Now Danny’s Dad, Russ, has stage 4 lung cancer and is on hospice. Yet he managed to lead the Walk for Danny Newville on its 24th year last weekend, as always. Russ has fought hard for information about his son for 24 years and he continues to do so as his body betrays him.

photo from the Walk for Danny Newville Facebook page

(To learn more about Danny’s story, head over to Joy Baker’s Substack, joy.the.curious. and Lakes Area Review)

Russ and all the others that loved Danny need to know more; how? where? when? who? why? They need to know everything. But I imagine they would be grateful for the WHERE most of all.

Can you imagine dying without knowing where your boy is?

Russ will most likely not see the day of knowing come, and that is devastating.

Imagine if he knew? Right now, on his deathbed. Imagine if he finally found some sort of peace in the knowing, in these last days.

Are you the person that can give him that?

Now is the time to speak up. Imagine the relief and healing that would overcome a dying father. The people around Danny that night were mostly young and have grown up, had families and lives, while carrying secrets.

There have been tips and information has been shared with authorities, but no one has shared exactly where Danny is. The likelihood that he took off is very low. The only conclusion for many of his loved ones is that Danny lost his life that night, and he was hidden. There are a lot of theories, but theories aren’t concrete evidence. Danny and his family need just one person to step up, living from their heart with love; not fear and the darkest kind of secret.

The truth shall set you free.

If you or someone you know has information about the night Danny went missing, please reach out. There is an anonymous option.

Phone:
Det. Sgt. Quin Pomplun
320-214-6700

Tip line:
320-214-6718

Email:
investigations@kcmn.us

Anonymous letter:
Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office
2201 NE 23rd St, Suite 101
Willmar, MN 56201

REMEMBER THIS

“Joy is who you share it with.” - Riley Worth via the band, Layup

^REFLECTIONS

<sub>I was sitting outside my sober camp cabin with two friends; one I’ve known since kindergarten and the other since middle school. They came to support me in my trying again for sobriety, and one of them asked me what brings me joy. There was a long pause. Then I admitted something I have rarely talked about. I don’t know exactly what joy is. I don’t know it when I feel it and if I do, it’s fleeting. I know there is always “joy” buried deep under all the grief and trauma and depression. But I can’t describe a feeling of wanting to jump up and down with glee and giddiness; or a pure happiness that lights me up. I was saying, “I think I might not really have joy, or I’m really not good at it.” I don’t know what it feels like to have joy rise and stay a while at the surface. After they left, I walked inside the quiet of the cabin and my phone pinged; a text from Riley, another lifelong friend.

“Joy is who you share it with.”</sub>

_{I typed back fast, “This is WILD,” and then told him I had just been talking to Jenna and Kelly about joy and how I don’t really know how to define it within myself right before his text.}

_{I had no idea Riley was quoting song lyrics and it doesn’t matter; it was about the timing and the way these simple words struck my core when I needed them. I do have joy. I have everyone I love. And sometimes we put too much definition on a thing. Maybe I’ve always assumed joy was something I had to attain in the way other people seem to live it. Perhaps my joy carries itself in a quieter way, like blowing a bubble with that little wand and then pop. We’ve all seen the joy doing that brings to a child; the awe of the bubble and the glee with the pop. Short-lived or not, it’s joy.}

Recommended
_{Song: Who You Share it with by Layup
2023 Blackwatch Records}

I had the honor of being a guest on the Hope Comes To Visit Podcast with Danielle Elliot Radford, a long-time friend from my OG blogging days. Danielle is doing a service to the world with her message of hope, her truth-telling about her alcoholism, and the way she extends wisdom to those people who are still struggling or questioning their drinking.

If you are looking for support and inspiration related to sobriety, Danielle also has an app called Redefining Sober where you can gain inspiration and tailor it to YOU and your needs for the path that YOU choose. Check it out!

I welcome you to listen (all links below).
If you want to see us, choose the YouTube option; all other links are audio only. Enjoy!

P.S. On YouTube you will get to enjoy looking at a wall of my office that includes a hanging plant…with no plant. AND Brandi Carlile’s FACE on her record. You’re welcome.

Spotify:

iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-hope-comes-to-visit-284771912/episode/limited-series-there-is-always-a-way-episode-2-finding-my-way-back-heather-king-on-recovery-relapse-and-the-courage-to-begin-again-338435864

Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b4340505-a7e7-40e8-9278-93b7e207429d/episodes/230c2281-6f11-43e7-a7ae-c606f8c7c790/hope-comes-to-visit-limited-series-there-is-always-a-way---episode-2---finding-my-way-back-heather-king-on-recovery-relapse-and-the-courage-to-begin-again

Youtube Audio:

YouTube Video:

This is the link to the entire video playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhLuD-nLF7WoflsrIxZTyOfAJH1dLP-Ww

I have another lifelong friend that has made
too many trips here
to bring me things like toilet paper or rice or eggs.
We laugh so hard, that soul friend of mine,
finding the humor
in even the darkest moments.
I watch her eyes crinkle and her hand
go up to her mouth
while she rocks forward with a belly laugh.

