I awoke this morning and had barely made it through feeding the pets and having my coffee before I got a text that made my stomach fall out.

“Well that’s super cool that this article listed our whole ass address.”1

I took a deep breath and opened Substack. I suppose my wallflower days are over.

In October of 2025, I started working with Blue Amp Media [BAM] and published a really important article about information I received from sources within the DoD. They alleged that active duty personnel were ordered by their superiors to delete photo and video footage of detainees that were rescued from a boat bombing and brought on board the USS Iwo Jima.

That is intensely important news. I wanted to honor my sources’ request and tell the story myself [they came to me because I am a Navy veteran], and I did my absolute best to honor their wishes and to protect them.

I may have made a mistake, but I chose to publish with BAM (and they have now chosen to paywall that article without my knowledge or consent).

Over the next four months, I mainly worked with BAM to create and build an Instagram profile with custom-designed graphics and to compile and post YouTube content. My son helped me with video editing, so of that money I received from BAM, $335 a month went to my son’s tuition payments as sort of an in-home internship for him so he could earn his tuition and help me out with my workload with skills he was just better (and quicker) at than me.

I told you: full transparency.

I also got to meet and interview with some cool people from all over the journalist/entertainment world. Hal Sparks is not a journalist, for example, but he now does shows that revolve around a lot of political content, so I went on his show to discuss the Navy story, as well as Julie Roginsky and others.

I presented the information with the same careful verbiage every time as to best protect my sources.

But see, I don’t run around just calling myself a journalist as my job title. Most of the time, I am careful to call myself a “citizen journalist” and I do make it clear that of my written content, only a fraction is what I would categorize as actual Journalism-with-a-capital-J. Those would be the pieces with over a dozen citations and sources listed.

Because I have an intense respect for the art and science of Journalism.

Journalism is a dying art and an evolving science. Telling the truth comes with a big price these days, so it’s become quite en vogue to selectively choose what stories to tell, with many journalists choosing which ones are easier and not so costly in terms of personal safety. Journalists have been arrested, fired, and “cancelled”, and since I have children and my elderly mother in my home, I have erred on the side of caution.

I also have many other personal projects that consume my time and energy. Among those, fighting Flock cameras in my city. Today, an incredible attorney is meeting with her Board to gain official authorization to represent me in filing an amicus brief to join the appeal filings of Schmidt vs. Norfolk, and the Texas Civil Rights Project has indicated interest in co-signing my brief.

I don’t just talk shit. I believe in action.

As such, I know I cannot participate actively in civic affairs and be a full-time Journalist. There are too many ethical quandries and exceptions to the fuzzy layers of overlap in these communities. I have to tread this water every single day, to figure out if my energy is better spent covering the information as a Journalist, or attacking the problem as a Citizen.

That weakens me as a Journalist.

And I have no problem admitting it. It’s why I don’t hang my hat on the job title of one or another. I am both, and selectively, I am neither a fulltime Journalist or a fulltime Activist.

In regards to my time at BAM, there isn’t terribly much to tell. I was low on the totem pole there, and after my first initial splash with the Navy story, I didn’t bring a file full of other breaking news behind it. I was approached by sources as sort of a one-off thing, and after the drama that unfolded behind the scenes with that one story, I pulled back from being available for more of that type of reporting.

I made a tough decision about where to publish; their paywalling such important content concerns me that I made the wrong choice.

Regardless, what’s done is done.

Beyond that story, I also began covering Latin American issues with Venezuelan professor Elizabeth Raven and accomplished freelance journalist Arturo Dominguez, whose journalistic chops are beyond proven. I was deeply enjoying these LATAM shows, but just as we really got the ball rolling, ICE showed up in my town.

Explosively entering the scene with a violent apprehension at the tienda a mile from my house, ICE agents were suddenly creeping all over our city and surrounding areas. I had been meeting with community groups who were preparing for this, and we sprang into action.

I served on ICE Watch, which just meant that I showed up on scene as quickly as possible to document via photo and video the apprehension and behavior of ICE agents in the field. At one scene, an ICE agent pulled up in a marked CBP vehicle with her driver’s window adjacent to mine, rolled her window down, and glared at me for a full heartbeat, stopped in the middle of the road, before speeding off haphazardly and almost hitting a stop sign.

The next incident was even more intense as an ICE vehicle blocked my van in from behind and said my name over their loudspeaker (meaning, they ran my plate in a warrantless search for the sole purpose of intimidation). This was approximately two months after Renee Good had been murdered in an almost identical situation.

I was sufficiently chilled.

Meanwhile, I had let Lawrence Winnerman, the CEO of BAM, know that I was stepping back from BAM to focus on my community. He and the entire staff were supportive of this and we amicably parted ways.

The trifecta of the drones, the ICE agents’ behavior, and just white-knuckling my way through losing all of my prescription meds, including Wellbutrin and hormones, due to the loss of my ACA plan when subsidies expired, all culminated in what could only be described archaically and probably not politically correct as a “nervous breakdown”.

I had to fucking rest.

I had to let down every other writer and creator who I’d been working with to build shows and networks and just back out. I had to let go of the LATAM content and disappoint those people. I had to step off ICE Watch so those fucking drones would stop harassing my household.

I was seriously hard on myself for everything that got dropped through the cracks in that dark month of March, but I suspect most of the other writers and creators have forgiven me or didn’t give it much thought to begin with. We always overestimate our own place in others’ minds, right?

So I rested and I healed. My husband is a saint, because he supported another two months of paying for an office with virtually no income to sustain it, so in June I gave notice and packed it up. It stung, but I also think it’s important that my kids, two of whom want to pursue creative careers, see that a creative career is a life of consistent ebb and flow. Some times you’ll have a nice office/studio space. Sometimes you work in your garage. It is what it is. That’s life, baby.

And more importantly, I want them to see that you follow your instincts and personal moral code, not money.

But I never thought, in a million years, I’d wake up to an article doxxing me with my family’s home address right there in black and white in a piece loosely alluding to me being involved with creating political content at the behest of Cliff Schecter.

I mean…. no offense, but if I’m going to create content at the behest of anyone I would pick someone with far greater influence and power. And it’s starkly insulting to even insinuate that I am a writer for hire to draft political propaganda for Israel, or whatever it was.

I literally don’t get hired in traditional newsrooms because I don’t follow orders well…

I’m laughing as I write this, in this moment, because it’s all so absurd. I’m the writer that people tell to stop cursing so much, to stop being so passionate that I throw myself headlong into issues, and I put my skin in the game way more than a traditional journalist would… or should. That’s why I walk the line. That’s why I back out of writing a story if I can instead go do something about the problem.

Sometimes I can do both; not always. And when the choice presents itself, I choose action over writing every time.

When I needed to act in my community for my neighbors being snatched, I chose that and I resigned BAM. It’s really as simple as that, and I think that action in and of itself should prove who the fuck I am, and I am no shill for anyone.

I know, the tea ain’t as hot as some would have liked.

So sorry to disappoint. /s

I’m very clear about my objectives with my personal mission in life: citizen journalism and citizen activism. Neither of those life journeys pays jack shit at the moment. ANY, and I mean each and every and ANY paid subscription helps me pursue this mission. If you have found value in my work, either a journalistic piece that informed you, a memoir piece that touched you, or my work to fight Flock and save democracy from an Orwellian mass surveillance hellscape, consider a paid subscription. Your dollars go a LOT further with me than with a sub to an orange-checked media conglomerate. Please and thank you. If you’d rather give directly, my CashApp is $thebestoftheomens or DM me…

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For every single person who has dropped in my comments, DMs, and texts this morning, thank you. It’s been good to have your support and encouragement.

I carry on. I’ll be charging forward with this federal case in Norfolk, and I’ll write about it as much as I am legally able as soon as I am able to.

I will keep doing deep dives into topics I find really important, and as always, those pieces will be robustly cited and informative.

Until then, catch me in these streets— I will be attending the Veteran’s March on Nov. 11 in Washington, DC. Want to meet me? Come join me!
And as always, I am and remain yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

In August of 2000, I stumbled across an internet forum.

What would now be considered archaic: a plain white page with a visible frame and a scrolling side menu, with purple text I can recall vividly, a small chat forum connected adoptees with their birth families.

There weren’t many joyous reunions; this was a shot in the dark for most of us.

My post certainly was.

I wouldn’t slide the missing puzzle piece in place for another twenty years, when in August of 2020, I found the identity of my birth father, Donald Lee Howard, and entire paternal line. Thanks to a combination of Ancestry DNA results and a shockingly honest obituary for my paternal grandfather, one which listed my brother and I by name a full three decades after the state took us from our parents for their ‘crime’ of poverty and desperation, I had my answer.

COVID pandemic lockdowns were in full affect, so I couldn’t travel to his nursing home to meet him. And before I could even attempt to make the trip, he died suddenly of “respiratory failure”. That nursing home complex lost over 200 residents and several staff in less than eight months to ”respiratory failure” during a raging pandemic which local officials refused to name as what it clearly was: COVID-19. It was horrendously mismanaged by red-pilled administrative, support, and janitorial staff who didn’t “believe it was real”. Even as the elderly people they worked for dropped dead around them.

I digress.

Finding my mother proved to be another herculean challenge as she is disabled and has never worked. There just wasn’t a record of her existence until a friend pulled a string and completed one search query that dropped the curtain forever.

Victoria.

Such a beautiful name, isn’t it?

Victoria… I said the name aloud for days, working my mouth around “Vickie”, her preferred name, and “Mom”…. Mama.

“Mama.”

My Mama.

My DNA. My hair, my nails, my eyes, my stubbornness, my wit, my care for others. My mom.

And so on August 14, 2022, my son accompanied me as I drove all the way down from Virginia to South Carolina, way back up into the foothills where the Appalachian mountains are blue misty, gently rolling peaks at the horizon. There, in the cradle of the land our family inhabited for ten generations, my Mama was waiting for me.

I am still, as you can imagine, processing what it means to search through countless files, flipping through microfiche in the Greenville Public Library as my kids were in the children’s section downstairs, searching for years and years, running into dead end after dead end, getting so frustrated I’d put it down for months only to pick up the thread later…. like a dog on a bone. Never giving up.

And finally, finally unlocking who the fuck I am.

For those who are not aware, adoptions in South Carolina are still closed by default, and prior adoptions remain closed by law in perpetuity. Which means adoptees have no legal avenue by which to obtain their own identity; birth name, heritage, birth parents, medical history, none of it. For our entire lives, we are infantilized, treated like children with no right to access the very truth of who we are.

This is a soul-crushing crisis of identity, one that leads to countless adoptees being plagued by mental health, addiction, and relationship issues throughout their lives.

I’ve experienced my fair share of all.

Right now, my Mama is sitting in the den watching Little House on the Prairie, one of her favorite shows. She’s sipping on her Gold Peak no-sugar sweet tea, and tonight we’ll be going out to dinner to celebrate our reunion.

Coming to know her has answered many questions about myself and the tribe of people I descended from. There’s a lot of harsh truths in there, and lo and behold, despite the opinions of the state, I have been able to handle knowing the full truth of my family tree.

It’s messy.

Every family is.

It’s imperfect.

Every family is.

In telling my story of reuniting with my mom, I seek to tell a greater story. I seek to plead the case of every adoptee of a closed adoption that is still alive, right now, in these United States, who is owed the dignity of their own truth. To decide for themselves if their parents are worth their attention and affection, by their own measure of character, not the archaic, patriarchal, classist, racist measure of a government entity in days gone by.

The social norms of many decades ago still keep many adoptees’ hopes of reunification and identity locked behind dusty state code.

I call on all states to reopen discussions on unsealing private adoption records for the benefit of the then-children involved. At least give the adults those children have become the option of obtaining that information.

As many of you know, my summer has been disrupted with some personal crises that we’ve had to handle. I wanted to have my collection of memoir essays, Finding My Way Home, ready for final edit by Labor Day, and I’ll have to revise that deadline.

But we’ve gotten good news and we have a few more months where we are, so I’m going to buckle down and work on completing this project.

I can’t wait to tell y’all the full story of my Mama, her people who came from stout mountain folk, the pride my great-grandmama Lula Belle took in her gardens, and how this poor hillbilly kid came from a dusty farm foster home to serve in the US Navy, work in community building and fund development for years, conjure up a little project that caught the eye of Google itself, raise four dynamic children, and emerge victorious over every challenge thrown her way.

I am a survivor. I am my Mama’s daughter.

I hope you’ll come along for the full story.

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Now we’re off to get some dinner and enjoy celebrating four years we’ve been able to be a real family. Until next time, thank you for continuing to read my musings, and as always, I am yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

I was 21 years old, ~115 lbs soaking wet, in [my] peak physical conditioning as an active duty Navy Sailor. I wanted to go into the EOD program, so I trained with a couple of EOD and SEALs who were on temp assignment to my ship while we were in the shipyards. I woke at 0400 (“oh dark thirty”, basically) daily to get to the gym facility with them. Swimming was my weakest ability, so I was focusing on that.

Even at my peak, my physical ability fell short.

All that to say, when I see women who are in any specialized positions like this in the military, I so very deeply admire their abilities, perseverance, and hard work because I know exactly what it takes and exactly how close and by how much I fell short of such a standard of excellence.

That’s okay! It wasn’t my life path, and I love my life. But if you haven’t attempted to walk the walk, maybe you don’t understand how incredible these women are. The physical conditioning alone is intense and relentless. The mental expectations on top of it, to learn complicated electrical and chemical explosive devices and compounds and be able to safely disarm or detonate under pressure in deeply uncomfortable physical conditions (wearing a full blast suit in the Middle East heat for a prolonged period of time), is nothing short of remarkable.

That’s why it makes me sad and angry to see how women are being treated, and how many great women have fought upstream in those demanding and sometimes near-impossible conditions, only to be fired by a nub like Hegseth. It’s infuriating.

Now let’s consider life for a female Sailor on board a vessel that’s been at sea for 265 days with a ridiculously brief 2 day port call in a tense political environment during an armed standoff right over their shoulders. Many confirmed rumors reveal that hygiene products of all types are running low.

A lot is running low on the Lincoln, especially morale.

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S.O.S.

The USS Lincoln is experiencing challenges from an extended deployment including food shortages, and families are raising the alarm after six individuals have allegedly attempted to jump overboard as the mental health of the crew is stretched to the limit.

I live in a Navy town that’s host to many of the ships that have returned from both the Middle East and the Caribbean boat murdering theaters, and I’ve made note of a few things: the bars are bustling, and DUIs are up. I have an app that taps into police dispatch, and domestic abuse has become a near-daily alert on the app, frequently multiple times per day. Local women’s shelters have noted an increase, as well.

My sons have friends who have returned. Quiet, subdued, and increased drinking characterize some of what they’re seeing when their friends come home.

Navy deployments have never been a pleasure cruise, and wartime on a ship can be outright hell. The heat index soars in the area of the Strait of Hormuz, and a floating tin can isn’t equipped with AC in all spaces. You know how much clean water needs to be produced for a crew of 5,000+ on days where temps at 0800 are already above 100 degrees? A lot of water. What if there’s a breach or a leak and JP-5, jet fuel, gets in those lines?

It’s all you have to drink and bathe in.

I bathed in JP-5 on board the USS Eisenhower for a couple of weeks in 2005. Smelled so strong I hesitated to light my cigarette with wet hair out on the smoke deck.

But we never ran out of food. The ships store never ran out of hygiene products. Logistics were on point.

The systemic failure of basic logistics under the current SECDEF is deeply disturbing.

The systemic failure of essential ship systems, systems which have worked more or less like clockwork on these vessels for decades (thanks to meticulous, routine care and maintenance by highly trained Sailors), is deeply disturbing.

Our military is fracturing. I’ve heard rustles from within of not just plunging morale but fundamental trust issues within the ranks is growing rapidly. Enlisted men don’t trust their leaders, from the White House down to their direct report officers. When their basic needs, like food, aren’t being met, the trust erosion is rapid and intense.

This is especially sharp in the US Navy right now. Left hanging out exposed to daily threat of attack in an already fragile global shipping chokepoint, prolonged deployments, food shortages, intense heat, fuel leaks and water pollution, our Sailors are feeling used for a war most of them don’t even ethically or morally support.

Sound familiar?

Every day I’m seeing parallels to Vietnam and Iraq, and the current Sailors will become the vets who rely on the VA for the eventual healthcare needs that arise from the current environment they’re in (like Agent Orange, and burn pits, and other JP-5 exposure that has resulted in debilitating disability, cancer, and death).

News from the USS Lincoln is just another in a long line of articles detailing in vivid description the epic and historic failure of this SECDEF. He will be listed as the worst, easily and by far, and generally regarded as an embarrassing stain on the pages of history. He cannot be gone quick enough.

I have the Sailor’s Creed hanging in my hallway and I walk past it every day.

I wish the guys at the Pentagon had it hanging there, or would just read it, much less live by it.

