Sad Hair
On the election and a name change for The Bright Side newsletter
I don’t see a bright side to this election. Hate won. I’m changing the name of this newsletter today, moving away from ebullient optimism.
It feels too soon to have a bigger plan. To fight. To insist that art matters. To revel in the small joys that helped me survive some of the darkest days of the recent past. To look for the bright side. I am just not there.
I need a minute to pick my heart up off the floor and to collect my thoughts. Or maybe I need a month. Or a year. Or four years.
There’s nothing I can contribute to the conversation that will change where we are as a country. Hate is at the heart of our nation and we can’t pretend otherwise. We can’t unsee it or console ourselves into okayness.
The only path forward that feels right to me now is to continue working and parenting. I’m proofing my book on publishing, Imagine a Door, due out from Forest Avenue Press in April 2025, which is lending this space its new moniker. I’m working on a new novel. I’m also helping publishers with their metadata and soon-to-be-published authors with their publicity campaigns. In all of these roles, I’m doing my part to counter toxic narratives. Helping to spread stories of kindness, of queer joy and inclusivity and ethical behavior and disability visibility and women supporting women. Forest Ave will open for submissions in January, too. We’ll become a funnel for more stories. For more imaginations. For more people seeking change and hope and peace.
This is something I can do as a publisher and editor and author. To make stories. And to make other people’s stories more discoverable.
I don’t have the energy, after our first four years of Trump and then a pandemic, to question whether I’m doing enough. I just need to keep doing what I can. Head down. One word at a time. One dinner made. One quick sketch. One more day.
When I imagine a door, I think of all the women ancestors who suffered, who marched, who persevered, who stood up again and again, who walked up to the precipice and beyond, for me. I think of Ellis Island, the scores of seekers milling about, hoping to get in, wanting better for their children in America. After this election, I imagine those doors slamming shut, rights ripped away, people rounded up, folks in despair. It is unfathomable what they have done. But then ... then ... I have to imagine that door opening again, a crack, a glint of sunlight, from somewhere. Please, for our daughters and sons. May it be so.
Thanks, Laura, for sharing where you are. In AA I learned about just doing the next right thing, one day at a time, one breath at a time. That’s where I am. I felt such shame Wednesday morning. I threw away so many Tillcodems emails and the leftover campaign material and slate cards that I didn’t put on doors. I wanted to erase that I was on the ‘losing’ side. I didn’t want to go to downtown Tillamook and be seen in our campaign headquarters where we had welcomed hundreds of people who were so excited to be part of trying to get Kamala Harris elected. Then I began to hear about how the Democrats did it wrong and lack vision and how they’re “just the same as the Republicans.” And I had to feel that. Which includes outrage at some people’s failure to recognize that the Democratic vision does include taking care of the collective, even as I mourn that there was not a strong stance for Gaza. Both things can be true. And I mourn the descent of the darkness, even as Trump supporters tell me that everything’s going to be wonderful now and that we’re going to have peace and we can all get along again. And in the face of that, which I find to be the most terrifying disingenuousness, I have to continue to do the work, the most arduous work these days, to keep my heart soft and not to generalize about the ‘other’. And in days to come, perhaps I will have more moments where I don’t consider them ‘other.” because I must not give into the egoic drive to create separation. I pace myself in calling and connecting with each of my family members who endorsed a candidate I don’t even want to name here. I am careful and tell my truth about the darkness that I see and the trauma activation I am in, and I do not blame or excoriate. I affirm love. But my soul weeps, and I must over and over consider Jesus‘s words, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Because these people who voted for Trump, they love people, and some of the people they love are going to be terribly hurt by what is to come, and these people are going to have to wake up and see what wrought, and I grieve over my story. And I consider the irony that perhaps then we will be more united, even though it will be in grief. Right now, in my family I am alone in my grief, and I am struggling, using all my resources, one after another. to support my activated nervous system reeling from our country’s second election of a criminal narcissistic psychopath who is so reminiscent of my own father. The lower self of our country is in full reveal. That must happen in spiritual evolution. Only acceptance of the lower self allows the energy to be freed to return to the cosmic energy stream that enlivens us. I know, as the Pathwork guide says, that people create out of unconsciousness. I have done that, and as a flawed human, will no doubt again So I must locate within myself similarities to what I despair about in the ‘other’ And then go to work on my own misconceptions and continue to free myself and help the planet through my own evolutionary work. We as a country are going to have much unity in coming days experiencing the destruction that will come. And that that is where increased unity could come is heartbreaking. And yet, given that there is always grace in the darkness, I trust the perfection of this unfolding. As Cynthia Ocelli says, “if you didn’t understand growth it would look like complete destruction”. So right now, I think it is connection that will save us. And connecting with your post was the catalyst for all of this outpouring which is clarifying and which I will use to go forth on the Path. Thanks for all of what you do in the world, Laura, and for sharing so vulnerably.☮️➕💜