Remember the time when we were a little freer, our minds were more open to new ideas, and our hearts were more open to not judging others based on differences. Am I imagining a time that wasn’t, a time that only existed in my mind?
I think these might have been only fleeting moments when we all seemed to step closer to each other and to understanding. Then, as suddenly as it came, we were pulled back into the all too familiar grip of division, fear of others, and hate. I know it is human nature, the longing for connection, yet here we are, building barriers, shouting slogans, and tearing at the connective tissues of hope.
Unfortunately, some of the people I once believed I knew, who were part of my inner circle, have changed, and I no longer recognize them. It saddens me, as I have grown older and expanded my own understanding of the world, to realize what it means to be open to new ideas, people, and cultures, just how small some people’s minds truly are. My worldview changed as I traveled and saw the world, while others tightened the cocoon around themselves and demanded that nothing change, or worse, that things return to a time they do not even remember.
Even more importantly, my understanding of how we individually affect others expanded, and I became more self-aware of the impact that both acts of kindness and acts of cruelty can have. I walked the grounds of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was soul-sick for days; something in my spirit folded up. As a young person, I visited Southern plantations and warehouses where human beings were bought and sold, beaten and belittled simply for their higher melanin. Their humanity ignored in favor of a monstrous false layering of ‘not like us’, therefore inferior to justify the hundreds of years of brutality this nation imposed upon a people they stole from another land, beat, and bred into inhuman enslavement.
By the time I was old enough to understand there was something fundamentally wrong in the world, I had begun to question my place in it. I questioned everything. My place in my family, how I fit with my peers, and where I fit in the world around me. My conclusion? I didn’t fit anywhere; I always seemed oddly outside of those around me. I rebelled, and I paid dearly for my rebellion. I broke my own heart more times than I can count. I had my spirit and my body broken by those who wanted me to fit into boxes that made them comfortable. Yet even when I thought there was nothing left of me, something rose up and fought, demanded I survive.
There are days even now that I question my place in the world, and I wonder why I fought so hard to get this far. There are mornings when I wake up after a restless night of bad dreams, where my body aches, my heart hurts, and my spirit is lonely; I wonder out loud why I fought so hard? There are days when my solitude weighs heavily on me, and I wonder aloud, why am I so alone now when I poured so much into so many for so long?
There are times when my spirit feels weighted down, and my heart is cracking. Those are times when I remember there was another time when it wasn’t like this, and I wonder if maybe the reason some of us 
from that time are still here is as a reminder of those days when we were walking toward something better? I think maybe it is, and those of us who still remember are the quiet reminder that it is worth the fight, even as we break inside.
Yes, it’s terrible today, and it feels as if everything has gone sideways, but some of us remember a different time. We remember, and we know there is a better way, but we also know we failed when we turned our backs and became passive. We own this failure; we may not have voted for it, but we failed to stand up and demand better, so we own it. Now, we must own correcting fifty years of ongoing and persistent destruction of everything we fought for.
If we don’t stand up now, tomorrow is lost, and the promise of this nation, however imperfect, will disappear forever and for all of us.
Dear God, I know, you grow weary of our cries for your intervention after we make our stupid mistakes and our own ignorant choices.
who were all of this, people who could not get beyond themselves without stepping on others. Yet now we have an entire population that is bent on the destruction of those they see as the reason for their own failure in life. Whether these failures are personal, professional, or something else entirely. Their misery is being transformed into a living object, something tangible and so filled with venom that it poisons everything it touches. Whether it is a person, an ethnic group, a concept, a Right, or even a Nation, the poison is flowing fast and spreading, killing everything in its path, everything it touches.
unencumbered desires of a group of small men who want everything for themselves, no matter the cost. Fear rules us, and at the top of the heap, we have one man who has tapped into that fear, uses your name when convenient and his own as a substitute, to divide us as a people.
The above is not everything I know; it is simply a silly list of ‘things’ that on the surface feel connected to why I continue to sleep alone every single night.