Honor. Courage. Commitment. That’s what they ask of every Sailor. While they slowly kill us for a war of vanity.

Check out my piece on serving in our Navy a couple of decades ago, when we had a Republican president who lied to us to get us to engage in a war in the Middle East for the purpose of securing assets for said President’s personal financial benefit and gain. Some technology and terminology may be different, but clearly some things never change.

I’ve heard even worse rumors floating around today, of much greater violence than we are aware, but without confirmation from at least three confirmed sources, I won’t perpetuate anything further. But we must listen to the families of these Sailors who are hearing firsthand what conditions are, and we must believe them.

Serving in the Navy was complicated, but also deeply gratifying. I’m appalled at what we’re hearing, what we confirmed happened on the USS Ford, and what I reported happening on the USS Iwo Jima back in October.

There is an active and rapid degradation of our core tenets of Honor, Courage, and Commitment, and it’s happening in front of our eyes. I hope there are enough Sailors with courage, resolve, and strength who can resurrect our naval honor and resist the cruelty and abuse being doled out by the SECDEF all over our fleet.

I’ll continue to research and bring you verified information as I have it, and I remain, as always, yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

The day after any election means extra coffee because we all stayed up to watch results, right?

First of all, I’m going to surmise that many of my readers were rooting for and the Democratic Socialist ticket on the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin. So let’s look at some important numbers:

Yesterday, 787,678 voters participated in the Democratic primary in Wisconsin (as of 9:30 AM 12AUG2026).

488,844 Republican voters participated in the primaries (as of 9:30 AM 12AUG2026).2

I think it’s also prudent to point out this: “In one more twist, reporting the results of about 28,000 absentee ballots from Milwaukee was delayed until early in morning of Aug. 12 after a human error related to uploading the data, the city’s election leader said shortly before midnight.”3

Francesca Hong lost by ~3,500 votes.

The numbers are telling a whole story. I like the way this story is going. I really… really like the way this is going, because hey, the Dem Establishment can throw millions upon millions at smear campaigns that come up with nothing better than “She made a twitter post years ago about cancelling Thanksgiving!” and a Democratic Socialist came a hair’s breadth to a gubernatorial primary. A 37 year old bartender, single mom REAL PERSON.

KEEP PUSHING.

Whatever you do, don’t see this as a “defeat”! The implications from the numbers I’m posting here are lost on no one. NO ONE, trust and believe.

So we must be more dedicated and fervent than ever to keep fighting, to keep pushing, to keep on keeping on, because we are making real headway here.

So what’s next??

Discovering the true lengths the establishment Democratic institution will go to quash what the people truly want and keep voting for Republican policies and bills and proposals and ideas has been very eye-opening for a lot of people.

Now your eyes are open.

Whatcha gonna do about it?

Here’s your checklist:

✅ look up local city council, check out the agenda, and find something to go speak about. Register with the clerk and go tell your city council what you think of them (this also applies if you love what they’re doing!). Use the voice you have in your immediate community.

✅ walk around your neighborhood and have conversations to make sure everyone is registered to vote, knows when elections are, and has transportation to the polls.

✅ research democratic socialism and what they really stand for; not what any of the mainstream media is telling you DSA stands for. Make up your own mind based on the information directly from the source, not what some pundit wants you to believe.

✅ If safe for you to do so, fly a flag that indicates your political/social persuasion at your house. This gives your neighbors and passerby “permission” to align with you. It’s amazing how many of us there are, but we assume we’re alone or few and far between on our beliefs. Believing in basic human rights is actually the common thread that unites way more of us than you may believe. Outwardly display your beliefs so you embolden others to do the same and you can all find one another!

✅ Vote, vote, vote… in every primary, in every local election, every time the polls are open, be there.

✅ Spend one hour a week in service to your community in some way. Check idealist.org for volunteer opportunities in your area, or contact your local DSA for mutual aid opportunities.

Democracy only works when you participate. Full stop. That’s the whole idea right there.

Of 3.7M registered voters in Wisconsin, one-third showed up to the polls to decide between the establishment pick and a Democratic Socialist single mom bartender who actually knows what the average American needs and wants.

How many of the other two-thirds will be bitching about the quality of their lives without having participated in the system that dictates said quality? I bet plenty.

A nation can’t work for the people with one-third of the eligible people participating.

We must have a goal of 100% voter participation.

We must keep endlessly working towards that goal.

In the meantime, we can participate in our communities directly to improve our own quality of life and that of our less fortunate neighbors.

A Man Making History

Several months ago, I had the distinct honor and privilege of interviewing Francesca Hong alongside the inimitable . He has been taking on the herculean task of contacting and interviewing lesser-known candidates, and I have zero doubt in my mind that his interviews brought Francesca to the point of coming within half a percentage point of the goalpost.

Every single vote matters.

Walter is out here informing and educating voters while simultaneously uplifting and making visible candidates who otherwise may not get that spotlight. And he’s doing it day and night, for months on end.

Walter’s over here influencing history, folks. If you haven’t subscribed to him, do it now. If you can only subscribe to one, cancel your subscription to me and give it to him. I mean it and I can NOT endorse him enough.

This is the challenge before us, my friends. We must get people out of their homes, off their little boxes streaming them a specific algorithmic cocktail designed to subdue, scare, and silence them, and into the streets and the voting booth.

The momentum has begun all over the nation. It’s never too late to jump in!

I hope to see you out there, and I remain, as always, yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

I talk mad shit on Norfolk, VA, the city where I live, and I go frequently to city council and school board meetings to share those sentiments with them directly.

Why do I bother?

I moved here in September 2003 on the heels of a major hurricane. The community came together across Hampton Roads to rebuild, care for one another, and move forward. I liked what I saw.

Norfolk has a gritty history. A seaboard city home to shipping since the first colonizers landed here, we’ve seen war on our shores many times. There are dozens of sunken ships in the Elizabeth River harbor betwixt Norfolk and Portsmouth. A friend has gone diving among them… truly fascinating stuff.

Norfolk has always been home to some form of a Navy base or port. Some older buildings still have the faded signs painted on the brick walls outside: “Dogs and Sailors: Stay Off the Grass!”

It’s a strange, half-transient area where literally almost half of the population is short-term in some way. Mostly military, some college, some federal workers. Assigned here for a stint, only here for ~4 years, and then on to the next. So why would they vote, participate in community building, or even care what happens after that four years?

So those who make this a permanent home have to push that much harder for lasting change. I’ve watched change happen here only to be undone in the next election cycle (just like in our nation). I’ve watched Norfolk do amazing things. And then I’ve watched the city decline, more rapidly in the past “season” (four year cycle) than ever before since I’ve lived here. Public school enrollment has fallen off a cliff, especially this year once vouchers to private [Christian] schools were approved by our state.

Corruption runs crazy deep as layer upon layer gets exposed by the week. Public squabbles betwixt the Council and School Board play out messily on social media and public meetings, with finger pointing on all sides and no one demonstrating an ounce of accountability.

So, again, why do I care?

Because people I love live here and are locked in. They can’t afford to leave. They are elderly and have paid off their homes. They have sunk their entire life savings into this city.

Because every city has people who can’t leave.

So EVERY city should strive to be its best version of itself it can possibly be.

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One frequent example of how citizens continually complain about one thing that the city refuses to change or develop appropriately is the flashy Waterside development on the water, the “face” of Norfolk when entering by boat (or 264E).

Our city owns a massive facility right on the water next to a large park which hosts several festivals through the year. It could be a bustling fish market, with retail spots for boat resupply for the marina outside, local businesses and restaurants, even museum or historic space to tell visitors about the battles that took place right outside in the harbor. I could think of a dozen better ways to use the space than the way it currently is used.

Currently it houses a string of bars and chain restaurants where Navy guys go get drunk and fight in the parking lot on Saturday nights and then drive drunk through the city back to base. It’s not family friendly. It’s not particularly inviting to visitors pulling their boats up or arriving by ferry from Portsmouth. It makes quick cash from Sailors but that’s about it, and it pulls down the reputation of the city due to the crime it produces.

That’s a string of bad decisions by City Council members who are mostly small business owners and developers who benefit from quick-cash over long-term investment in strategic growth that benefits the entire city, not just their personal bank accounts.

Norfolk, VA, is an excellent example of why local government leadership is so unbelievably important. Continue to elect self-serving businessmen, developers, and political tourists (just using this office to leverage to the next political position up the ladder) and watch a city die before your eyes.

It’s a cautionary tale, actually.

Citizens should speak up more.

You should go tell your city council exactly what you think of them, as often as you deem it necessary. Their job is to sit and take it, and if they don’t like it, they could govern better so citizens aren’t so angry with them.

They volunteered for that when they ran for the office, but they bank on you not paying attention, staying home, and never holding them accountable.

So until the day that we find ourselves leaving Norfolk behind us once and for all, be that next month or next decade, I will continue holding her stewards responsible for their actions and how those actions impact our residents.

I cannot encourage you enough to do the same where you live, no matter how hopeless you think it is. Maybe nothing changes. But there will be a voice on the record noting dissent for all of historic posterity.

Let that voice be yours.

As always, I am yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

I’ve always been a scrapper and a fighter. I’ve gotten back up more times than I could possibly count. At 19, I was homeless until I scraped together the money to answer the classified ads for roommates in the local paper. I then lived with a weird dude who had worked in audio for BBC South America for a few years- he had an actual (he claimed) shrunken head and lots of cool souvenirs. He had a colorful group of friends from all over the world who would come over and cook and leave the fragrance of curry and onions in our apartment for days (I didn’t mind- I love curry and most of our apartment building was Indian families who had a student at the USC School of Engineering next door).

Then I went into the Navy, which taught me radio and IT stuff, mostly hardware and then web design. After I got out, I used those skills to work for a few years before enrolling in college. I went to three years at ODU and was approved to graduate with a 3.6 GPA… and I was leaving an abusive husband by the beginning of my last year in college.

So I took my three kids and moved to a cheap rental in a neighborhood where they kept getting their bicycles and toys stolen from the yard, getting up at 4:30 am to get to my job at the campus coffeeshop by 5:30 to bake all the baked goods and start all the coffee before opening. I then went to classes all mid-day, picking up my kids from the neighborhood babysitter (who made them sit on the floor and the stairs because she said no white people would ever sit on her furniture…. I didn’t find out about that until later).

So I worked like that for my last year of college. My ex would show up at my rental in the night, or I’d walk out in the morning and he’d be sitting in his car watching me. Police said they couldn’t do anything until he physically hurt me or committed property damage again.

And then I had a court date. I had to be there to keep custody of my kid. The court date was on a date for final exams for three of my classes. When I brought documentation in, two of my professors, Dr. Manuela Mourao and Dr. David Loomis, were incredibly supportive and kind and gave me a proctored exam two days later in their offices. I got A’s on both exams. (Dr. Mourao submitted my bio for a feature in the Alumni magazine even though I didn’t graduate and has continued to be supportive and kind, all these years later. Dr. Loomis passed on to his reward a couple of years ago and the world lost an absolute gem of a human being.)

One professor, I won’t share his name because I’m not throwing anything his way because I hope karma found him (and I have no doubt I’m not the first woman he found a way to flunk in his tenure- he was AWFUL to female students), seemed to find glee in my situation. He smirked when he denied my request and failed me.

I did not graduate college because of one man with an obvious chip on his shoulder.

I had to go to work. I didn’t have time or money for another semester of college.

The clock had run out.

Over subsequent years, I talked my way into jobs with loads of references and examples of my work, jobs that technically required a Bachelor’s but I proved my way into. And I did well in those jobs; quadrupling online giving at one nonprofit. Creating the Veterans Build program for Habitat for Humanity, where veterans build homes for veterans (I still have some of that original documentation). And then at the onset of Covid, creating Virtual Tip Jar, which funneled over $3M directly to suddenly out-of-work service industry professionals and led to interviews by a lot of big outlets and even Google itself did an article on me (wild, right?). I don’t share all this to brag so much as to demonstrate that I have real, tangible skills that have produced actual, quantifiable results.

Every single skill I used to build that career is now easily replicable with AI.

AI doesn’t have my community relationship building skills. AI doesn’t keep a drawer of stationary to write hand-written thank you letters and checking in on major donors and dedicated volunteers. AI can’t put a human touch on fundraising, volunteer management, and even data management (entering data for hours can get monotonous but if you’re chronically nosy, you can pick up on patterns that lead back to human interactions which can, over time, actually lead to bigger gifts and more loyalty).

But it doesn’t matter… if the economy goes the way it’s predicted in the next few years, most nonprofits will collapse anyway. Most are struggling massively with the sudden cessation of billions in federal grants as we speak (and the largest pool of donors remains those millions who regularly give $20 and below to their favorite nonprofits and they won’t have that $20 to spare in short order).

I’ve also done “side jobs” throughout this entire journey. I’ve done laundry in my home for neighbors. I’ve baked baked goods (cheesecakes) and sold them to local restaurants when my kids were babies. I took in other kids to babysit. I’ve sold T-shirts, bumper stickers, and books online. I’ve done any hustle I can think of to keep an income stream coming.

And now, it feels like the bottom is falling out. My young adult kids are trepidatious to begin college when they don’t know if their major will be that of a defunct career by the time they graduate. So they’re working. Few workplaces are giving full-time hours; almost all of them are cobbling together multiple jobs only willing to give them 20 hours a week.

Online or virtual income opportunities are thoroughly saturated. I could revert to washing, drying, and folding laundry in my home for neighbors, but none of my neighbors can afford the service. Local restaurants are closing every month, not finding new cottage bakers to make them desserts. Small businesses and nonprofits are using AI tools to create and update websites, manage donor data, and even creating content for marketing, blogs, social media, etc. so they can keep as much capital focused on the product, or the mission, as possible.

There’s a difference in what I’m feeling now, 26 years after I left home and struck out on my own. There’s a fatigue that is not just being tired. It’s the fact that I’ve worked, my kids have watched me get up in the dark hours and not come home until it is dark again, for two and a half decades with not much to show for it, no degree, and not much prospects for an income-generating career.

A few weeks ago, I toyed with the idea of going to the board of ODU, sharing this story with them, and hoping they’d find a way to allow me to take that course and still graduate. But credits expire after a certain number of years, and I’m sure I’m beyond that point.

I kick myself… I should have pushed through another semester with that man (he’s the only one on campus who taught that class at the time) and graduated. But I was a newly single mom with an ex who refused any financial assistant and who still parked outside my house to harass and scare me. I had three little kids to feed.

That professor denying the exam just kicked the chair out from under me one good time, and it took me years to get on my feet again.

Everyone has a story.

Mine is not unique.

If we keep sliding as rapidly we are into a state of serious decline, we need to share our stories with one another. We have to look to humans, not computers or robots, to get us through this.

My son’s partner got a job at a nearby Amazon warehouse, in their robotics fulfillment center. His job?

To pick up the robots when they fall over.

Here we are y’all.

Another day, another dollar. They’ll pay us minimum wage to pick up the robots that lose their balance as they perform the labor that 3 people couldn’t in that time frame…. but in that situation, it seems the person picking up the robot is the most valuable entity in the room, eh?

Oh, and he had to consent to Amazon essentially observing and recording his entire person, including some biometrics, while he’s on the clock and has just a couple of minutes to use the restroom per shift.

This is all fine.

Everything is fine... right?

So I know that many of you know about my family’s shakeup recently causing me a lot of anxiety about where we’ll be living and if we can find a place big enough for all of us or if some of my young adult kids (18-21) will have to find somewhere else to live. I really don’t want my family split up. I really don’t want to force them to live piled up on each other in a small house or apartment, either. This isn’t how I pictured my kids launching. This isn’t how I pictured any of this going.

I’m thinking of actually rebooting or building another site that is similar to Virtual Tip Jar in that instead of having to go to GoFundMe, individuals can give directly to one another via CashApp, Venmo, Zelle, or other direct transfer options. This model was extremely simple but effective to get dollars direct to the bank accounts of people immediately without work when the world shut down due to Covid before unemployment and stimulus checks could kick in. Virtual Tip Jar kept people’s lights on and food in their fridges, and there were a lot less fees being chopped off than platforms like GFM.

Let me know if you’ve got a catchy name for this site and I’ll get working on it. I’ll be the first to add my info; in the meantime, if you’d like to help our family do everything in our power to keep our family together, here’s the link. For total transparency, we are using this money to set aside for my mom until she gets her full Social Security restored, and then as as a moving fund in case we need to move suddenly and making sure we won’t get blindsided by deposits, fees, etc. We are literally waiting in limbo by the day here, so this has been a huge balm for my mind in case we do need to up and move quickly.

I want to share your story. How is AI treating you? Are you concerned about your own career and financial future, or that of your kids? Here’s a link to the submission: if the site looks different to you, this is CryptPad. It’s a far more secure mode of collecting information, and your story won’t be shared directly with Google- it will come to me first and I can share after that according to your preferences. If you would rather just email me your story, go for it! mcorrigan@counterstorymedia.com

CLICK HERE TO SHARE YOUR STORY.