I have missed my dogs, especially George
no offense to Scott, Ruff and Dottie
but everyone knows the Shih Tzu
with the weird eye is my emotional support George.

Oh and I missed my family, too
but got to see them
like visits at treatment
and we’ve talked like therapy sessions,
healing.

I have written and written; in a journal
and in unseen documents
that might become something later
but I won't mind if they don't.

I have been doing Tai Chi Indoor Walking
and loving it
don't judge me
just look it up or something.
I have gone for walks outside too, okay?

I have kept a list of ideas and a therapy list,
things I know I need to work on most
and it’s strange (for me) that I am excited
to do that work.

I'm open and honest and willing and loved.
I'm interested in joy which has seemed sort of off-putting
to me for a long time; can't explain it.

I have cried so many times, on the phone with my sister
and in person with friends that love me through it
and trust me and believe in me,
but mostly by myself or with whatever holy beings
are floating around here only stopping to hold me.

I have cut off all my hair again, a pixie it is
because trying to have long luscious locks
to obtain some sort of younger look or something
just isn’t my jam.

I have decided I'm not returning to myself after all,
but instead I am walking toward the next Heather,
the next stage of my life,
to the wiser and more grounded and more joyful me.

Am I scared to go home, even with all kinds of support and recovery appointments in place?

Of course.

It’s not like there has been any kind of magic wand here
and this could not have been absolutely everything I need,
but I did it. I did what I had to do with the resources I had
and I made the most of it; did the very best I could.

(I’m maybe making those last belief statements until I believe them fully because my chemical dependency counselor had me take a look at all I’ve done and learned since I entered this cabin when I doubted myself because of someone else’s doubt about doing “treatment” this way; the only way I could. I had not been doubting myself, and my counselor told me to stick with that, because she too sees the progress I am making and that is enough. And she reminded me that no matter the opinions of one, or some, there is not One Way to do this. Also, I adore her; she is really good at her job.)

The inner work is something to share another time; all that has come to me through the silence of this place, in the stillness, scribbled into my journal.

Tomorrow I return home, to the needs and activities and dog hair and demands and no, I don’t feel ready. I could stay here a year and not feel “ready.” But it’s been almost a month away, and I’ll continue all the recovery things I have put in place. I will keep working on balancing this old nervous system of mine so I don’t get triggered so easily, and I’ll be working hard on my boundaries.

I have a friend that prays a little prayer, “Surprise me, God,” especially when she’s in the thick of it and it seems no answers can come. It struck me this morning that I need to add something to that.

”Surprise me, Heather.”

In other words, stop believing your patterns are stuck, or that you aren’t capable of consistent healthy action. Lean into what the silence and space has renewed in you. Believe you aren’t going to drink to numb or escape the Big Feelings or to just feel something different. Believe you can learn to regulate, hope, and stay present. Surprise me, Heather.

Peace, my friends. More to come…

I have been a writer for a long time, but I’ve been a caretive idea machine my entire life. I once had space to kick around like five big great (questionable) new creative ideas a day. Then I would try to do all five big “great” ideas, which then defeats all the ideas since that’s impossible.

Of course not all my ideas were/are actually good or the right fit for my life and pocketbook. (Does anyone say pocketbook anymore?) But the ideas brought me joy no matter what.

My little bookstore was a really, really good idea and it worked. Placing it in a shared space was the ticket to being able to afford rent. It’s an inspiring and safe space for me, filled with opportunity for connection and community.

Starting a blog in 2007 was also a great idea. Thank God my friend Kelly suggested it. It brought me a writing practice and soul sisters across the country that I cannot imagine never having met. (Long live the original blogging community-mostly not “influencers”, but instead, incredibly talented storytellers, writers, creatives, artists and thinkers, in true community. I am 51 and I will now say, Those were the good old days.)

During the years of being the primary caregiver for my parents and taking care of three kids and four dogs, I still had ideas but no space to implement them. I would try (like the Hearty podcast with my beautiful friend Steph) and it would be going well, and then something traumatic would happen and I would be consumed by the aftermath while still meeting everyone’s needs. So it stopped. But it was fun. It was good. It wasn’t for nothing. Somebody somewhere got something out of it, and I know Steph and I did, too.

