the past few days feeling gutted. And I’ve cried, a lot.

But I’m still here. Still at the ranch with the critters. And today, while I was trying not to think about the heat in the light of an new administration known for gutting environmental policy, I heard the a bird song in the distance. Long and lilting. And the air smelled like the fallen leaves that crunched underfoot. The azure of the sky a backdrop to shifting branches holding onto their final leaves. I pulled my hand to my heart, closed my eyes, and tried to take in the song.

And for a moment, I smiled, feeling the moment of joy that sprang from that birds song and holding it close.

<<<>>>

If Trump’s coming administration is anything like the last, it will be really bad for a lot of vulnerable people. But I’m not seeing resignation. I’m seeing people reaching out. Loving. Preparing.

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Julia Cameron wrote “Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.”

A therapist friend of mine has been reminding me to fill my emotional reserves. Feel joy and hope and allow it to fill me up. Lately, for months now, I have been touching my hand to my heart every time I see something lovely that causes me to pause. Today I did it when I heard the bird.

There will be much to do, I think. But for now, remember that “Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.” And remember that Joy is, and always has been, an act of resistance.

Much Love.