I hope to share your stories and really craft a greater narrative of where we’re all at, from the ground perspective. As I’ve written this morning, I’ve been listening to NPR. 1A is on, and they are talking AI. This is a conversation uniquely for this moment; add your experience to the narrative!

Thank all of you for your ongoing support and love, and as always, I am yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

Uncertainty looks like restlessness.

We are still no closer to any type of certainty with our housing situation. [If you don’t know what I’m talking about, catch up here and here]. The rental market here is super bleak for larger homes right now because the seasonal PCS [an official military transfer wherein a servicemember moves their whole family to a new duty station] hustle and bustle for the military has been going hard all summer. Available homes come up and are taken just as quickly as they appear. Homes large enough to hold our family are already super few and far between… add the competitive rental market and I’m really…. really anxious about finding something should we need to move quickly.

In terms of qualifying for a mortgage: our scores are okay, but at the end of 2025, our bank changed the platform they use for online banking and bill pay. I set up all the autopayments again, but I misunderstood the timing and 2 of the bills skipped a billing cycle. This was right in the thick of the holidays (and working with BAM), so it was a few months before I actually realized what was going on (which of course caused a ripple affect of making the subsequent months technically “late” even though they received a payment). We corrected it, got caught up, reset the autopay, and it’s been paid as usual ever since.

Unfortunately, for a VA loan, even ONE missed payment requires manual underwriting and lengthy explanation. Multiple missed payments are a non starter.

We’re writing dozens of letters for goodwill deletion requests to the companies involved, with all of our fingers crossed.

We keep paying rent and are giving our landlord lots of space as her husband’s funeral was last week. The realtor who knows her is doing the same… keeping her ears open but giving her space.

A mortgage broker told us we’d qualify in January providing no more late payments hit our reports and we keep our credit going the way it’s been going. We’re hoping she just rides month-to-month until then in lieu of everything she’d have to do to sell the house on the market and we’d have to find somewhere else to live (and it would have to be into another rental).

So in the pregnant pause of waiting, I clean. I’ve cleaned out cabinets, donated stuff to thrift, paring down. I’ve made a daily habit of logging on to our online bank every morning at 6 am to make sure there’s no autopay or payment that is waiting to surprise us; just watching every dollar like a hawk.

It’s way too hot and humid to take this restlessness out on my garden lately, but that’s up next. Ripping out spring plantings that have been exhausted of their fruits. Weeding and tidying. Removing plant stakes and cages.

I’ve looked at local jobs, but not knowing where we’ll be living in 30, 60, or 90 days is making it nearly impossible to pin down a reasonable geographic region for said job. Everything feels like it’s on pause… and for a planner, this is a constant state of anxiety and fear. For a gardener, a season of grief where I will pass on putting in fall plants for fear of cursing any hope of ever seeing them bear fruit. For a mother, a season of fear not knowing where our children and my mother will be laying their heads next month.

Before we got this news, months ago, we had planned a little short getaway for the last week in July. Booked and paid for. Just a brief drive up to Harper’s Ferry, a little balm for my Appalachian soul and a break from the daily grind. My husband scheduled that week of PTO back in January and he desperately needed a break. I’m worried about his stress levels.

When everything happened with the house, he immediately said we should cancel. I checked, and what we had already booked was non-refundable. I said let’s go. We can just hole up in the cabin and get a break. So we did.

We walked up the big hill, straight up the side of the mountain, on the Appalachian Trail that cuts right through the middle of town. We stood in a blackberry patch and breathed in some mountain air while picking a big bucket of plump, juicy fruit with stained fingers. We held some space for something other than the next task on the task list. It was nice to have a change of scenery, but the broad expanse of Unknown now stretches before us in perpetuity. On our way home, we swung through DC and took our youngest to see the original Star Spangled Banner— the giant flag displayed at the American History Museum that was the very one that Francis Scott Key spied through the haze of smoke and flash to see that “our flag was still there”. I wanted her to see it with her own eyes.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for every one of you who has contributed to our GoFundMe as we sit in limbo like this. You have given us some peace of mind as we wait to see what lies next for us. Our family has drawn closer through this; even our seven-year-old brought me a cup of change from her room to contribute to the house fund (I redirected it to her piggy bank). I know we’ll be okay at the end of it all, but I somehow sense and fear that life is going to get very uncomfortable for our family before too much longer.

I’ll keep you updated, and as always, I remain yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

We need to adopt a renewed vigor around shaming.

I watched a video of “leftist” podcasters and their entire support staff greeting Jake Lang as he arrived for a “debate” show. Everyone shook his hand, even with stiff, uncomfortable looks on their faces. Everyone nodded to him, their lips pressed in a thin line.

Is it any wonder the “Alpha males” of the right laugh? Once again, they go low, we “go high”… or act from cowardice.

Why did anyone shake that piece of shit’s hand?

Why did anyone greet him, nod to him in even a minute show of deference, when they all should have turned their backs and made his experience uncomfortable?

[I know, I know, because then his bitch ass wouldn’t have done the thing and they wouldn’t have been able to record their episode.]

I wrote a piece yesterday about doing what moves the needle. Social media rants feel good and keep people fired up, but the actual quantifiable impact to our communities is negligible. And yet we have these perceptions of these people: that social media caricatures are some kind of Resistance Leaders.

Sometimes it’s accurate. is literally out here on the front lines at detention center protests around the nation and on the ground in Washington, DC, frequently. That’s where I met him, on the National Mall before a march. That’s a guy who is walking the walk and live streaming it on social media to fire us up.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about alllll the talking heads, the political influencers who happen to be predominantly conventionally attractive (and white). The ones with witty and cute skits, portraying Satan welcoming various Republicans to hell or mimicking Karoline Leavitt or hollering exactly what we want to hear in familiar southern accents, those who are now being paid by shadowy organizations like Chorus, posing in designer “activism” sweatshirts that retailed for upwards of $300, and going to cocktail parties with Chuck Schumer— those creators who poke fun at all the people we hate and look damn good doing it.

Are they moving the needle?

They’re entertainment and they keep up morale. They make us laugh, and I’ll never discount what that’s worth in times like these. But I fear they’re there to make a lot of people feel like they’re part of “the resistance” because they fiercely speak up in the comments section of their favorite beautiful influencer’s videos. [Insert power fist emoji.]

And that doesn’t move the needle at all.

In fact, it does the enemies’ work by keeping us staring at a feed, scrolling, power-fist-emoji-ing our way to fascism in our designer activist duds. ✊🏼#powertothepeople

I’m tired.

You’re tired. I know it. We’re all tired. Steve Bannon told us years ago that this was the plan. A total assault on the senses to overwhelm the average American into submission. Exhausted compliance. “Flood the zone.” I am loathe to admit how well such a simple, ancient tactic has worked.

In my region, hundreds of thousands of people are hamstrung by their personal connection to the federal government. Strict rules govern not only the political speech of active duty military personnel but that of their spouses and dependents, federal government employees, their spouses and dependents, and those gag orders have only gotten stricter and more enforced over the past eighteen months. So there’s a healthy chunk of the residents here who literally can’t go to a march, rally, or protest, who may not even be able to speak at their City Council meetings or submit a Letter to the Editor or do so much as post their true feelings on social media. Even disabled veterans are getting nervous about political speech as it may threaten their disability rating under this petty, vindictive McCarthyistic regime.

All that said, I don’t know what the energy on the ground is like in other cities. Here, it is muted, muffled, and afraid. Our entire local economy rests on the back of the federal government, and that is absolutely no exaggeration. This keeps it tempered.

What’s it like where you are?

So we know that social media comments and once-a-quarter public rallies aren’t cutting it. So what can a working gal, or guy, do to contribute to “the resistance” while doing their best to make ends meet?

It’s all in the little things.

And I mean little.

Where do you buy your soap? And what brand do you buy?

What about clothing? Tomatoes? Screwdrivers? All the necessities of life, small or large. When you go out to eat, where do you go? Sysco-fueled chain restaurant or a local spot that serves food from local farms?

I get it that these decisions cost money. Who said the resistance would be cheap… or easy? Who said that? Who said we aren’t going to have to sacrifice, and deeply, to starve these massive corporations to their fucking knees?

Some people believe the discomfort of resistance is purely physical: hiding behind barricades in the streets inhaling pepper spray and physically fighting off federal agents. Oh no, no, no. That makes for excellent Broadway material (and it is vitally important and necessary in the overall portfolio of a robust resistance), but the day-to-day deep, lasting, and impactful work that moves the needle are the decisions historically made by hundreds of thousands or even millions of housewives to boycott a certain store, butcher, or seamstress, either for their actual action (turning in their neighbors, calling the authorities on others) or for their loud political beliefs; to shun, and to shame while financially starving them.

They shame them and they boycott them financially.

Humans are social creatures and while it may feel good to connect with likeminded people online, at a fundamental level, we want to be more or less on the same page, morally and ethically, with our immediate physical tribe. The men, women, and children who live right around us are our actual tribe, whether we like it or not. If the grid fails, who will help us or come for our resources? Our immediate neighbors.

We live in a historically working class neighborhood. According to the elders I’ve spoken to, the community used to be very active and close, but there hasn’t been a block party in over two decades. We haven’t had an active civic league in nearly the same amount of time. Our immediate tribe has changed a lot as elders have died and their families chose to rent out their homes or sell, meaning quite a bit of military families have moved in, some short-term renters, some long-term buyers, and the demographic of the neighborhood has shifted.

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What some of our neighbors may not know is that we not only have a sitting School Board member living right here, we also have a Housing Commissioner of Norfolk. That’s right, in our modest little corner of the city, we have access to two main doorways to our local governance. If we are able to stay in our current home, Jodi, the School Board member, and I are going to start taking evening walks throughout the neighborhood once the temperature becomes bearable. She wants to be available and visible to the people here, so if they have a gripe with their kids’ school or the district, they won’t have to make an appointment downtown, they can just wait for her to stroll by that evening.

Call me naive and old-fashioned, but I think that’s basically the way it should be.

She should be open to accountability in real time, where she lives, as should all public elected officials, and I think she’s both wise and brave for making that her mission and her actual lived lifestyle.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, we went outside and found a bookbag and various personal items, including an AmEx, an iPad, and other expensive items, strewn on the far corner of our lawn. It was apparent that some kids had tossed some vehicles, found this bag, realized it was a city employee, and dumped it. They clearly weren’t professional criminals to leave behind expensive tech and a credit card. My husband left for work as I gathered the items and looked at the name. Why, it was our Housing Commissioner. I grabbed the leash, hooked up our German Shepherd, and walked around the corner and returned the items to his front porch, shooting him a message so he’d know they were there.

He responded a bit later, and we had a good conversation. Returning a piece of mail or wrongly delivered package could yield similar conversations.

This isn’t hard.

If you are able, start taking a walk through your neighborhood. Many, many studies have shown that a daily walk has tremendous health benefits, even to extending life by years. It’s the easiest and most accessible workout available to a lot of us. Evening is great because most people are home and some are outside. In our neighborhood, quite a few people sit on the front porch in the evening. This provides the opportunity for on-the-spot conversations with our immediate tribe, and I highly suggest you lean into that. It doesn’t matter if you’re a renter. You live there. Your presence contributes to the community, whether good or bad.

Here’s why this is absolutely critical right now. The social media bros are about to turn on the spigot of radical propaganda that is going to go full bore until and throughout November. They need us to hate each other so we won’t band together against them. So prepare to be riled up to hate MAGA, to be incensed to the point of considering actual violence towards your fellow citizen. MAGA is receiving those dog whistles against us right out in the open right now with accusations of Communism and terrorism flying wildly. If your MAGA neighbor knows you, he might not like your political beliefs but he’ll psychologically be less inclined to, you know, harm you…. or believe you’re a terrorist.

And my friends, the other piece of this is just as crucial. We have got to really and truly reject consumerism. My grandparents (one with an eighth grade education) had a home and super solid retirement and savings and they stored leftovers in Country Crock containers and drank their beverages out of jelly jars. Not as an aesthetic but as “I purchased a food in a glass jar and kept it to drink out of so I don’t have to purchase an everyday drinking glass”. They had nails, screws, nuts, and bolts stored in coffee cans in the garage. They kept everything and used every last penny they invested in anything.

They, and their entire Depression-surviving generation, rejected a lot of consumerism that their kids, the Boomers, fell prey to. Gen X and Millennials are nothing but consumer babies, and Gen Z and Alpha don’t even realize there’s such a thing as existence outside of consumerism. Their anti-authority adolescent rebellion is to shop at thrift stores because mentally they already understand what older generations are just grasping: we are trapped in a sort of feudal servitude due to grotesque consumerism fueled by corporations entrenched in government (which is also how you know we live in an oligarchy).

These are all generalizations across generations and it’s not to shame or blame anyone because we just lived here, right? The incessant marketing seeped into every facet of our existence and shaped our consumerist habits; this is not personal failure but societal conditioning at mass scale.

But now we have seen the bigger picture, the devastating implications of corporations and billionaires buying a nation’s government and using it against its people and vulnerable people around the world, and we have got to starve these corporations if we want any hope of reaching our government to get it back on course. That’s where we are, and we need to really digest that.

So it’s shitty, right? They’ve consolidated businesses to such a degree that if you want certain items, there isn’t much choice except Amazon or a big box store.

In that position, we have to be able to ask ourselves just how much we need that item. Is there an alternative? Now I know I’m going to get a thousand knee-jerk responses with examples of this medical device or that allergen-free item, and of course I am aware that there are extenuating circumstances that require these purchases.

Cutting back your spending with a corporation by 90% is still going to starve them. We don’t have to live in extremes and live without a medical device that’s only available on Amazon. I don’t expect that of you. I don’t think anyone does.

But refusing to purchase anything else sends a message, and that message gets louder and louder with every single one of us who makes this commitment.

The resistance won’t be in the streets for most of us. It will be in our bank accounts. [Where is that account? What do you mean you don’t bank with a credit union yet? WHY NOT??]

In a capitalist oligarchy, power lies with currency. If you are earning or collecting currency, you are holding power in your hands. Every single penny of it has power if every single one of us decides to wield it. The consumer holds the power, and they can actually use it quite effectively if we band together and are targeted, intentional, and relentless in our boycotts.

So here we go, comrades. We are going to do our homework, because y’all, the moment really was two+ years ago. We have to get real and get real now if we want to pull through this. Here are three boxes for you to check off:

1. Commit to one local activity, protest, recurring meeting, speaking at City Council, or just going on a daily walk through your own neighborhood and be intentional about meeting people (say hi, wave, be open to conversation). I have anxiety. This is hard. Beloved, we can do hard things, and we must. If you’re lost on where to begin, go to your public library or their website and check out upcoming events. Search for your local mutual aid group (on a search engine like Duck Duck Go or some other non-Google tool), or your local city’s website.

2. Go through your budget and decide how you are going to strategically weaponize your spending (and saving). Cut the fluff subscriptions. Stop buying from corporate entities unless they have proven themselves worthy of our dollars. Research farmers markets, bonus points for permanent year-round ones, in your area and begin supporting your local farmers by committing a percentage of your grocery budget there. Also look at local international or ethnic markets and support them too. When you eat out, look to immigrant-owned restaurants over chains and support them with your presence and your money. Save your money in credit unions where local people invest in one another.

3. Don’t be afraid to shame those who deserve it. Bring back shaming of Nazis, rapists, child molesters, abusers of every stripe. Reserve your cordial civility for those who deserve it. A snub doesn’t have to be loud or even overly rude, but we must be comfortable verbally and publicly drawing the line in the sand on where our collective moral and ethical boundaries lie (and doing so is going to involve yanking the Overton window back over in the land of reality). Stop doing business with people still openly supporting the regime. Make it hard to be MAGA*. Not dangerous- do NOT mistake my message or put words in my mouth. Violence is never the answer. But civil shaming, social rejection, and boycotts are a must in this journey. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. If your hands are tied, if it’s a workplace thing, the cold shoulder is legal and effective. No warmth for warmongers and fascists.
   *I knew I told you above that getting to know your neighbors means the MAGA ones too, and now I’m telling you to utilize the cold shoulder. I trust you’re mature enough to make that discernment from situation to situation. If I walk up to a restaurant (this happened recently) and they had Trump paraphernalia in the window, we’re not going inside and patronizing them. That’s a boycott and a cold shoulder that makes it hard to be MAGA as a business owner. One of our MAGA neighbors I would be comfortable inviting over for a meal and attempting a conversation. Another one, I would never. He literally seems unstable in general and is unduly aggressive. This is a situation where I keep my respectful distance. This moment in our society requires you to sharpen your discernment and be willing to hold conflicting spaces simultaneously, to be open to reasonable conversations with neighbors with conflicting opinions but to still firmly and clearly hold your own moral and ethical lines. [Part of MAGA propaganda is telling them that liberals and leftists have no moral and ethical lines, that we are heathens, hedonists, anarchists to our core with no sense of right or wrong. Showing them that we do, in fact, have quite strong morals and ethics, in personal settings helps to clear the fog of the Fox News propaganda.]

