politics – Almost Farmgirl

When my browser opens, I get a countdown of the days, hours, minutes, seconds until Trump’s presidential term ends. It’s a little thing, but it’s hopeful to me. A reminder that we have done this before and can do it again. That, right now–assuming the house legislation introduced by a Republican Representative to allow for a third, nonconsecutive presidential term, doesn’t pass–Trump and his house of cards has an expiration date.

I’m baffled that we’re here again, and I alternate between frantically clinging to whatever joy and beauty I can find and feeling absolutely despondent. I dip low, but I know that I cannot live in the low places. I know that the best way for me to show up is with my joy and my whole self.

These first two weeks have given me whiplash. An EO intending to end birthright citizenship. Exiting the Paris Accords and the World Health Organization. Slashing Federal funding to basically everything including Medicare and Medicaid, Headstart, Meals on Wheels. Ending NIH research, including active trials.

ICE raids. Gitmo being reopened to house immigrants. Talks to send US citizens to internment in El Salvador.

Discussions related to ethnic cleansing in Gaza that would turn the nation into a US territory and displace the current occupants.

Meanwhile, several states have drafted legislation to classify abortion as murder and a few of them offer up the death penalty as the punishment. Idaho drafted legislation that would push the issue of same-sex marriage, legal at the Federal level in the US since 2014, back to the Supreme Court who will as likely as not use the same justification they used to overturn Roe to push the issue back to the states. Legislation is pending vote for a bill that would severely restrict voting rights, especially for women. More legislation is pending that would codify a national abortion ban.

Trump wants to withhold Federal Disaster Relief to blue states, and he seems to believe water flows from the top of the map to the bottom of it.

The tax plan Trump just released means my taxes are going up, so, likely, are yours. But at least the millionaires and billionaires are getting a tax break.

It all feels very dark and sticky.

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Last week, while journaling, I realized that my body had shifted into fight or flight mode. The barrage of bad news was being interpreted by my body as a physical threat.

I’ve felt scattered. Anxious.

I feel overwhelmed. Tired. Already tired.

And yet, we all know that this was the plan, and that, if they overwhelm us, if they can exhaust us into not paying attention, they will win.

So what’s next? How do we do this?

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I spent the early part of the morning looking into a piece of House legislation that is getting noticed on social media. H.R. 8281, introduced by a Republican in Texas and also known as the SAVE Act, introduces new rules to govern voter registration. Specifically, this law would require proof of citizenship when voting. Driver’s Licenses would not suffice. Instead, voters would be required to provide a US Passport or a birth certificate with the name matching the voter’s current name. This legislation is part of a response to the myth of voter fraud, which MAGA conservatives have long championed, but it also is part of a long-standing republican tradition of disenfranchising voters.

H.R. 8281 would disenfranchise thousands upon thousands. Anyone without a passport (which cost hundreds of dollars and require months of processing) and anyone whose name doesn’t match their birth certificate would be disallowed from voting. This includes all of the women who changed their names after marriage.

One of the posts I saw pointed me to an app called “5 Calls” that connects you to your representatives and legislators. Input your zip code, and it allows you to call them directly from the app. It gives you a script if you want it, and it also provides a list of pending legislation that you might want your voice to be heard on.

I called my representative today about H.R. 8281.

Tomorrow, I will call about H.R. 722, a national abortion ban proposed by a Missouri Representative.

I told my friends about the app. Some of them told their friends. Several of them have also made calls today.

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Trying to stay fully informed right now can feel like trying to drink directly from a firehose. Social media convinces us to keep our attention glued to it as headlines speed past like the broken lines between lanes on the interstate.

We get dizzy and overwhelmed with the trying.

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I found myself in the barn for an hour and a half as it snowed today, grateful that a friend had come out yesterday to help me put coats on everyone before the weather turned. Grateful that I had the hay in the barn to fill nets. Grateful for the eggs I collected from my chicken coop, even as I worried about the sparrows who keep getting in the coop amidst concerns over the spread of bird flu.

I noticed the soft hums of the llamas, the almost muted nickers from the horses, the definitely not muted squealing from the pigs and piglets. Those are the grounding sounds of my very present life. And, in a world and with a news cycle demanding my attention, I deliberately shifted my attention to them.

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This year, I made a resolution to pay closer attention to my life as I live it. To my time, my energy. To the way I spend my money and the way I engage with the people around me. It’s so easy to make our way through life on autopilot. To numb ourselves to the heartbreak that feels sometimes like it’s pressing in from all sides. To bypass feeling.

But you can’t selectively numb, and a heart guarded against heartbreak and disappointment will try and protect you from love and joy as well. So we do our best. We feel the heartbreak and let it propel us into real actions, however small, instead of despair.

As Joseph Campbell, in “A Hero with a Thousand Faces,” wrote “We save the world by being alive ourselves.”

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Almost everyone I know is talking about living in tension between staying informed and staying sane. I’m navigating it myself. I think we will be navigating it for a while.

But here’s what I’m learning:

First, action doesn’t always look like you will expect. It’s not necessarily the stuff of heroics. It’s mundane. It’s calling your representatives and asking your friends to do the same. It’s paying attention to where you’re spending your money. It’s maybe spending less or buying less. It’s supporting local organizations who are already doing the work.

Maybe it’s voting in your local elections coming up. If you’re Peoria, IL resident–some of you are– please plan to vote in the local mayoral election coming up. (Incidentally, three House seats are up for grabs, which would shift power in the House of Representatives and shift the entire narrative here; if you’re in Florida or New York, pay attention.)

Second, it’s important to recognize where and how we can act. That is to say, I cannot control NIH funding or do much about USAID being locked out of their good work (aside, of course, from contacting my elected officials). Rather than despair over what we can’t do, we have to act in all the ways that we can. Donate food to your local food pantry. Visit local business that proudly support equal rights. Spend your money, time, and emotional energy in ways that maximize your impact.

Third, community acts faster than government. Show up for it. Reach out to your friends. Meet with them in person. Stand alongside the people in your community that are already doing good work. We do not have to reinvent the wheel; we just have to offer what we can to the people who already loaded up the cart.

Fourth, take care of yourself and those you love. Sometimes, that has to start with disconnecting with the chaos and reconnecting to what you need. Take walks. Make art. Dance. Eat a beautiful meal. Do yoga. (I moved my own body out of fight or flight mode with very intentional yoga practice.) I know it’s repeated enough to be cliché, but you cannot pour from an empty cup. Refill it, and come back around.

Art and movement have always been our quiet saviors in moments of historical darkness.

When I was going through my divorce I stumbled on a quote by Najwa Zebian that I committed to memory: “These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.”

Sometimes, I remind myself not to try and carry mountains.

Sometimes, I remind myself that I am simply meant to climb.

Sometimes, I remind myself that I am not alone in the climbing.

If you are climbing right now, know that I am with you. And if you are trying to carry the mountain, know that I have tried it before as well. Take a seat. Take a moment. We’ll be here when you’re ready to start climbing.

One step at a time.

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I saw a poem today that I will leave with you to hold close.

The plot has not yet twisted, but we already know the ending.

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.

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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.