A week or so ago, a new subscriber told me that the following piece really resonated with them.
The sentiment behind that piece has never felt truer, and these reflections came from the same chamber of my heart as that piece did.
I saw the Wild Party on Sunday night. It was indeed a wild, wild party. It was so good and so intense.
Earlier that day, I watched another intense performance — Hippolytus (in the arms of Aphrodite), an immersive augmented reality theatre experience. I’ve seen countless exceptional performances at CultureHub, where I’m on the board, and this one was no different.
On the way home, when my Sunday of theater was over, I speed walked to my subway station in the rain, so I wouldn’t have to wait 15 more minutes for the next one. It was then that I realized how sore my ankles were after 2+ miles of walking all day + jump roping that morning.
I got home, had some leftover macaroni and cheese, and fell asleep after watching 3 hours of Golden Girls. But not before reading about the plane that collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia upon landing.
You think you’re about to be safe and sound, and then just like that, the ground is ripped out from beneath you.
I woke up and stretched a little. I check the news and can’t stop myself from watching the video of a woman being detained by ICE at SFO. I learn that they’re apparently coming to New York, too.
I start puttering around my house, washing my face, brushing my teeth, and making coffee. I feel off. I’m judging myself for that feeling of offness. Why do I feel so down, so lethargic? I have got to get it together.
I’m reminded of how I kept on working when I heard about the January 6th insurrection. I was in a consultation when it happened. My phone was buzzing uncontrollably when I turned it back on. I turned on the news and watched in horror as I continued to send emails.
Here I am, five years later, watching more horrors and sending more emails.
I am not hopeless — but I also won’t pretend to have all the answers.
What I do know is that I feel better when I feel less alone.
Sitting with all of my feelings, and all of these atrocities, I was reminded of something that Andrea Gibson said on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast.
“I have spent my entire career encouraging people to have their feelings.
Don’t push down your feelings. Open up to them all. That is where, in my experience, like I would have, if I would get depressed, I could, and I know this, and I don’t want to negate the fact of clinical depression and meds, all of that, I’m pro-meds.
But I would get more depressed if there was something I wasn’t allowing myself to feel. And I thought, I am allowing myself to have all my feelings. Why aren’t I fucking happy?
And I realized that the feeling I was pushing down was joy. That I was afraid of that feeling. And there were a certain number of things that led to that.
And some of it was how I was relating to our culture, how I was relating to activism, growing up in activist communities, and thinking that if you weren’t devastated, if you weren’t despairing, if you weren’t enraged, then there was something about you that was heartless.
And some people respond to the world in really vibrant ways because they’re furious or because they’re grieving.
For me, I am much better, and I have far more to offer the world when I am joyful.”
I, too, hope to look back at my life and say I spent my entire career encouraging people to have their feelings.
I am furious and heartbroken beyond measure for every single individual being affected by this monstrosity of an “administration.” Families crying both inside and outside these detention centers have been senselessly ripped apart.
I finally started reading Kamala Harris’ memoir, 107 Days, yesterday at one of my favorite Italian restaurants, between plays.
I want to be at an Italian restaurant in Italy. I want Kamala Harris to be the President. I want Donald Trump to go back to being a punchline in sitcoms.
Lorelai: It’s the title search for the Rachel property. And guess who owns it!
Sookie: Tell me it’s not that bastard Donald Trump.
Gilmore Girls, Season 2, Episode 8, 2001.
There’s no grand moral here. There never is.
Tell someone how you’re feeling today. Share this piece. Leave a ‘like’ or comment for a stranger.
Text a friend that you love them, and you’re thinking of them.
Do as the incomparable Corinne Bailey Rae says, and ‘put your records on.’
Call your senators, and then order your favorite takeout.
And maybe check out this song. It’s quickly become my anthem for these times. It truly feels like Elton and Brandi are singing directly to me every time.