Gil Scott-Heron told us that the revolution will not be televised. It’s not glamorous work. It will be a long and tedious slog full of micro-decisions that can add up to an avalanche if we coordinate, communicate, and strategize. Press that heart for your favorite influencer, and then get out and make your own resistance plan. Together we rise, one dollar and conversation at a time.

That’s it, friends. Consider this your marching orders if you’ve been wanting to do something and haven’t known where to begin. This is where you begin.

I’ll see you out there, and as always, I am yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation. Click here to support my family during our recent series of struggles.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

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She sits behind me everywhere we go.

I say she’s a she because she’s coy, cunning, smooth, and elusive. She is feminine energy, sharp and protective.

I have gone and stood in front of bodies of power and spoken my truth. I have published under my real name and done countless videos uncensored, my face to the world. I have been before ICE agents who called me by name and I stared them down. I have acted brave to the world. And then I would go get in my car and she’d be in the backseat, reminding me that my location services are on. Geolocation’s got me at that meeting or rally. Pointing out every breach in my security, like I was back on duty.

She is my Fear.

I plunged into this New World headfirst, fiercely writing and reporting and protesting and covering protests and printing zines and pushing back. I was loud. I believed so wholeheartedly in the thin veneer of freedom of speech, in the ‘rights’ afforded to us in ancient parchment documents, that I foolishly felt protected.

Then the drones arrived.

And then began my education into these United States of America.

I know a person who has in the past been affiliated with the Black Panthers. When the drones arrived, I mentioned it to them. They leaned back and cast their eyes down upon me, looking me dead in the face for a long minute before inquiring what it was I was “into”. I told them of the articles, the protests, the videos, and their head began to swing back and forth.

“You’re doing too much, you’re doing too much. That’s what draws attention more than anything. Is it moving the needle?”

Their eyes met mine with a piercing expectation.

I thought. I don’t have a huge audience. If I had to estimate my readership, I’d say a few thousand people have read and do read on a semi-regular basis the words I have to say. The government’s secrets they want me to keep. The public records most don’t read or see. But at the moment this conversation happened, I was being given a platform to reach many, many more readers. Hundreds of thousands. I shrugged, “Depends. I’ve been working with that media company… you know I told you about… so they have a bigger following. Some of my stuff has been published out to at least a few hundred thousand.”

Their eyes glared at me. “Well. Do you think it moved the needle?”

I knew damn well what they were asking.

Did it make anyone get off their couch and go join an ICE Watch team? Did it make anyone register to vote or check the status of their registration?

Did it make anyone actually engage in the actions required for a healthy, functioning democracy or did it just monger more fear and keep people frozen?

We don’t have a column for that in the Substack stats reports at present. “Democratic engagement click-thru rate”… LOL. I wish.

And I knew damn well what they were saying.

I would have way more actual impact by actively engaging in my community. In a real way. In a “let’s knock on dozens of doors to get an awesome woman elected to School Board” kind of way. In a “boring”, routine, Breakfast Program kinda way.

The drones came back some more, and I actively worked in my community some more. In March, an ICE agent called out my name from the loudspeaker of their vehicle. Three days later, I went in front of City Council. I looked like shit because I’d barely slept, but I’d practiced that three minute speech for four hours that day. I delivered it. Delivered it well, I might add [FF to 35:08 in the video below].

Afterwards, I got in my car. That bitchy Fear sidled right up to my ear and whispered, “I hope it’s worth it. I hope it’s allllll worth it.”

Days later, I had a cardiac event. She was there, shaking me to my core. Panic attacks came in waves.

The last video I have of the drone is from February 24 at 7:51 pm… just as I was arriving home, as per usual. I spoke to City Council on March 10 and then my work on Flock dropped off entirely. I did what a concerned citizen is supposed to do: I took my grievance to my duly elected representatives and handed it to them.

Those Council members couldn’t be bothered to even acknowledge the citizens that night; they just gathered their papers and left abruptly after our comments. Two months later, they stifled free speech by restricting citizen comments to one individual per topic. Only one person may speak about Flock every month.

Our local lawsuit failed, the federal judge sided with the City, and it felt like a dismally lost cause.

I turned 44 mere days before all of this. I was struggling with health issues and chronic pain from an old Navy injury. After March 10, I turned inward. I focused on my health. I focused on my hyper-local community. I focused on planting a garden and growing food.

But damn if she’s not still here. Igniting my anxiety.

I have watched, even in the “mainstream news”, as story after story demonstrates that everything I predicted over the past three years has come to pass or is on the verge of doing so. So very many Americans are shocked and horrified even though we told them years ago this was coming and they just refused to believe it.

We all watched, in real time, as an entire people were annihilated on live stream. We’ve all seen more abject horror than we were ever designed to process. The internet made the world very, very small for sheltered, privileged people like us, and it has been a constant punch to the gut.

And we know, through so much proven evidence, that the technology used to target and mass murder in Palestine is being introduced here in our nation. Rapidly.

When I saw that drone rise out of the tree line by my home several times over the fall and winter of 2025-26, I didn’t see a harmless ALPR or camera drone, I saw the autonomous drone used in Ukraine and Palestine to precisely target and murder anyone.

The technology is one and the same. Only a fool would believe otherwise.

Seeing a drone over traffic or a public park is unnerving enough. Having one greet you when you pull in your driveway? I can’t explain to you the chill that comes over you.

My mother’s Social Security was slashed and I was “randomly” removed as her legal Representative Payee. I don’t think it was an accident. I think it was, after the drones, the clearest warning shot they could send me.

“We won’t just fuck with you. We’ll fuck with the people you love.”

The drones wouldn’t just be targeting me.

I have a young child here. An elderly disabled woman on Social Security. Young adult children. A husband. Friends.

So I’m sufficiently chilled.

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I remember the drill instructors in our faces, their spittle flying, as we did pushups and sit ups to the cadence of those words.

Up- “I”
Down- “Am”
Up- “A”
Down- “United”
Up- “States”
Down- “Sailor”

That’s a lot of pushups to get through the entire creed, so you’ve really got time to internalize those words as you repeat them hundreds of times throughout basic training.

I have them hanging in my hallway, right by the kitchen. I pass them many times a day.

Honor, Courage, and Commitment. The Honor to recognize when something’s not right. The Courage to expose it. The Commitment to see it through.

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

There’s no expiration date on that oath. It doesn’t end with your contract. It ends with your breath.

My fear does not control me. She is there as a Mama Bear, watching out for my kids, my mom, my husband, my home. She reminds me every day of the price of continuing to honor the oath I took and exposing unconstitutional abuses of power.

And we need that, right? It makes us sharper, safer, more cautious. It lends a gravitas to what is quickly becoming the sacred work of saving our nation, one concerned citizen at a time.

I am moving ahead cautiously with sharing my experience with Flock, and ICE, with a local team of investigative journalists who are producing a high-quality, in-depth dive into government surveillance and other impacts of this administration on the “average American”.

Although my voice shakes, I am still speaking.

Meanwhile, my family and I are staring down the barrel of housing insecurity after sudden tragedy. We’ve rented a large house for many years- we weren’t sure we wanted to purchase such a big house but needed it during our six kids’ teenage years and it’s served us well. Our landlord is great and we’ve had a good working relationship. Her husband died suddenly last week, and her knee-jerk grief reaction was to immediately want to divest of her non-primary properties. We have to scramble to either pull together resources to purchase this home, or uproot and move our family of nine with very little notice (also an expensive and chaotic venture).

This has been a pretty rough year for us, but we are massively privileged and blessed that we are all safe and healthy and we don’t take that for granted for one minute. We’re just an average American family, doing our best to make ends meet, keep one another safe, and striving for our dreams and falling somewhere close to reasonable satisfaction in the pursuit of happiness. If our [white] family can find itself in the crosshairs of an aggressive government surveillance, any of us can.

The next time my fear whispers in my ear, I am ready to snap back. I’m not doing anything wrong.

Daniel Sanchez Estrada wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Renee Good wasn’t doing anything wrong, nor was Alex Pretti.

We cannot comply in advance, but we can be cautious and smart. We can weigh the impacts of our speech on the internet vs. at home in our communities. An Instagram rant may go viral but actually change nothing (and potentially get you on a watchlist) while a three minute speech to your local city council can literally change your life and that of every resident of your town. Working with local mutual aid groups can empower you to help at-risk communities directly: feeding, clothing, and protecting neighbors may be more in your power to do than you think, but it won’t gain you followers or brand deals. There’s a place for both: just be realistic about in which space you are truly more valuable.

I can do this. You can do this, and you can be as quiet and discreet about it as you want. Just because someone isn’t broadcasting every move they’re making doesn’t mean they’re not making moves.

Recently, my friend and I spoke again. They had seen the video of the City Council meeting. After a lengthy conversation, they leaned back and said, “You know I don’t fuck with caucasians, right? But you? I fuck with you.”

It’s the biggest compliment I’ve received in a long time. Because it means the education is sinking into my brain. It means that I’m one step closer to actually moving the needle.

Be bold, even when you’re scared. Courage is not the absence of fear. As I speak out, my voice still shakes. I am really scared for my family’s financial future. I am scared for our housing situation. I am scared for a lot of reasons, but I have found that when I am quiet, I am still scared. I’m not retracting my work, and it’s already out there. I’m already in this, and I won’t shut it down. Just like our Black friends cannot just “take off” their skin and our LGBT friends cannot just “take off” their queerness, neither should we average cis white folk “take off” our mantle of dissent…. ever.

We’re in this together. And as always, I am yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

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Confession

As a writer, reader, and consumer, I was that classic Liberal White Woman. Oh, to be on NPR. I craved to be Rachel Maddow. My minor in Journalism and lifelong desire to write made me perfectly suited, I thought, to tackle this emerging new field of independent political journalism.

I have come to know myself very deeply throughout a long and sometimes traumatic life. I know when I am in balance and when I am not, and when I dipped my toe into the piranha pond of political journalism, I was buzzed. I thought I had finally made it, a lifetime dream achieved.

I could not have been more wrong.

Wait. Let’s go back.

2023

Rewind to the new, strange time after Covid lockdowns, which had shuttered my business, when I popped open my old Medium account and decided to write something. I wrote a story, about my son, and submitted it to a publication, “Pink Hair and Pronouns”.

That story was the spark that ignited a rush of paid writing that ensued for months. I was writing memoir, mostly, narrative about my own life. Being adopted. Being a female veteran. Being a mom. Being a mom of queer kids. People were connecting. The connection was the real adrenaline rush for me. Here I was, just talking about my life, and people were resonating with it so much. I was getting tons of private messages from people who’d lived similar experiences, who just wanted to share their appreciation of what I do.

What was I doing? I didn’t really get it.

The stories, the vulnerable ones especially, struck people deep in their core. Not a lot of people write so openly about their own experiences, good, bad, and ugly. It captures our primitive attention. I didn’t realize how much my stories were impacting people until I started getting those messages. I began to realize that I was not alone in my suffering— in fact, I actually began to grieve for humanity that so many people have experienced abuse and trauma in their lives.

And because of this very intimate connection based on hurt and wounds, I almost felt guilt for the money I was making because of the traffic my stories were getting (this was when I was on Medium, and the algorithm paid you, essentially, instead of individual subscriptions). It brought up a lot of old memories, because to really write memoir well, you must relive the memory. Over and over, sometimes. It can get raw, and exhausting.

Medium got weird, the pay rates changed, and suddenly everyone was buzzing about Substack. Not wanting to lose this new stream of income my family had gotten pleasantly used to, I reluctantly (months after the big guys) dragged my butt over to Substack and started ‘stacking. And that’s where things began to change.

So back to my love for political journalism… consuming it, that is. I considered myself very well versed in current political events already, and when I saw this burgeoning group of citizen journalists starting to do their thing, actually reporting on news the mainstream media suddenly seemed incapable of, I got really excited.

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Maybe I could do the thing! I could be the hard-hitting investigative reporter I always wanted to be. I did a lot of really deep-dive articles on this regime, mostly to warn people of what was coming. Issues the mainstream news was totally ignoring. I traveled to DC several times, going live from marches and rallies. I had a blast. I was also just indulging my desire to participate on the ground in the protest effort against this president right in his front yard. I wanted to be right there in the heart of it, letting it be known I was never, ever okay with the cruelty of this regime. I was covering known issues, diving into Executive Orders, researching and citing others. Breaking news I was not.

And then one night, with the quiet ‘ding’ of a notification, a doorway dropped into my inbox. A lead on a major story. A military scandal. A national security scandal. Really next level shit. My heart pounded, and I breathed slowly and thought about the best way to handle it (I probably still did not handle it perfectly, but I did my best and I can say to this day that I honored my oath to the constitution I swore 23 years ago). I went through quiet channels for over a month before I broke the story.

I was thrust into a flurry of live videos with huge names (to me) in broadcast journalism to share this story. I met the coolest people, got to speak with legends of journalism, and also serve out my oath… to live my patriotism. Truly. A snapshot moment of my life I will always treasure.

And yet, live videos were a disaster for me: a sensory nightmare, a constant strain on my auditory processing disorder, and a logistical hurdle every single week. If my home was not available, I had to have an office. Renting an office, then realizing the wifi there sucked for lives. It baffled me how everyone else just seemed to flip on their camera and off they went (I know it’s not that easy for anyone and people work really hard and invest a lot in good camera set-ups for this purpose). But this format was taxing me… my writing dropped off, and I began to get really frustrated with what I felt was my own failure to adapt.

The Crash

During all of this, I knew the cliff was coming. I knew the ACA credits were going to expire and we could not afford whatever rate was coming. When it came— $1,372 monthly— I laughed out loud and folded the letter away. That was that. We just couldn’t afford it.

I loaded up on supplements and braced for impact. I remember the day I took my last Wellbutrin, knowing I had not been off this drug for any real length of time for six years. And I knew why I went on it. I remember vividly that black hole of darkness, with the echoes of voices of reprisal and judgment that never shut up. And it did come for me, in a bit of a different way this time. Maybe because I’m older, I’ve seen some shit, even more than before, but I was ready to wrestle with it.

It’s been a rough ride, don’t get me wrong. Hard to get out of bed some days. Cardiac episodes (perhaps related to the cold-turkey cessation of Wellbutrin and other meds). My body just aching and inflamed, reacting to not having the medications I’d used for years. I reached for what has always helped me: real food. Paring back my diet (also forced by the new gluten intolerance), eating lots of vegetables and whole foods. Juices and sea moss gel and that daily shot of apple cider vinegar tonic. Remembering one day at a time who the fuck I am.

A few weeks ago, I shared right here on Substack when it felt like it was overcoming me. The incessant voice telling me what a failure I was, what a burden to my family, and wouldn’t they be better off without me? They could all go and thrive if it weren’t for me holding them back. And then my fall-off on Substack. The heavy guilt of having paying subscribers and not producing enough content for them. The brick wall of writer’s block. The inability to do anything but keep surviving. And here’s where things began to come full circle…

When I made that post as a Note here, you all began to comment. And message me. And text me. And you reached out through this weird ether of internet and lifted me up. You cared for me. You dusted me off and said let’s keep going.

And I began to remember why I was even here in the first place.

Remembering What I’m Here For

Substack makes writers into business people. We have so many stats we can look at. Open rate and click thru and time on page and upgrade rate. And there are so many examples of superstars here whose numbers on those charts dwarf mine. Converting followers to free subscribers and then to paid subscribers. I really suck at all of that. I really suck at cross-posting to four other platforms. I really suck at marketing myself. I really suck at playing the game.

The only thing I don’t suck at… is writing.

Through the past five rocky months, my family has gotten hit from a lot of angles with finances, like the seemingly endless car repairs, then Mom’s Social Security debacle just took the cake. I’m exhausted and my back’s on the wall, so I said, “Hey Substack fam, can you help me up again?”

And you do.

Just since my earlier post, seventeen people have financially helped my family. For no other reason than at some point, my writing made them stop and pay attention. Because my vulnerable life stories resonated. Or they appreciated a political piece.

When I was in elementary school, a teacher looked at me dead in my eyes and said, “Please never stop writing. You have a gift and you should use it.” My senior year of high school, our English teacher gave us an essay homework assignment and secretly submitted them to a scholarship contest in nearby Charlotte, NC. I won. I went on the court at a Hornets game and got a basketball from the team. Writing has always been this unwieldy thing I have, but I’ve never been able to quite tack it down.