Those were just the highlights. Fantastic right? The men I have met have all behaved as if they were somehow doing me a favor. Fools who have convinced themselves their presence is enough and nothing more is required of them. These man-children have somehow gotten it into their heads that they are THE GIFT, despite their inability to provide even the simple things necessary to create and sustain a relationship.
don’t drag my history into my future. But I should not have to tell you the intimate details of the brutality of my past to make you comfortable. I rose up, I survived, I am more than my past. All of those things those men saw, those things that intimated those man-children, those things that created me, the woman I am, the warrior-queen, THE GIFT I am; those are my past, and I am not ashamed but they are mine and I feel under no obligation to share them.
our own money. Or even when we purchased our first home, and they handed us the keys. It could be anything; each of us has our own idea of what that ‘it’ moment was when all just seemed like it was, well, perfect.
the world around us. Was the shift in the world, or did we somehow lose that spark that made us dance in the rain, laugh at silly jokes, or want to cuddle with someone we loved. When did this happen to so many of us that now we live these terrible lives of isolation, fear, and ever-increasing aloneness?
make life easier. The generation that freed women like me to have careers, own homes, and choose different lives from our mothers. The generation that changed this nation in very real ways, at least for a while, is now the same generation that is miserable because of those changes.
When I say ‘let’s talk’ does this scare you? For some it should, you know when a woman says, ‘We need to talk,’ it can cause some men to pull up short, shiver in their boots in the sun’s heat, or run and hide. But truthfully, I think it is time for us to have a serious conversation about our shared world.
are dangerous. They are in it for no reason but performance and attention. While they are making more money than their education would command in the private sector, they are intentionally promoting other women’s loss of rights and opportunities. Let’s be clear, these are the women who cheered the Dodd decision, while actively swallowing their birth control pill every morning. THEY ARE NOT PRO LIFE! What they are is Anti Choice for any woman that is not them. What they are is anti opportunity for any woman that is not them, does not look like them, and does not vote like them. What they are is members of a cult that wants to strip men and women of the right to vote unless that vote is cast for them and theirs.
the election, she has had to kick-off campaigning, vet potential vice presidential governing mates, and raise money. She has had to reach out to the cohorts that were indifferent to the Biden campaign and try to win them over, and she has had to try to figure out how she is going to Beat Trump.
Dear God, It has been a little while since we talked. I wanted to give you time to consider the world’s circumstances and maybe take some small actions. It doesn’t seem you are interested, still letting us muck about in our own stinking shit. I don’t know God, but we need some help here. I don’t think we will survive this one without some divine intervention.
Concentration Camps with Immigrants, and they cheer and chant. I listen to his newly anointed VP pick say no woman should have access to No-Fault divorce, which means all women should be forced to stay in an abusive marriage without access to support or legal remedy. I weep for all those who will die at the hands of spouses. I read the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 and realize it is simply an updated version of Mein Kampf, taken to a new level of degeneracy. With Justices for sale and every political appointment a value exchange for who can best prove their level of loyalty to the Dear Leader.
Not respectfully. But full on and with nothing but disdain, I Dissent.
on the very edge of losing our Democratic Republic with their latest rulings. When we add the swamp of the GOP and their unwavering loyalty to a man who is wholly unfit to be on the grounds of the White House, let alone in the Oval Office as President, the most powerful man of the free world.
lead to one thing, and we see it at Trump Rallies, on bumper stickers, and even the halls of Congress every single day, an escalation of violence. Now, a Presidential candidate has escaped an assassination attempt. Yes, I think this makes it worse; no matter how I view the man himself, I believe violence doesn’t solve any problems and, in fact, only makes him both a martyr and a hero in the eyes of his base. With his ear winged and Secret Service surrounding him, he pumped his fist in victory. Members of the audience who were interviewed said this ensured his victory in November, does it? Nevermind one person lost their life, or others were critically injured, it took a bit to acknowledge them in the race to blame the Democrats and pump up the Orange One as a Hero.
48) is too weak, that violence must be met with greater violence and encourage their parishioners to acts of sedition, racial hate crimes, and openly carrying weapons of war on the streets of our cities.
who love the violence, who worship the darkest parts of this new and ugly church that has risen in your name, are following. The inevitable end will be nothing short of catastrophic; millions will suffer and die if you allow these liars and false prophets to continue to speak in your name. Only those who embrace the worst in humanity will be left standing to speak your name if you continue to allow them to claim you as their own unless there is a reckoning.
QBG_Tilted Tiara 