I have written and re written this post several times. It feels like there is so much to say and yet it feels like I don’t have the words to say any of it. Yes, this is a blog about the experience of living with and hopefully thriving with chronic illness, but right now neither of those things seems very important.

Being a human is hard right now. Being a human with empathy, kindness, compassion, and a deep rooted sense of justice, equality, and equity is heartbreaking right now. I don’t recognize the country I live in anymore. Empathy has become synonymous with weakness and cruelty has become synonymous with strength. I often find myself feeling helpless… like I’m fighting a forest fire with a dixie cup sized glass of water. I vacillate between wanting to scream like a feral cat at the top of my lungs and wanting to pull the covers over my head and sob at the cruelty and the irreparable harm that’s been done and continues to be done. While my feelings are very real, I also have to recognize and own my privilege. I am not under direct attack. I am not in fear of being ripped from my home, my family, and my community.

I don’t have the answers for how to get through this time when the very foundations of our country, of what it means to be human, of what it means to live in a free society are under attack in a way we have never seen before. It is terrifying, heartbreaking, rage inducing, and so many other adjectives. And yet in spite of it all there is good happening. There are people standing up and speaking truth to power in ways they never have before. There are people and communities stepping up to say “This isn’t who we are or we want to be.” There are people answering the call to stand in solidarity with those communities under direct attack for they know that what happens to one of us, happens to all of us.

I do know that those in power want us to be afraid and they want us to forget what it means to be human. They want us to fear our neighbors. They want us to hate those who love, live, worship, etc differently than we do. They want us to believe that we have no power. They want us to be silent. So, we resist when we build community with our neighbors. We resist when we raise our voices louder than we ever have before. We resist when we love and accept all. We resist when we see ourselves in the face of each and every person we meet. We resist when we celebrate our humanness. We resist when we stand with and for the very people we are being told to fear.

Now is not the time to be silent. “History has its eyes on you.”