Now, I’m not offering medical advice or anything like that. That’s my disclaimer. But now that the Wellbutrin is out of my system, I can see how it’s been fogging my brain for a while. If I had continual healthcare coverage in a decent country, I probably would have discussed this with my doctor along a continual course of treatment and perhaps been weaned off it earlier. Regardless, I have a great deal of clarity now and I feel more “myself” than I have in many years. I remember now how I was the person who solo parented three young kids while getting a graduate certificate from Notre Dame and working full time in my first executive-level position.

And with this clarity has come this realization: the “magic” of coming to the internet to share my writing was when I was writing memoir. When I was sharing my life with the world— pulling a curtain back on the abusive industry of adoption, the difficult realities of female military service, the enraging helplessness of parenting queer kids during a Christo-fascist takeover— the synergy was equal and flowing between me and my audience. The comments and messages and different life journeys these stories have brought to me are what I want my life to be made of.

Writing memoir can be seen as corny, dismissed as emotional nonsense, and not fully embraced by the ‘serious’ literary community. Say you’re writing the next great American novel, and people lean forward in interest, intrigued. Say you’re writing memoir and they ask why? Who are you? You’re not famous. Your life can’t be interesting. And what self-involved drivel to just drone on about yourself. Dismissed with a wave of the hand of the literary elite.

But…. it’s my home.

I can’t write highly charged political content forever. It is never-ending, high-paced, constant, and grueling. I have such a huge amount of respect for people who do it. I realize now just how difficult and exhausting it is, not to mention mentally and emotionally taxing. To never be able to look away from the carnage is a service in and of itself, and for that I am truly grateful to these independent journalists who are killing it.

I brought CounterStory Media here for a reason: to share my life stories and help you share yours. To publish and amplify the stories of life from those who have lived it. To audit societal narratives, one story at a time. To break the spell of the Hallmark adoption fantasy. To claw back the illusions of Christian Nationalism, from someone who was inside that world. To give a dose of reality for the end goal of increasing empathy.

Because empathy is the fucking key, y’all. There’s a reason psychos like Peter Thiel literally demonize empathy. Empathy is really the only thing differentiating us from the animal kingdom, from pure animal instincts and savagery. Empathy is the goal, the vehicle, the message, and the work.

There’s a reason people who still possess a healthy amount of empathy are throwing their weight behind Democratic Socialists now: because they don’t feel that empathy is a cornerstone value of Democrats anymore and we all know it left the Republican party long ago, if it was ever there in the first place.

Empathy is the dividing line between people protesting outside detention centers about the conditions for the human beings inside and those who call the ICE tip line on the men who replace their roof.

And empathy is a direct product of stories. Personal narratives. Folk tales. Historical lore. When we read the stories of a stranger who lived through similar struggles as we have, it connects us and unites us. We realize we have a hell of a lot more in common than we don’t, so we should pull together for the benefit and uplifting of everyone.

I’m here to tell the raw truth, but not as some revenge tour on my adopters or exposé on the shitbags in the Navy, but for the propagation of empathy for the social evolution of humanity.

I mean fuck… isn’t that what we’re all really doing, anyway? Isn’t that the connection we’ve been missing with the advent of the internet and social media? Because nobody puts their raw nekkid truth on social media, we filter and pose everything to frame ourselves in the best light possible. That doesn’t foster real connection and conversation.

Flaws are human, and life is messy.

So let’s just talk about it.

In Conclusion

A couple of years ago, I had a dream to start a writing community to nurture beginning memoirists. To provide a safe space that’s smaller and more intimate than just jumping into sharing with the Whole Wide World. Maybe a structured program, a simple course, to work through in order to get your feet under you and establish your flow, learn the tools of writing memoir, and do so in a caring place (because the comments section of your first public piece probably ain’t gonna be it).

I’d like to revisit this. Let me know if that sounds interesting to you.

Something I’d like you to notice: when we read history books, they are dry and unpersonal. When we read Erik Larson’s nonfiction, we are gripped with the emotions of the people involved. It brings history alive in a visceral way, and it’s because he tells their personal stories.

We are, I hate to inform you, precisely in a Historic Moment. What we’re living right now will be written in dry, dull, flat prose in a history book one day. Our lived reality will be a question on a pop quiz some kid gets wrong and ends up grounded.

Let’s audit the historic narrative being written right now by infusing our actual experiences. Let’s write about how it feels to have the stability of your nation’s bureaucracy yanked out from under your feet. How it feels to be led by clowns and sadists. How it feels to watch helplessly in the rain as a dark-haired man is shoved into a van by armed masked men and whisked away and the remaining agents glare at you and threaten you. For that to be our reality. Something many of us never conceived of in the United States. And then let’s write about the naïveté of white people saying this.

Let’s write about all of it. Let’s record history in real time through our eyes. Let’s write about our fucked-up childhoods and marriages and lives. And let us have the courage to be more real, more raw, more true than those who came before us, for the sake of those who come after us.

My friends, I am humbled and blessed and grateful beyond measure. I feel renewed, re-energized, and optimistic. And I remain, as always, yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee?

In June, we received a letter from Social Security stating that my mother’s monthly benefit would be cut to pay for Medicare Part B, in which she had been enrolled in a state she has not lived for over four years. The Social Security Administration has her correct address, and no one at her prior address received any mail for her, so we are completely at a loss as to how she was enrolled in another state. Until the situation is rectified, which may take several weeks or months, her benefits will be slashed.

My mother takes great pride in supporting herself and providing for her own material needs, and she is devastated and near-hysterical over the loss of those funds. She has certain needs not provided for under Medicare coverage, and she’s been able to meet those needs independently, which brings her great pride and satisfaction.

My young adult children, three of whom live with us, all work, but as economic tensions rise, their hours have been cut (from already far below 40 hours so employers don’t have to provide benefits). For one, requesting more hours became punishment as his hours were slashed to nil for a week. He begins his second job this week, but that pay won’t come for another 2-3 weeks. Another adult child has had recurring extreme eczema that leaves open cracks on the skin and cannot work but has been DoorDashing; they can make their rent but we’ve been helping with groceries. All of our kids are intent to work and have the drive to do so, but have had difficulty finding adequate employment.

I am a Navy veteran, but due to new naming conventions at the VA, since my last name does not currently match the last name from my separation date from the military, I cannot access my VA healthcare. I lost my ACA plan back in January when the credits expired and the premium jumped to $1,387 per month. When I lost coverage, I lost access to prescription medications, including Wellbutrin and hormones, which made my mental health tumble. Ensuing medical issues include a new gluten intolerance and a revived stomach ulcer.

I am primarily concerned with ensuring my mom has a continual flow of income so she can independently meet her needs until her Social Security is restored in full, and ensuring our household doesn’t fall behind on other obligations as my kids’ employment struggles to meet their promised hours. We are traveling on Monday to a nearby Social Security office to insist on an appointment in person to see how to begin to rectify this, and we need one new tire on our vehicle before making a drive like that (it involves driving across the infamous Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, and a flat on that bridge is actually a nightmare of mine).

Every family has stumbles, and we’re hoping this is just a little rough patch as we all work towards increasing and securing income.

You can help our family through this by donating to our GoFundMe here: https://gofund.me/c364b7823

You can also become a paid subscriber to CounterStory Media here:

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You can donate or become a monthly patron at my Ko-Fi here: https://ko-fi.com/itsjustmelissak

For those who are interested, I am finishing up my collection of memoir essays, Finding My Way Home, which I am hoping to have ready for publication by the end of September. This collection details my childhood in an abusive adoptive home, an adulthood that began, truly, on 9/11 leading to my enlistment in the Navy, on to a career in the nonprofit sector before launching my own business and beginning to write for a living, leading up to the moment I got to meet my mom and bring her home to live with us. Your support now helps me focus on this goal. I think this book is important not because my personal story is so incredible, but the experience of an adoptee who was essentially dumped out of a failed adoption is a vitally important narrative to have in our national discourse right now.

My gratitude for your ongoing support can not be overstated. Consider yourself patrons, neighbors, friends, or benefactors, but every person who contributes to me continuing to put one foot in front of the other, to string together words to bind communities across the world, is a blessing to me and to my entire family.

I have some other projects in the works, but I am keeping a lot of my work offline for the security of myself and my family. I do not have sufficient evidence that my mother’s Social Security “accident” was not targeting for my political writing, but that coupled with the drones outside my house kinda makes me wonder. I am taking increased precautions around some of the offline work I’m doing to fight for democracy— I encourage you to do the same.

And as always, I remain yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

Hey y’all!

I’ve been busy, busy in my garden, getting everything squared away. I’ve almost reached the tipping point of the season where caring for the garden is mostly maintenance and patience.

Because of a combination of super concerning factors (prolonged drought, lack of snowpack in western states, fertilizer hung up in the Strait of Hormuz, and the closure of tens of thousands of small farms across the nation), I really buckled down on optimizing my garden this year. This means planting more calorie-dense and protein-packed foods, getting serious about irrigation, and encouraging each of you to consider planting a Victory Garden.

But what “victory”?? To me, “victory” is defined by leveling up in self-sustaining home practices and connecting with local community. Many of my neighbors are elderly and rely on Social Security and small pensions. Last year I was able to deliver some of them fresh produce on a regular basis. That definitely feels like a victory! Turning a $2 seed packet and some dirt and water into food for my community is a huge win!

Food is central to community, as we’ve seen throughout history. We gather around tables, in kitchens, and in gardens to learn the age-old art of feeding ourselves and those around us. I’ve been cautioning for many years, a couple of decades now, that there are far too many people in this nation that don’t know how to cook without opening a box or can. While watching a new generation of young people learn to cook a head of cabbage is reassuring, the fact that they were forced into it because a cabbage was all they could afford is deeply concerning.

And when your government is actively being oppressive and cutting programs for its citizens to access food, then growing food becomes an act of resistance.

So whether you call it a Victory Garden or a Resistance Garden, make no mistake: your time and energy may find few more satisfying and productive results than growing food.

Growing Real Food On A Suburban Lot

Food, gardening, and cooking is an invaluable act of resistance in uncertain and tense political times (and when those political times intersect with rough weather, drought, and climate change, the importance of the humble act of gardening grows to the level of survival). Last year I grew over 600 pounds of food in my suburban yard, and I am shooting for at least 800 pounds this year. With that volume of food, we had fresh produce daily and I was able to share with the four households nearest me.

I’m going to share with you what I’ve planted so far on my 1/4 acre suburban lot, and follow that with my top ten tips for new and veteran homesteaders.

Across four 8’ square in-ground boxes, one large plot (16’ x 20’), and various containers and raised beds I am currently growing:

16 tomato plants; 4 sauce tomatoes, 4 slicing tomatoes, 4 cherry tomato, 4 heirloom varieties (it’s a lot, but tomatoes are excellent for canning and freezing [sauces])🍅
6 okra 🌱
4 eggplant 🍆
4 bell pepper 🫑
2 jalapeno 🌶️
2 thai chili peppers 🌶️
2 pepperoncini 🌶️
6 cabbage 🥬
6 brussels sprouts 🥬
10 cucumber 🥒
10 summer squash 🌱
4 zucchini 🌱
4 spaghetti squash 🌱
2 pumpkin 🎃
4 large potato towers- probably will have six large towers and some smaller grow bags before it’s all said and done 🥔
16 beans; 3 lima bean, 6 pole bean, 8 pinto beans (and a smattering of other beans that came up and I’m not sure of their variety) 🫘
4 sugar snap peas 🫛
variety of lettuces mixed with pollinator flower seeds 🥬
herbs: large in-ground bed of mixed herbs, “kitchen” herbs in pots, and in vertical garden
6 strawberries 🍓
🪴🌱🪴🌱🪴🌱
Second round of seeds have been started and are just sprouting:
2 watermelon 🍉
2 cantaloupe 🍈
sunflowers 🌻
2 kale 🥬|
2 bok choy 🥬
4 broccoli 🥦
lots and lots of marigolds and flowers 🪷🌸🌺🌼
🌞🌞🌞🌞

Because I recycle some of the dirt I use when potting plants, I have at least a dozen “volunteer” plants… dormant seeds in last year’s soil that have popped up in the containers. I’m going to carefully dig those up and pot them and place them on a table in my front yard with a sign encouraging neighbors to grow their own… I’ve got several tomato, squash, and cucumber plants that have come up this way.

I also have several extra plants from extra-prolific seeds that I’m taking to my daughter’s school for their garden, whose yield will be donated to the local food bank.

Tips and Tricks

Here are some things I’ve learned that I can share with you so you don’t have to learn the hard way!

1) Irrigation.
INVEST IN IRRIGATION. Whether it’s a setup of soaker hoses attached to timers, or rain barrels with drip systems, getting your irrigation sorted is going to be the most important part of your garden journey, especially this year. This drought is no joke. Investing in rain barrels will surely pay off, especially over years of use.

2) Use great dirt.
I am obsessed with all Fox Farms products, but there are some local nurseries that sell their own blend and they’re awesome, too. Your local nursery is more likely to blend compost and soil specific to your region, so it’s worth checking out.

**Note, this is another side tip: if you have a bad back, like I do, invest or scope out thrift stores and free posts for a decent wagon. It makes my job a lot easier if I can pull large bags of soil, sand, and rocks rather than attempting to carry them around my property. While you’re at it, also get a hat. You’re going to get more sun than you think you will.

3) Compost.
Get whatever size composting bin you can fit on your property and use it religiously. I potted my seedlings in medium size pots with sand in the bottom, a layer of my own compost, and then Fox Farms Coco Loco soil, and they are all growing like gangbusters. Getting seedlings a great start during the first six weeks of growth is the best thing you can do for your garden, and having your own compost is an excellent way to do that!

4) Creativity.
Plant food in buckets. Plant them in bowls and bricks and literally anywhere you can think of. It doesn’t have to look pretty if it grows edible food. Look at the sides of your house… which external walls get lots of sun? Buy some bean seeds and twine from the dollar tree and string them up on that sunny wall. Don’t just look at the ground space you have available, look at every place the sun hits your house and find ways you can plant vertically.

Below is my first (of many, to be sure, because of the low-effort nature as well as the sound of trickling water through the day… love it!) self-sustaining vertical garden. I took a metal tub I already owned, bought a solar-powered pump, a $10 48” pipe, a $2 elbow, $6 shower arm, and $9 4” rain shower head, and stackable planters from the Dollar Tree ($1.25 each). I’ve used water loving plants like strawberries, cilantro, chives, and parsley, and since the pump is solar powered, as long as it has water, this garden comes to life every day when the sun hits it and it provides continual water for the duration of the hottest part of the day.

No electricity. No irrigation to run. Just a simple loop that can save a household a couple hundred bucks over a season if they cook and eat at home a lot. Can be customized with all herbs, lettuces and greens, or all strawberries. I like a mix because strawberries are heavy feeders… herbs less so.

Best part: I can just squirt a little plant food in the water at the bottom and it will get distributed throughout. It really can’t be easier.

5) Patience and attention.
While you must be patient when growing plants, you also have to pay attention. Yellowing leaves may mean it needs more water, has too much water, or needs nitrogen/food. Stick your finger in the dirt to eliminate the first two, and put a regular reminder on your phone’s calendar to remind you to feed the plants on a regular basis… or, another point…

6) Companion planting.
Growing certain plants together can maximize resources and minimize how much you need to add to your soil. Growing beans next to tomatoes, cabbage, squash etc. works because the leafier plants need nitrogen and bean plants provide it. I like to plant the crops I know will grow large first, let them get their roots in for a couple of weeks and start to spread, then plant their companion plants around them. Marigolds, garlic, and onions throughout the garden helps deter pests, as well.

7) Let nature do its thing.
Sometimes something just really takes off in a certain area. I have a hefty patch of lemon balm and another of oregano. Neither are necessarily where I’d like them to be, but who am I to argue with where nature put them? Both are herbs with medicinal qualities as well as culinary uses, so they are very valuable and I’m glad they’re thriving so they’re staying right where they are. Likewise, I won’t be attempting to grow hearty plants in a particular box in my front yard which is very shaded… I threw some shade-loving flowers, mint, and Columbine (a native plant) with a small birdbath in that box to be the pollinator box. I also scattered some lettuce seeds so if they grow it’s a bonus but if not, the box will still serve a very valuable purpose in the overall ecosystem. Speaking of which…

8) Pollinators.
Add flowers throughout your garden, as well as small birdbaths with rocks in the basin, to attract and provide a comfortable environment for pollinators (birdbaths don’t need to break the bank- a bowl on a log or stacked bricks works just fine). Our little pollinating friends need pollen but they also need water and a place to rest! Focus on native plants here; they’ll grow without much effort and local bees will seek them out.

9) Calorie counts!
When you’re planting an actual kitchen garden, look at the calories of what you’re planting. We are doing tons of beans, squash, okra, and potatoes, which are all dense calorie and protein packed foods. Also, it might go without saying, but plant what your family actually eats!! But this year more than any other, with an ongoing drought, a shortage of fertilizer, and the closure of thousands of small farms all before the summer agro season has even properly kicked off, if you’re investing in a home garden, make it the most bang for your buck!

