Surrounding myself with things I love makes me happy. The thoughtful arrangement of trinkets, tools, and toys (!) makes the ordinary everyday a celebration. And finding reasons to celebrate in these crazy times is essential to my mental health. To create beautiful insulation from the ugly reality while practicing self care and not going so far as to become a Long Island Edith is a difficult battle for balance.
Here we are in the first full week of August, 2025. The promises made in the cold weeks of March and rainy days of April to have more frequent and larger protests of this Regime of Crazies have not been realized; at least not locally. I am prepared, anxious even, to DO something to demonstrate my anger. And it feels like protest is on summer vacation.
So, I paint my protest; that canvas, the subject of future posts. I arrange summer blossoms and I prepare summer’s bounty. But the anger is barely contained. So I lash out at yard weeds and hovering wasps (carefully). I sweep stray leaves from the porch and bat at ants that appear to be nesting in my deck chair cushion (!).
What started as hand wringing angst and heart chilling fear has turned in to hard core anger. I want to lash out. I want to punch and hit, and quite honestly cut the tiny dicks off all these cowardly white males who are destroying the futures of our children (their children included, duh) and tie their hands and watch them wither in pain and slowly bleed out. And as they lay dying I want them to watch me take their precious dollars and share them with the hungry and destitute that these white men’s book of myths says they must do to earn their rewards in a heaven that they cannot be sure exists. But I sure hope their hell exists, because that is straight where I wish them going.
Rather than imagining mutilation and murder my younger daughter has taken up boxing to vent her anger. I don’t doubt she has images of slow, painful death for white christian (note the intentional lower case letter “c”) nationalists thriving in her imagination as she “floats like a butterfly,” wanting to “sting like a bee.” Her training goals, “to punch nazis in the face.”
My older daughter, the empath, copes by cultivating a physical space of serenity and hope. She has planted native milkweeds and cosmos next to sugar snap peas and tomatos to create a safe haven for heart, mind, nature and humanity. I fear for her whole health as she feels the pain for ALL inflicted “by man and all his greed.”*
Still we struggle. When my oldest said she is just about ready to go to D.C. to “punch the f**kers in the face” I said I would ride shot gun but that we have to wait until September because everyone is on summer vacation.
*Summers of My Life – Gino Vannelli, 1976
swansroost 