This is why I’m so heavy on the “I love you” and the “drive safe” and the “let me know when you get home.” Because life is like this. Because there’s a pandemic raging. Because world is harsh on the ones who need the most compassion, and often they’re the strongest among us and we don’t see it. Because there’s an actual attempt at a coup unfolding before our eyes and ears, through the TV screens and the car radios. Because we knew that tensions were building, but this –

What has happened in Washington today extraordinary, and I didn’t really belive that it would.

So. I love you. I hope you and yours are safe, and if they’re not. I have a friend who lives 30 minutes from Washington and they’re okay.

I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m listening to the radio, drinking water, staring blankly into space. I notice after a while that my breathing is rapid and my throat is swollen and I’m not sure if I can actually move. I go outside and hula hoop in shorts and wellington boots for about five minutes and then force myself to get inside out of the cold.

I’m in my room now. With my cat. She’s purring. She doesn’t know what’s going on, how could she, but she’s here. And she knows I’m wound up, I believe. But she is calming me down.

I can’t do much from here. But I wish for superpowers that would allow me to go to the capital building and make sure everyone was safe. I wish for a shield to protect them from this madness.

And many other people, from many other things.

I often say that I have a void where my parental instinct might have been. Maybe this is what is feels like. This protectiveness.

I wish for the power to keep everyone safe and doing okay, and I can’t have that. There’s no way that anyone could carry that alone.

What I do have is a solid shade of Blue in the house, the Senate, and the White House. I think of the many good things which could come of that, and I feel heartened. It isn’t – it isn’t everything. But it’s something, and I’ll take it.

I think that there exists a team now that could build that kind of shield. That could get along and do good work. It’s still going to immensely tricky to do, but there’s a framework in place.

I have to believe this will happen.

If it doesn’t, we will find a way to get through.

I know this is – kind of a well worn sentiment or collection of words. And it’s been varying degrees of hard for me to remember that they’re not empty, that there’s something to them.

But please, if you’re having a hard time with the intensity of the world, today, know that you’re not alone. I see you. Remember that there’s a place for you here, remember that you bring something into the world that nothing else can, and that so many of those things are beautiful. Remember that there is hope for all of the things that are wrong, and that healing will come, even when everything seems impossibly dark. Even when all things seem lost.

Feel these words and know that there’s truth in them.

Remember that you are not unloved.