10) Get free supplies.
Download the app Freebie Alerts on your phone. This app compiles every post for free stuff from Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, Nextdoor, etc. People give away garden supplies quite frequently. Many of my tomato cages were free from a posting last year. People also post free seedlings and plants, as well as compost, mulch, and topsoil. You can save a ton of money by acquiring these resources from people who need to get rid of them, and you can also use it to post your own to contribute to someone else’s garden!

And the final and most essential rule is to have fun! I love bringing a speaker outside and listening to some music while I’m doing the more labor-intensive tasks, or sitting in the shade really quietly and just being still- sometimes pollinators, including beautiful Monarch butterflies, will come through in those moments of quiet.

Whether you can only manage a few containers on a sunny balcony or a robust rowed garden, growing plants from seed is an age-old meditative activity; growing edible food adds another layer of motivation and energy. And whether you call it a Victory Garden or a Resistance Garden, I am here right with you, fighting aphids and fascists the entire way.

As always, I remain yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

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Hey y’all,

I was as shocked as anyone to read the 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy that dropped unceremoniously on May 8, 2026, and it read more like some conspiratorial manifesto than any serious document or plan for our federal government.

But the direct and odious mention of “radical transgender ideology” stopped me cold in my tracks.

Twice within this document we see a mention of transgender ideology, and while many are saying this is not worth outrage, I absolutely beg to differ.

We’ve seen a slide in rights, protection, and treatment of transgender people in the United States over the past decade. I’ll share a personal story to exhibit this marked decline in the standing and treatment of transgender individuals by our federal government.

After I left the Navy, I worked as a government contractor for the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Still worked on base, just in a building instead of a ship and I wore a suit instead of a uniform. I still reported to the Department of Defense.

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One of my coworkers was trans. This was in 2008. She mentioned that there may be an issue with the bathroom because she didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable (note: no one had said anything- no women nor any men- about her using either bathroom, but she just wanted to make sure everyone was comfortable).

Just like that, leadership said no problem, and within six weeks, a small utility closet right off the work floor was turned into a single bathroom, just like a half bath in a private home.

So to be clear, in 2008, a trans person worked for the federal government, specifically the Department of Defense, and when the bathroom question arose, they (the Department of Defense) simply spent a few hundred bucks to convert a utility closet into a single unisex bathroom, and business carried on as usual.

That’s. It.

There was no big deal, no issue, no protests, no loud drama… just a bathroom for a valued employee. And it actually benefitted the entire office. The regular bathrooms were a bit of a walk from our work floor, and this was right by our desks. Pregnant women (as I was at the time) and even men with IBS and other medical conditions massively benefitted from having a bathroom right by our desks.

Imagine this scenario in 2026. It would be front page news, and the employee may face termination if not some extended legal battle… over a toilet. We are actively going backwards at lightning speed! Every bit of it is concocted faux outrage for political purposes, but it is actually causing violence against trans people in real life.

And now our President has released a document wherein he specifically names transgender people with the solemn threat: “We Will Find You, and We Will Kill You.”

WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

This document attempts to connect the murderer of Charlie Kirk with transgender ideology here1:

This document is radically dangerous because there is no quantification of assertions of “violent secular political groups”[sidebar: secular?? As in… not Christian?? What the fuck is that??] and it falsely draws a connection between the transgender community and the murder of Charlie Kirk. And just as a reminder, Charlie Kirk was not an elected official or beloved national leader, he was a racist podcaster who said horrific things about his fellow American citizens. The people who assassinated civil rights leaders were steeped in white supremacist ideology, and yet no President has ever specifically targeted those people or groups in a federal counterterrorism document.

We’ve been sliding down a steep slope with trans rights in this nation, and this document pushes us way, way down that slope. We are nearing rock bottom.

There have been five murders of trans people in the United States just since March 1, 2026, one of them in my state a mere hour or so from where I, and my trans family member, live. I will list their names and photos so they are recognized and not forgotten as nameless statistics:

Lucas Redbeard Knapp – Cibola County, New Mexico, April 18, 2026. Age 39.
Aleanna Royal Belcher – Binghamton, New York. April 17, 2026. Age 31.
Dannielle Spillman – San Francisco, California. April 16, 2026. Age 74.
Davonta Curtis – Chicago, Illinois. April 5, 2026. Age 32.
Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-Mccray – Petersburg, Virginia. March 13, 2026. Age 42.

And remember, these people were all murdered before the President himself issued a formal declaration of an intent to murder those espousing “transgender ideology”.

If there has ever been a moment in time to stand up loudly and vigorously against this defamatory threat against the transgender community, it is now. I mean, it truly was five years ago, but now we need your voice more than ever.

Contact your elected officials about this Counterterrorism Strategy and bring their attention to both the Christian Nationalist-coded use of the term “secular” as well as the intentional targeting of the transgender community. This document needs to be removed and edited to represent a more accurate and appropriate summation of the actual threats against the United States at this moment in time.

But then again, that would place the man who signed it directly in the crosshairs. Because the greatest and most imminent threat to our United States in this moment is the President himself.

Stand with your fellow Americans right now. Because when they come for someone else and you say nothing, who will speak when they come for you?

As always, I remain yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee?

Hey y’all!

As I review my stats since I began writing “full time” a few years ago, May is always my lowest month in terms of online output. It’s because I’m busy putting in my garden for the year (with the help of the whole family!). Every day is some task, whether prepping a new bed, turning and dividing compost, repotting seedlings, repairing fences, gates, etc., building new boxes, and every year I try something new, horticulturally, so that’s a learning curve. This year I’m working on incorporating more hydroponic growing to utilize vertical space on our limited property.

I’m also learning an entirely new way of cooking and eating without gluten this year, which ain’t all bad… last night I made pupusas with a quick curtido (pickled cabbage slaw) and they were insanely good. That’s gonna be on the regular rotation, but the process of learning new recipes is pretty time consuming.

My priorities this summer:

☑️Complete my collection of memoir essays and do my best to get it published by fall. Here’s the cover, and within a few weeks I’ll have a pre-order site up and running for you…

☑️Keep an eye on current events and bring you the most important issues. Make sure you’ve subscribed to get them as soon as they drop!

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☑️Maximize production of our garden to be able to store up food for ourselves and also share our harvest with our immediate neighbors, most of whom live on Social Security and small pensions. Here’s some of our garden thus far:

☑️Keep building local connections and parallel systems to support our neighbors most in need. If the Suffolk ICE dispatch center is approved, this will take top priority as our community will undoubtedly be inundated. Because of some health issues, I’ve stepped back from some direct action, but in its stead I’ve been working on other ways to support this community, including designing a line of products whose proceeds will go to the Virginia Hispanic Foundation Legal Aid Clinics that provide low cost or free immigration legal assistance.

☑️Keep learning new ways of cooking to utilize our harvest and prioritize diet in keeping everyone in the house healthy.

☑️Enjoy my son’s high school graduation and last summer of being sort of a kid before fall, and whatever his version of adulting looks like, comes around. Two of my sons are hiking a portion of the Appalachian Trail this summer, something that I also did around their age. Watching children blossom into adulthood during these fraught times is a bit scary but also wildly inspiring as I see their moral and ethical centers take root as they loudly and vocally oppose fascism in word, music, and action. They inspire me to keep going, every single day.

This year has been especially difficult. I lost my health insurance at the end of January when the ACA credits expired, and with it I lost my prescription medication. All of them. With other health issues, it’s been pretty sobering and I’ve been forced to slow down and give myself the attention and time to deep healing, getting accustomed to life with no Wellbutrin or hormones, so I’m just raw dogging life right now… which proves pretty damn difficult some days.

I’m also, whether by nature or life experiences, an empath, and the onslaught of horror we’ve witnessed in the past few years has utterly fried my emotional center. My heart is broken into a million pieces for the people around the world who have been plunged into unimaginable suffering because of our nation, our government, our tax dollars. The depth and breadth of the wound to humanity is profound.

Add to all of this the whiplash of conflicting messaging: on one hand: “Don’t let everything negative consume you! Look away for your own sanity!” and on the other, simultaneously: “If you’re a white person and you’re not engaging, if you’re looking away, you’re a rotten, entitled, privileged piece of shit!” is completely mind-bending and difficult to navigate, especially for people for whom self care has already been a struggle to master.

There has not been one single day since Jan. 20, 2025, that I have not looked into the abyss. I plunged myself into it, immersed in documents and executive orders and rulings and memos, and I thought if I brought forward the truth, the shocking facts and realities buried in these documents, maybe I could move the needle, just slightly. What I got was drones outside my house and a fear that is new, icy and raw, when I contemplate risking the safety of my children, husband, and mother for a message that never seems to land on the ears it needs to: specifically, the residents of my city who seem to not care about mass surveillance, abusive and illegal ICE behavior, and blatant, rotten corruption at the core of our city’s leadership.

Yelling into the void is okay. When the void comes and yells back, it’s unsettling.

I believe the next several months are going to be brutal for the US. MAGA is splintering, and some of it over something as absurd as a Trump-branded cell phone. Republicans realize their base is faltering and so they are going to pull out all the stops to swing this election. AI and mass surveillance are growing and spreading their reach by the fucking hour. Flock, Palantir, Axon, and other mass surveillance corporations are digging in hard to establish the framework for a surveillance state that rivals any in the world, and I saw a comment yesterday that chilled me to my core. The Republican base seems to think the mass surveillance network in China is something we need to not only match but “beat” in breadth and scope— they literally see this as some kind of competition and China can’t “beat us” in the field of mass surveillance. This is the ‘party of small government',’ remember…. remember??

Getting in the garden every year is very grounding and healing, but it also admittedly takes away from my work here. (Don’t worry, statistically the autumn months are massively productive for me so if you’ll just hang in there, you’ll get a ton of content come September- October!) As for now, I’ve gotten most of my plants in the ground, so the bulk of my hands-on work is done and I’m coming back to get caught up and figure out what I’m going to write about next.

What I like about Substack is that you all are always here, always supportive, and genuinely understanding and compassionate. As a “social network” goes, it’s the absolute best there is but not because of any feature of the platform, it’s just because of YOU. Aside from a random asshole or Nazi who pops into my comments, the overwhelming response is positive. I can’t tell you how reassuring that is, especially in times like these where we are learning daily how truly awful humans can be.

So stay tuned… I’ll be back in your inbox before you know it, bringing you tidbits of info to keep you informed, educated, and empowered. Thank you for understanding my body’s seasonal rhythms and being committed for the long haul. And as always, I am yours in solidarity…. no matter what.

💜 XoXo

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee?

Hi friends, just a quick note today:

I’ve had a lot of discussions lately about playing the game as it lies. Here’s what I mean: we currently exist in a capitalist hellscape. I don’t begrudge anyone selling merch or books or other items to either make some cash or spread a message. We have to exist inside this system, and refusing to use the system to our advantage is tactically foolish.

I personally am still trying to figure out my role in all of this, especially with recent cardiac health episodes forcing me to turn away from a lot of the work I’ve been doing.

One thing I can do in a ‘passive’ way is to simultaneously spread a message and raise money for a cause that directly impacts the immigrants in my city and region. The work of Virginia Hispanic Foundation Legal Aid Clinics is to get as many immigrants legal assistance with their immigration cases as quickly as possible. If I’m not making much money myself, I can’t just give them money.

But I can design some products and donate the proceeds of those sales to the VHF.

So I designed this graphic, with every star representing someone who has died in ICE custody since January 20, 2025.

You can purchase these items at my Printify shop, and you can simultaneously support immigration legal aid and get an item that you can use to strike up a conversation. Tell people every star is a person who has died in ICE custody since Trump’s second inauguration. Tell them what’s going on with DHS and ICE in this nation. Tell them about the concentration camps.

Tell them about the pregnant girls.

Here are the items (T-shirt, hat, car magnet, flag, and bumper sticker), and here’s the link to the shop.

All proceeds will be donated to the Virginia Hispanic Foundation Legal Aid Clinics.

I’m still trucking along, writing and reading and doing what I do. I’m building my garden for maximum output and enjoying spending time outdoors.

I’m working on my collection of memoir essays, and I’m still intaking way too much news to be healthy but I have to keep myself informed or I go bananas.

I appreciate your continued support, even as I shift gears and lanes into a new way of working.

And as always, I remain yours in solidarity,

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My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee?

Good morning friends,

When I thought of potential titles for this piece, The US Broke My Heart was a strong contender. As was One Headline From A Heart Attack, but who really knows what gets someone to open an email. Regardless of a quippy title, I’ve been dealing with a heart that has been pushed to its limit one time too many. Forced by palpitations, racing pulse, dizziness, faintness, chest pain and tightness that appears suddenly, I’ve had to rethink so much.

When I was 8 years old, I wrote PRESS on an index card, stuck it in the band of my granddaddy’s fedora, and pretended to be an investigative reporter. As the years passed, I wrote for the school paper, the college paper, and several other publications and papers through the years, ever reaching to realize that childhood dream. I had children along the way, which limited how much I could just drop things and run to investigate breaking news. It kind of always felt like I could return to it when I was able. One day…. some day….

For those of you who haven’t read a lot of my work, especially prior to January 21, 2025, I write a lot about my childhood, like how I was cycled through eight foster homes before being adopted into an abusive adoptive home. I’ve spoken before about Dr. Bruce Perry, who has done extensive research and written several books on the impacts of early childhood trauma on a child’s developing brain. He noted that the brains of kids which were constantly washed in cortisol and adrenaline as fight-or-flight took hold during traumatic events were noticeably, physically different. Some were smaller, some had lesser-developed portions of the brain, but all showed literal physical signs of stress that impacted development.

Recently, it was brought to my attention that the cardiac systems of people with early childhood trauma show similar damage. The racing pulse and pounding heart that accompany those fight-or-flight instincts can and do cause stress and damage on the tiny, developing hearts of children in duress.

I have continued to pay the price for the choices of the adults around me during my earliest years of life. The brain damage done by excessive childhood trauma has granted me access to the Complex PTSD club, as well as the ADHD and autism branches of that club. Because, you see, I do not have “classic” ADHD or autism. Medication would help ameliorate the symptoms of those conditions, and yet it does not. Because the symptoms I have that mirror those diagnoses are caused by the altered brain development, not by the classic chemical imbalances that respond to medication.

Now I’m finding out just how much my cardiac health has been impacted, and it’s deeply troubling.

I’ve taken measures to be reasonably healthy my whole adult life. I have a child with a kidney condition, so sodium has always been moderated. We eat whole grains, green vegetables, lean meats, very little processed food… the whole nine. I never acquired a taste for energy drinks or excessive caffeine consumption beyond a couple of cups of coffee a day. I guess it’s a good thing I took these measures, because if my cardiac health is in the place it’s in with these dietary measures, I reckon I could be much worse off if I hadn’t been so cautious with my diet over the years.

So.

What now?

If doing the work I’ve been doing, the work I’ve wanted to do my whole life, of being a “hard hitting investigative reporter” literally makes my heart go haywire, what now? If the direct work I do in my community, like observing and staring down ICE, makes my head spin and breath go shallow as my chest tightens, I’m not an asset in that situation. I’m a liability.

It is not my work ethic or skills or capabilities that are keeping me from fulfilling what has been a lifelong dream, it’s my heart. The same heart that drives me to do work that may put the slightest dent in making the world a better place. The same heart that drove me to work in nonprofits for peanuts for years. The same heart that wants nothing more than to witness the realization of an equitable, just society during my lifetime is threatening to go haywire if I keep pursuing the work of making it happen.

Part of the same big series of tests that found the cardiac damage and high cholesterol also revealed, much to my surprise, a gluten intolerance. I used to own a cottage bakery, just to put in perspective how much I adore gluten. But I’m desperate to feel normal and healthy, so no problem. I cut out gluten immediately and lo and behold, I do feel significantly better. The aches and pains are diminished and I have more energy.

I’ve reached out privately to many of those Substackers that I’ve done lives with to discuss this with them and just let them know that I’m refraining from doing lives for a while. I would be mortified if I had one of these episodes on a livestream video, and I don’t think it would be a pleasant experience for those viewing. I’ve been so grateful for the opportunities and the people I’ve met on this platform.

I am a writer. I began writing at 8 years old, when my granddaddy gifted me an electric typewriter and I started writing stories. I wrote an essay about him that landed me a scholarship my senior year of high school, seven years after he had crossed over. I wrote in college, I wrote in the military (for the Navy Times sometimes!), and I’ve written ever since. All I know that I’m good at, really, is writing.

So I’m going to keep writing, but out of necessity I’m not writing about the latest breaking news out of Washington anymore.

I realize many of you subscribed for just that, and for that I apologize.

I still very strongly believe that one of the ways forward from the mess we’re currently in is to keep sharing our personal stories, to grow mutual understanding and empathy, to break down the walls between us.

As such, I’m going to keep driving forward on publishing the stories of others through publications like Served, as well as sharing my life story through a collection of memoir essays I am hoping to have ready for publication by the end of the summer. So much of the MAGA agenda has to do with making sure women and girls are getting pregnant and having babies while simultaneously cutting all funding to assist those women, girls, and babies, which funnels into a seriously disturbing, uniquely American industry: adoption. Basically human trafficking. My memoir will, in part, expose the dark underbelly of the adoption complex and the very real harm that arises from adoption through the eyes of an adoptee who lived it.

(Oh, hey, if you’ve got a chummy relationship with any publisher you think may be interested in publishing this work, I’m open to all connections and suggestions! Otherwise, I’ll be proudly self publishing.)

I’m not going anywhere. I’m still here, just rethinking how I can keep making an impact while keeping my heart and body going for as long as possible.

As always, I remain yours in solidarity,

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My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee?

I had a little time this morning, so I read through the 22 points below, and I had some thoughts. This is by no means an exhaustive dissection of these points, as I don’t think they’re worth a lot of our time, but I did want to point out the obvious hypocrisy and agendas at play here. Without further ado [my thoughts on each point are italicized below]:

Palantir’s 22-point summary of Karp’s book:

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

It’s wild that the automatic assumption of paying a debt must be done through the defense sector. Silicon Valley could pour back into our society to improve the lives of average Americans in countless ways, but Alex focuses solely on the military. Interesting. This opening point puts on full display Alex’s singularity of thought: that the ends to a means must be achieved in some way through violence. Which is, I think, some kind of mental health diagnosis more than a real life philosophy, right?

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

Silicon Valley designed a device so addictive that literally millions of Americans, probably the majority, can not put them down. Lawsuits are proving the innate addictiveness of the devices and their apps. To whom is his ire directed: the companies that designed them to function exactly as they are functioning, or the people utilizing them and falling prey to the addictive design? Hold your own sector accountable… oh, wait, there’s something about accountability below… keep reading.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

No shit, and yet Palantir is elbow-deep in taking away freedoms from the average people who are being surveilled by its technology. So economic growth and security… for whom exactly??

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Hard power must be tempered by moral compass, full stop. Disregarding moral appeal to develop hard power using software is how killer robots come to be. Like drones that obliterate people from the sky. Like the ones Palantir has developed and perfected in Gaza. Alex doesn’t just want “something more than moral appeal”, he wants moral appeal gone altogether.

Also, soft power is precisely what achieved the “peace” Alex mentions in a point below of nearly a century with no world war. The establishment of USAID and its offices globally, which was a soft power, did more for peace than any gun or bomb ever did. But Alex just can’t accept the overwhelming evidence that proves that because it’s not violent enough for him.

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

Oh, so because our enemies won’t use any moral guidance in the development of murderous technologies we shouldn’t either? This is a classic Mom-ism: if your adversaries jumped off a bridge, you would too? Or you would race them to jump off first?? Israel can not draw the moral line for the world for the development of technologies or we are all walking ghosts at this point, but that is unfortunately exactly what is happening. This point in particular demonstrates Alex’s lack of maturity in thought.

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

Easy to say by someone who never served. Vietnam is an excellent case study for what happens when unwilling men are put into battle. Friendly fire is only one of the dangers that awaits. Put guns in the hands of Gen Z and see what happens…. even Alex Karp isn’t ready for that smoke, which is why he writes this as a total outsider, a non-veteran, and someone with more experience in Call of Duty than any type of real military experience. Forced military service never works out, and for the nation who demands it, it risks developing a population of mindless murder bots (see: Israel).

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7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

Enlisted servicemen and women have been asking for better equipment for decades, but we’ve also been asking for better healthcare and preventative measures to avoid the need for healthcare at all (first Agent Orange, then burn pits— what’s next?). But somehow, when the vast majority of military veterans are speaking out against Palantir and its intimate involvement in our defense department, then you don’t want to listen to military people, eh, Alex?

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

I think the general public would be more sympathetic to the $175K salary of our elected representatives if they themselves made even half of that on average. But we don’t. So it’s still a slap in the face to talk about the salaries of our federal workers and elected officials when the federal minimum wage won’t buy a combo meal at a fast food joint. I wonder if Alex even knows that a lot of Americans go into federal government work because it does pay better than a lot of “civilian” jobs, it was [pre-DOGE] considered more stable and secure, with better benefits and retirement, and thus was chosen because it was a better package than working in private sector.

If he thinks federal workers are paid poorly, wait until he finds out about the average civilian pay!

And it seemed that Alex really supported the work of DOGE, which FIRED hundreds of thousands, total, of federal workers… how’s that factor into compensating them more??

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

Oh, forgive us for actually having some kind of moral expectations for the people making the most important decisions for our nation.

Is a rapist to be trusted to make healthcare decisions for women? And yet that’s exactly what’s happening… because there has been too much space for ‘forgiveness’, and now we do have a cast of characters at the helm that we already regret.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

Written like someone who exists above the structure the rest of us have to live in. Yes, again, like above, we have basic moral expectations of the people who run our nation because they are making the decisions that impact our quality of life. We don’t “look to the political arena to nourish our soul and sense of self”, we are literally held hostage by it. Our lives are determined by the people make those decisions. Even if we want to look away and stop being involved in politics, that doesn’t negate the impact it has on us. So what’s better, ignorance or paying attention? Alex wants us to look away and be ignorant of it because he himself has that luxury as he resides above the system the rest of us live in. He has the privilege of looking away, and he genuinely doesn’t understand why we don’t.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

Oh, is Alex concerned because a CEO got capped and others are being threatened? Get over it. You’ve made yourself our enemy, and while you on one hand support genocidal maniacs and develop software technologies for the sole purpose of killing innocents, when the crosshairs are pointed your direction, suddenly there’s a moral imperative to slow down and think about what we’re doing?

Get a grip, dude. You’re the guy who fantasized openly on camera about spraying your enemies with fentanyl-laced urine from drones…. where was the “pause” in that scenario?

12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

A new dawn at which you and your cronies sit at the tip of the spear. If you want to talk moral imperatives, you’re holding the bag, buddy.

13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

“Opportunity” which can only be realized if one can grasp the bottom rung of the ladder. Most Americans now are in the deep end with several feet of water between them and that last rung. Corporations like Palantir? Dumping more water by the thousands of gallons per second to widen that gap. But yeah, tell me more about “opportunity”… from a guy who claimed to be “poor” but whose father was a pediatrician. It’s always the ones who have that leg up that they refuse to acknowledge as they cosplay poverty for relatability when their words and actions demonstrate otherwise. People like MAGA fall for that. The rest of us do not.

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

First of all, the absolute erasure of history for the veterans of Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan wars really is astounding. We have not had a “world war” in name, but it’s a fool and a revisionist who claims the past century has been unilaterally one of peace. And it’s really insulting to the allied nations who came alongside us for almost every one of those engagements to pretend that it was solely American power. That’s isolationist bullshit, and it completely ignores the US meddling via CIA that has caused countless conflicts in that span of time.

Alex believes the wars in smaller nations “don’t count”, even and perhaps especially when they are directly caused by the great and powerful US. American power has not “made peace”, it has ended wars. Those are fundamentally different on such a basic logic level that I’m really wondering about this guy’s academic and intellectual abilities.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

Punishment for engaging in genocide must be deep and painful to successfully correct the course for the future of global cooperation. There’s no debate here. Maybe Alex believes the “defanging of Germany was an overcorrection” because he knows that’s what’s coming, eventually, for Israel, unless they nuke everything first. Which just provides more justification for strict and stringent punishment for crimes against humanity… because when left to their own devices and not properly punished, some nations will stop at nothing to conquer all. Nothing. The US is on the precipice of officially becoming one of those nations (most of us believe we’re already there), and it’s becoming clear through this document that Alex just does not want to feel the accountability he so obviously loathes for his participation in the crimes of Israel and the US.

16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

Maybe if Musk, and others like Alex, would resist from inserting themselves forcibly and without the will of the people into our governmental structures, branches, departments, and functions, the people in general would have a more positive and inquisitive nature towards their work. Nobody nominated, voted for, or elected either Elon Musk or Alex Karp. Alex is just another CEO of just another company that’s trying to exert far too much influence and power over an allegedly democratic nation. So yeah, bro, we don’t like you and that inherently makes us less “curious” about your work and the work of other grandstanding narcissistic CEOs like Elon Musk.

Also, this point is just… pathetic. Because we know you’re not talking about Musk, you’re talking about yourself, and you’re literally whining because not enough Americans have recognized and applauded your self-diagnosed “genius”. Alex desperately needs an ego check.

17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

If Silicon Valley wants to play a role in addressing violent crime, all you “brilliant” men can come together to solve poverty, as that remains the persistent sole leading factor in violent crime. Alex, if you’re so smart, why don’t you know that? Or better yet, and more to the point, why do you refuse to acknowledge it? Oh, because you’re an inherently violent person who can only comprehend of violent solutions to societal woes… many of which are caused by men just like you, or now, you directly.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

Accountability matters. The only people shirking from such accountability are bad people who don’t want to be held accountable. It’s wild how there are elected officials who have served for years without a corruption, harassment, or abuse scandal. So when someone does misbehave, they will be held accountable by the court of public opinion, as they should.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

Look back at my last point. Accountability is a good thing.

20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

To what “elite” are you referring? If you’re talking about the leaders in science and tech, they’ve been predominantly atheist, agnostic, or other for basically forever and aren’t so much “intolerant” of religious belief but dismissive of it— they don’t care if you believe so long as you don’t bring those theories into the lab or the classroom. If you’re talking about social elites, like celebrities, why do you care what they “resist”? And why should we all unilaterally be forced to accept religious zealots who actively bring harm to millions of people in the name of a fairy tale book or man in the sky? This points back to accountability, above. You don’t want accountability, period, because if we, the people, truly did decide to hold the religious zealots responsible for the billions they’ve murdered in their fantastical quests, it would be a blood bath. And you’d be on the wrong end of it due to your entanglement with Israel.

In fact, almost every single one of these points begins to look like a desperate man using pseudointellectual speak to avoid accountability for his own crimes against humanity. Palantir perfected their drone tech on children in Gaza. Spare me religious speak, Alex: murder is still the capital crime against people in every single organized religion, so even if you’re hoping for the cover of “God”, you’re up the creek.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

Yo, eugenics much? I’m not even stooping to address this hot garbage.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Globalism and pluralism are the way of the future, full stop. There’s no logical or reasonable debate on this. These isolationists are so deluded in their fantasies. You know what the opposite of pluralism is? Elitism, where power is concentrated at the top. Alex is just saying the quiet part out loud, eh??

So to summarize:

Alex Karp fantasizes, and the Palantir Corp found it appropriate to share, about a world in which power is concentrated at the top among a small elite group where religious ideologies are apparently held to the same accord as science and truth and accountability is nowhere to be seen.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the United States of America is just about at the point of realizing Karp’s dream, but he wants more?? This isn’t enough?? A $7.25 minimum wage vs. a man worth between $13-18 billion dollars, and he thinks pluralism [diversity] is the enemy.

His lack of self awareness is astounding.

And his innate evil is palpable.

But if we want to walk away from this with some kind of optimism, it’s this: confident, self-assured men who know their power is locked in don’t write shit like this— they know their power is secure. I see it as an anxious attempt to sway public opinion by a weak little man who knows his grasp on power is impermanent.

Keep pushing, my comrades. Keep fighting, and keep letting it be known that we do not condone the work of Palantir, we don’t approve of the deep involvement in our government by Palantir and corporations like it, and we will keep holding the fire to the feet of anyone who will listen until they are ousted and men like Alex Karp are in padded rooms squawking about pluralism and how it’s not fair people don’t realize how smart he is.

As always, I remain yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

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I was an IT in the Navy, with a TS/SCI clearance. After I left active duty, I went to work as a government contractor at the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, on both the ‘hi’ and ‘lo’ side (CLASSIFIED network and UNCLASS network).

During much of my time in military and federal service, I was tasked with being the first stop on check-in for many young men and women when they entered the field. I had to issue them their login to their email and internet access and any equipment, and then again when they were leaving the field, I had to reverse/revoke that access and receive any issued IT hardware.

The stories that were shared with me while they sat next to my desk, their eyes zoned out, when they got back from Iraq or Kuwait or wherever… they hadn’t processed that shit whatsoever, it just came out of them. They reported atrocities as if reporting the weather outside.

I knew a young woman, Navy sailor, who was sent to Iraq during one of the Mess Lotteries (when the Army was running short they’d pull from the Navy, and they’d pull names at random and announce who was going by posting the names on a bulletin board in the mess decks). She came back with a gnarly scar, still fresh and pink, on her neck. I was like “WHOA, I’m glad you’re okay!” and then she flatly relayed the day she was shot, turned around and saw it was a child who shot her, so she had to shoot back and “neutralize him” before he shot again.

And then I gave her her username and password and she left my office.

Then there was the information I saw across the screen; the message traffic of all classification levels. From young wives losing pregnancies and having to inform their spouse on board the ship or in the field to minute details of incident reports detailing the ‘accidental’ US assault on a childcare center, I watched the words of the war flow by.

I received a lot of information that way. I was 21-28 years old. I had no way to process that information or respond in any meaningful way. Besides, what could I say? I’m sorry? It was hell. We all knew it was. There weren’t any more words to make it any better.

And now, now that we’re about to do it all over again?

Once again, I find myself at a loss for words. Because there still aren’t words to make it any better.

. . . __ __ __ . . .

The men below are just the people I had some personal connection to during my time in service, or they served in the same squadron I did. I share their names and faces because I want to show the price of war, just a tiny bit.

There aren’t photographs to demonstrate the mental health destruction, and that’s huge.

This is the price we’re paying….

#NoIranWar

On April 23, 2013, my high school friend and classmate Army Spc William Bryant Fersner lost his battle with PTSD at his home. Born in Florence, he was the son of the Rev. and Mrs. Bryant Doyle (Roseanne) Fersner. “Will,” as he was known, was a paramedic with the South Carolina National Guard. He was a graduate of Andrew Jackson High School and attended USC. He was a member of Boy Scout Troop 74 and received his Eagle Scout Award.

Will gave unselfishly and served in the United States Army, serving during the Iraq Conflict. He was a member of First Baptist Church, Kershaw, and a volunteer fireman with the Marion Fire Department.

He left this earth at 31 years old after a mighty battle of many years with PTSD, and he left behind a 7 year old daughter.

This is the price of war.

#NoIranWar

Christopher August Gage was my ride-or-die buddy in my late teens/early 20’s, joining me for local punk shows and road trips, and he enlisted in the Navy after I did. Joining the military as a Navy Corpsman with the 1st Marine Division, he served two tours in Iraq. He passed away on March 16th, 2022 at Caromont Regional Medical Center in Gastonia, N.C. from Stage 4 colon cancer.

Colorectal cancer has been proven to be a direct link to burn pit exposure, of which Chris had plenty. By the time his cancer was found, it was completely throughout his body and he died mere days after the diagnosis.

Incidentally, he died on the anniversary of my first husband’s death, who had also been a good friend of his. I still don’t quite know how to feel about that other than…. devastated. The three of us kicked around town quite a bit. And now it’s just me.

He was the most loving father and husband. He was very fond of a good “dad joke” and making his children groan loudly. Chris was a gaming nerd, who enjoyed video games, Warhammer 40k, and playing Dungeons and Dragons with his family, and we shared a love of west-coast turn-of-the-century punk like The Bouncing Souls.

He left behind him three children and his wife, Ariel.

This is the price of war.

#NoIranWar

Aviation Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Robert Lemar Robinson, a shipmate on board the Ike, died Oct. 4, 2008, aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

AB2 Robinson was struck by an aircraft on the flight deck during flight operations and was pronounced deceased 16 minutes later.

Family said he had a strong love and commitment to them and his friends, adding that he was a loving son and brother and a devoted father. He was survived by his parents, Sherrene and Robert, three children, and three siblings.

This is the price of war.

#NoIranWar

My last duty station in the Navy was with HC-4, the Sea Stallions, a squadron for the mammoth MH-53 & CH-53 helicopters.

The squadron suffered a loss when a helicopter crashed on 16 July 2003, outside Sigonella, and all those on board perished.

The dead included Executive officer CDR. Kevin A. Bianchi, LT. Peter Ober, Aviation Structural Mechanic 1st Class Brian P. Gibson, and Aviation Electrician’s Mate 3rd Class Samuel Cox .

This is the price of war.

#NoIranWar

Another CH-53 helicopter crash caused the death of Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class John D. House, killed 26 JAN 2005. From his obituary:

House 28, of Ventura, Calif.; assigned to Naval Medical Clinic Hawaii, Marine Corps Units Detachment, Pearl Harbor; killed Jan. 26 in a helicopter crash near Rutbah, Iraq.

House was in Iraq when his son was born on Christmas Eve, but he was able to hear little James’ first cries of life over a satellite phone. A few days later, a video hookup allowed House to see him.

But the 28-year-old Navy medic never got to meet his son face-to-face. He was killed, along with 30 Marines, in a helicopter crash Wednesday near the Iraqi town of Rutbah, about 220 miles from Baghdad.

House, who was stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was scheduled to return to the United States next month. He was originally scheduled to return in July, his family said, but remained in Iraq because of a shortage of medics.

In a letter to his family he had written of bonding with his military comrades and of worrying constantly about them, said his mother, Susan House of Simi Valley.

“I know all of them ... even in the dark, by their mannerisms,” he wrote home. “I don’t know how I am going to deal with losing any of them. It is my job to take care of them and keep them safe.”

House, who was on his second mission to Iraq, married his wife, Melanie, in September 2001.

The 1994 graduate of Moorpark High School had enlisted in the Navy in 1998 for the education benefits, his mother said Thursday. He planned to leave the military when his enlistment was up next year, his mother said, so he could spend more time with his wife and son.

This is the price of war.

#NoIranWar

.. -- .--. . .- -.-. .... / -.. --- -. .- .-.. -.. / - .-. ..- -- .--.

In 2023, I began a publication on Medium for the stories of veterans. Only veterans: no “think tanks”, no politicians (unless they are a veteran and telling a related story), no spin, no fluff. The words of veterans themselves so you can see for yourself the price we pay and pull back the veil a bit for civilians.

I’ve decided to migrate that publication over to Substack, knock off the dust, republish the incredible pieces we’ve already run on Medium, and open up for new stories. If you are interested in submitting your piece for publication in Served, shoot me a message and I’ll work with you from a scrap of an idea or memory to putting together a full piece.

If you’re interested in subscribing to this publication, just know that these are going to sometimes be raw, intense pieces that share the brutal realities of war, carnage, mental health, suicide, and more. While it may be tempting to shy away from such material, you also honor the men and women who share their stories by boldly receiving what they so bravely share.

All pieces will be free, but paid subscriptions will help me devote the time to meeting these veterans where they are, assisting with editing, formatting, and wordsmithing, and ensuring their stories are given the due attention they deserve before their publication.

Subscribe now to Served to get stories direct from veterans to your inbox.

Served: The Words of War & Peace

The words of United States military servicemen and women; their stories of war, peace, death, survival, and more.

By Melissa Corrigan, she/her

This war in Iran has kicked up many memories of my own, and since the VA has cut mental health care for many veterans, I know lots of others will be fighting their own memories as our nation engages, once again, in bloody combat in the Middle East.

You don’t have to suffer alone. I am here. If you want to write down your stories and never, ever publish them, we can do that, too. Get a paper journal and write it down. One day you may be ready to share, or maybe never.

But for every story you have, there’s a civilian who thinks they support war, thinks they support combat, and your story may change their thinking.

My mind and heart are heavy today, friends. I remember my comrades in arms, and I share their stories with you so that you may remember and honor them, too.

If you’d like to send a message to this administration, make a sign and join us this weekend at your local No Kings rally.

As always, I am yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

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If you’ve followed my informal notes, you’ll know that I’ve been working on doing ICE Watch in my region, meaning we show up when ICE is out detaining people and we document— we don’t intervene— so we have video and photo evidence of the actions taken. In the pursuit of this, I’ve been personally intimidated by ICE, along with other members of our team.

Because of this, I have really wanted to take a keen look into the environment of the Department of Homeland Security and its affiliated agencies, and when it comes to finding out the truth of these agencies, we have to look to those who have been on the inside. came immediately to mind because, as a former Border Patrol agent, she is a foremost expert in the tactics and history of Border Patrol behavior.

This was a wildly informative hour as we dug through the behavior as trained (which eerily mirrors the behavior of antebellum “slave catchers”), the behaviors that aren’t necessarily trained but accepted, and how dissenters are punished.

Make sure to take time to watch this hour, and then if you haven’t, go watch Critical Incident: Death at the Border. Jenn is featured in this deeply moving documentary about a death at the hands of Border Patrol agents, the ensuing coverup, and the grievous lack of justice for that murder. Watch it now before it gets taken down!

Jenn gave us really good action items: go to your local city/county/municipality and find out what contracts they have with ICE (you can accomplish this with a FOIA request), and then demand they immediately cancel those contracts and don’t spend your taxpayer dollars to work with ICE. Follow the money in your local area to find out who’s working more intimately with DHS/ICE— are there buildings being purchased or leased? Why? Ask questions; it’s your right!

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Make sure you’ve subscribed to Jenn Budd’s newsletter:

Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd

Former Senior Patrol agent turned immigrant rights activist. Learn the truth about the Border Patrol created a fake invasion & gets away with criminality far worse than those they arrest.

Interviewing Jenn, who I can easily say is an American hero for her ongoing advocacy for the rights of migrants and immigrants as well as her whistle-blowing about the egregious violence and sexual violence inside Border patrol, has been a highlight of my time on Substack.

Thank you all for joining, and I’ll see you next time!

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you’d like to subscribe and you’re a veteran, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you are an adoptee, click here for 50% off annual plans, forever.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee?

A few weeks ago, the stomach aches began. At first just aches but then, increasingly, pretty serious pain. I knew the feeling. That stomach ulcer was back to plague me.

Through the holidays, my adult kids said they were worried about me. They asked if I could “turn off” the news. I tried to explain to them that if I didn’t know what was going on, I’d be way more anxious and worried. That the information, albeit awful and incessant, was better than the not knowing.

Just having information gives me some measure of a feeling of control.

I couldn’t explain to them why. That in my childhood, as a child in foster care and then in an abusive home with a domineering narcissist, control was a weapon. A tool. A lever of power to pressure people, all with a saccharine smile, as if they have any choice at all. Every facet of my life was strictly controlled, down to the underwear I was allowed to wear in adolescence.

Music, film, television, all media was strictly filtered. Our diet was tightly monitored, as my female adopter has an eating disorder which, by virtue of her control of the groceries and meal planning, extended to all of us. If a Weight Watcher “point” value couldn’t be assigned to it, should it even be consumed?

Leaving that house required many years of me learning who I really am, once I had the ability to control my own life. It led to mistakes, but that’s OK because we learn from mistakes. More importantly, it led to accomplishments and achievements that no one could swoop in and take credit for.

It also led to a fierce, deep-rooted sense of independence and reluctance to release control, one that has guided much of my adult life.

Since January of 2025, my mental health has suffered. I am always working: writing, interviewing, reading, examining, learning, organizing, speaking, planning, responding, while also being present for my kids in all the ways their varying ages require.

I identified this early on but I still am struggling mightily to grapple with it: the core reason I feel so sick is that I feel that I am trapped right back in an abusive home once more.

Only escape isn’t in our immediate future, at all, this time.

The gaslighting of this regime is unprecedented in its depth, scope, and blatant transparency of it. My abuser would widen her eyes in faux shock when I would address her behavior, even if it happened mere moments before, and would deny her actions and, under the guise of “concern”, unilaterally blame me for the eruption prompted by her words and actions while sidestepping any accountability for her own role whatsoever. Sometimes she would force me to apologize for a situation she instigated and exacerbated to the point of a blow out; chaos conjured out of thin air.

Sound familiar?

Years later, my abusive husband would do the same thing, only he would add snarky laughter on top, to truly drive home the cruelty as he chuckled at my tears.

When our Press Secretary, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Vice President, and President all speak in this way to reporters and the public, to anyone who speaks to them without groveling adoration, I get flashbacks.

Flashbacks to twelve years as a child in a house with a gaslighting abuser.

Six years in a marriage with a gaslighting abuser.

But in both of those situations, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. There came a point where I could leave. It was hard, but not impossible, and I was able to do it twice.

In the process, I have absolutely no retirement, I gave up the value of a house I paid into and helped pay to renovate, very little Social Security income thanks to years of working for nonprofits being paid peanuts as well as being convinced to stay home after the birth of our son, so while I have been able to escape the cruelty, the abuse, the gaslighting, I totally sacrificed my financial future to do so.

Because of that, I don’t have the financial stores now necessary to leave this abusive environment.

In this nation under the current regime, I feel like I’m stuck back in the oppressive house in high school or the little home in South Norfolk that became the host of my nightmares. And when anyone says anything about it, our highest elected and appointed “leaders” scoff, smirk, and sneer as they lie to our faces day in and day out as the evidence of their cruelty piles up to their ears.

And somehow, we’re all just… taking it. The press corps. The newspapers. The cable news shows. The entire machine seems just committed to the illusion that all of this is absolutely normal and sane and healthy and therefore does not require disruption or cessation.

Much like my adoptive father who pretended his wife wasn’t an unstable abuser.

Much like my former in-laws, who suggested that I lose some weight and wear makeup every day, to see if that didn’t make my husband happier and less… volatile?

Meanwhile, someone threw water on the Democrats and they melted into puddles on the House floor while the flying monkeys run circles around the Capitol building, shitting and smearing it on the wall, and the news anchors don’t have a hair out of place as they blankly repeat the shrieks of the monkeys with a brilliant white smile as the credits roll.

My daughter goes to school in the next city over. Our city didn’t have a school with an opening that was affordable for us, so we have to drive. Our budget is pretty razor thin as it is, and GAS is a line item on my spreadsheet that tabulates where our dollars are allocated.

If the number on the GAS line changes, something else has to give.

So we give up something to keep a dream alive for our daughter, the dream that the right educational environment will give her the foundation she needs to rise to…. whatever… is coming.

It feels like every hard-won promotion and raise my husband has achieved in the past five years, every subscriber I’ve gained, every paid article, has been gobbled up before we ever saw or felt the benefit of it. I know I’m preaching to the choir here— all of you have felt the pinch. The way we can’t gain ground without a lottery windfall or collecting an inheritance. The way financial stability feels more like quicksand every passing month.

And under the quicksand, oil. Black crude that throws the geopolitical balance of the world into a tailspin every time some greedy asshole wants to claim ownership over it all.

The very first people who pay are usually babies. Children. Even if you just don’t start the entire show with a wholesale destruction of a school full of children, as our government apparently prefers to do, you kill their parents, their grandparents, their teachers, and disrupt their entire childhoods in the pursuit of bottomless greed.

None of us voted for this.

None of us ever vote for this. Not the majority, not even close.

I’ve always followed politics closely and enjoyed it. Now I feel sick and trapped in a nonstop horror show, and one in which I cannot just look away because we’re not in a cinema or theater and this is not a fucking movie. The death is all too real.

The GAS line in our household spreadsheet that transports our daughter back and forth to her school, the Waldorf environment where she’s being taught confidence, self-reliance, and harmony, may fluctuate and cause stress on other aspects of our household budget.

The GAS line in their lives, the children of Iran, blows up and dismembers them.

Our insulated privilege makes my stomach turn. How my daughter won some invisible lottery of life to be here and not in that school, crushed under the weight of tomahawk missiles and institutional greed, shakes me to my core every single day. My daughter is safe while others’ are dead.

I don’t sleep well nowadays without assistance of some kind.

I cannot focus on anything, any particular article or assignment or research. I can’t square up the inequalities and sheer breadth of unfairness in the world with my limited vocabulary.

Doing the work I’ve done over the past two years has meant I’ve stared into this abyss, pretty much unceasingly, and taken in every headline, breaking news, photo, video, tweet, and quote. I’ve written on a lot of it for you.

I think if I didn’t have kids to go home to at the end of every day I could do this work just fine. I’ve always wanted to be the investigative reporter. I’ve always loved writing and bringing information forward for the benefit of those without the time and resources to do deep dives.

But knowing everything I know makes me absolutely dread my children’s futures. Their potential white-collar careers are being swept up by AI in staggering numbers. The wage gap has only increased and the cost of living leaps up every year without fail. My first apartment was a two bedroom that went for $450 a month— $225 each. My son’s first apartment was also a two bedroom: $1,765 a month.

When I moved into that apartment, the federal minimum wage was $5.15.

Today the federal minimum wage is $7.25.

These kids don’t stand a chance.

I don’t want to sound defeatist or alarmist or just flat out depressing. Just because I’m struggling doesn’t mean you are or should, but it’s perfectly okay if you are, too.

My deeper concern is the utter lack of civic activity by the vast majority of Americans. Even those who have woken up to the horrors happening around us seem wholly incapable of finding a way to become civically engaged. They ask, “How can I help?” without making one single Google search on their own of doing just that.

I feel like a lot of us involved with any level of organized resistance or community organization are feeling more and more like dispatchers: connecting people who are [finally] upset enough to do something with the opportunities available to them. This is a valuable service, but (a) it takes us out of commission to actually be doing more substantial and productive work, and (b) this is something most people could find out for themselves with a modicum of online research and just showing up with the preexisting organizations in their communities. Mutual aid, Democratic Socialists, Democrat party, immigration rights organizations, nonprofits and grassroots orgs, 50501 and Indivisible, all have substantial web presences that announce their meetings, fundraisers, and events on a regular basis.

It’s basically pretty hard not to find information unless you just are not looking.

So that level of ambivalence— that you are upset enough to cosplay as “doing something” while you need a personal guide to even find the resources that exist openly on the internet— gives me an uneasy feeling as to the long-term fate of our nation.

If the resistance can never even organize itself, the regime doesn’t have to do much to oppose us. They can continue on unabated as they snatch people in public, shoot American citizens, round up humans and hold them in concentration camps, wage war on several fronts around the globe, destabilize our economy, arrest and charge American women who’ve had abortions or even miscarriages… all before “the resistance” can even be bothered to pull up a Google search to find their local Indivisible group.

It’s wildly demoralizing.

The conclusion to which I’ve arrived is this: I can’t keep being a public face talking about some of the work I’m doing in our area without potentially drawing unwanted attention to that work and, more importantly, the people it benefits.

I can’t keep openly doing that work while still earning any kind of money and I have to allocate my time somewhere, and I still have to be able to pay my bills.

This means I have to be really strategic with how I invest my time, talents, experience, and energy, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I love my Monday show: CounterStory Perspective…. have you caught it? Yesterday I interviewed on her time in the Border Patrol and her thoughts on the current immigration mass deportation humanitarian crisis [if not, the recap is coming out tomorrow- watch your inbox]. Next week I’m talking about our economy with . These conversations move the needle, address critical current issues, and give some action items. I’m not sure some of my other work has been so productive, so I adjust.

The CounterStory Perspective is staying— I’ll keep doing it as long as I’m able, and I’m working to get guests who bring you valuable information you can use immediately to inform your worldview, choices, and votes.

I also have to keep a lot of flexibility in my schedule to be able to act with urgency when needed, so I can’t commit to a lot of other scheduled events.

I am still planning to report from DC once a month or so to cover ongoing marches and protests in the heart of our nation’s capital- I’ll be there March 28 so come see me!

I’m still going to keep writing; sometimes it will be a detailed article with lots of citations, and sometimes I’ll just be sharing my thoughts as we forge into this dark chapter together.

And sometimes, I’ll gently put a boot in your ass to get moving. We all get stuck. We all freeze. We all have days where all we can do is pull the covers up and not even engage. That’s OK.

But that cannot be our normal, especially if we have privilege, if we are not a targeted community, and if we have the ability to do something then it is our moral imperative in this moment to do whatever it is that we can. As always, I’m talking to the [wo]man in the mirror now, too. I don’t say anything to you that I haven’t said to myself a thousand times over, and I say it with love and encouragement.

So I’m sharing a bit of a resource guide here.

Indivisible has a massive and steadily growing network of resources. Just put in your zip code or address and find your local groups. Then actually go and find out how they can use your specific talents and skills: https://indivisible.org/get-involved/take-action/

The Universalist Unitarian churches have Social Justice committees. In our region, Hampton Roads, they have connections to many other existing organizations, they participate actively in serving the community through soup kitchens and meal delivery, and they host trainings for Know Your Rights, among many other endeavors to connect passionate community members with opportunities for service. Sometimes churches just focus on food stability, which is great, but UU’s are also politically involved and engaged for that further touch. Find your local church here: https://www.uua.org/find

50501 focuses actively on protests, marches, and rallies— in person events that give you the opportunity to personally redress your government. Find your local event here: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/events

If advocating for legislation is your thing, Courage Collectives are community-based groups organized around shared identities to build power within key societal pillars and push institutions to resist authoritarian actions and defend democracy. Find out more here: https://indivisible.org/resource/courage-collectives/

If none of this specifically speaks to you, maybe you are the person to get your community organized! In that case, there’s no better model for that than Dr. G’s Daisy Chain. Learn about it here:

your weirdo friend

The Daisy Chain: A Neighbor's Guide to Mass Cooperation

The Daisy Chain is a story of how everyday people move together to reclaim democracy when institutions are weaponized against them…

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7 months ago · 1051 likes · 89 comments · ✨your weirdo friend✨

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Please.

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

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