Anyway, here at sober camp, I’m reaching for my journal a lot, as ideas are starting to flow again when for many months there were none; none at all. I have these ideas on their own page, a list of “what ifs” and after a few days I revisit the list and see what still strikes me and what makes me go, Well, that was weird. No thank you.

I’m sitting with these “big” ideas instead of impulsively starting all of everything at once, like I often have. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. These stops were not failures. It was all learning.

A focus on drinking, an obsession with it really, killed the artist spark in me. I could not write. So apparently booze is not my muse. Creative Heather went silent, sneaking away in the same covert way alcohol had snuck back in. Creative Heather had no breaths left inside this tightly wound body and its ashamed broken heart. She tried to show up, like to writing group, and had very little to give. She had half-assed ideas she knew she could not truly follow through on while chasing a buzz every day. Creative Heather had gone to sleep, like Sleeping Beauty with no muse to kiss her awake.

Alcoholism has never been all that I am, but if I drink, it infiltrates the rest of me, closing doors and windows, pulling the shades and turning the locks.

Now, at sober camp, Creative Heather is here in this cabin with me, stretching and yawning and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. I kissed her awake myself, and she’s even looking in the mirror and seeing a spark.

When we get out of our own way; sometimes drastically like sober camp, and sometimes by choosing some time in the quiet instead of hitting “play next episode” or doom scrolling or shopping or whatever the drug of choice to stay numb is, change always comes. Change always comes, just like spring always comes after the longest bleakest winter. We will not feel like this forever.

On the days when I feel like progress is too slow, or that I just feel too terrible to work at anything, I have this mantra gift from my sister-in-law, who lost her husband suddenly and tragically not long ago. Obviously she has many days where she cannot muster the energy through her grief to have a “good day.”

So she gives herself this profound grace:

Hi, my name is Heather

and I’m an alcoholic…

For almost sixteen years I was an alcoholic in recovery.

About seven months ago, I relapsed.

Therefore, I mostly disappeared from this here Substack writing space because what is there to say if you are the type of writer that tells it all but isn’t currently willing to tell it all? I could not bring myself to write anything much unless I could tell the whole truth.

If I was going to say it out loud to anyone that was willing to listen,

Hi, I’m Heather...and I relapsed,

I would have to stop drinking.

I mean, it worked for accountability the first time-the telling. It got me on the right path and I stayed there for almost 16 years which I still consider a win. I had the honor of helping a lot of people on their own path to sobriety. It all still counts.

Those seven months ago, something snapped. (Spoiler alert—it was me; body, mind, sobriety, soul and spirit.) My nervous system had been in fight-flight-freeze-lather-rinse-repeat, for many years.

I had been working my way toward a relapse by giving and giving and giving and allowing my life to get more and more overwhelming. I didn’t create all the stress, not even close. Life was also like, Let me take you out at the knees too many times to count. Illness, so many deaths, my daughter’s chronic illness, the state of the country, the list goes on and on.

Those may sound like excuses, because there is nothing, for an addict, that a drink cannot make worse.

A nervous system, on the other hand, can become so whack-a-doodle that it tricks your mind. There are no limits to its need to shut down. Mine has constantly been an electric chair for too long, it could only remember the way caring for my terminally ill parents felt, day after day, year after year, and how losing them continues to feel.

I had also started a stressful job after all the years of caring for my parents; and lo and behold, it requires me to care for caregivers. Did I realize that might be triggering? No. My mind had no place for wisdom and clarity.

There are micro-traumas every day in the caregiving life; and often traumas that are the opposite of micro, like that time I was helping my dad in the bathroom and he started to pass out while vomiting at the same time, and I held him up; that six-foot-two man. I called for my husband and we helped him to bed, like carrying a wobbling drunk with no ability to use his legs, a centimeter at a time. He lay there, where he could not speak and his eyes were rolling back in his head and he was still vomiting while I called 911. I was there for these…events…and I will never regret it because that man loved me so well and serving him was an honor.

But yes, it took its toll in just the way he worried that it would.

A few days before he died I told him I would be okay, as if it was permission for him to go. He looked me in the eye and said, “No, you won’t.” And we both cried and said nothing more about it.

That wasn’t cruelty, it was truth-telling; it was love. He knew my identity, for better or worse, was wrapped up in years of caring for them both. He knew our connection was too strong for me to lose him and be “okay”. He knew it the same way he always knew my “fine” was a lie. All those times I came through the door after caring for my kids, to care for them, right next door.

How are you?
Fine.
No, you’re not. I hate that word, he’d say. Then I’d tell him everything.

:::

Alcohol loosens. It turns off that feeling of being electrocuted by your insides. What a relief. So it worked, until it didn’t.

The deep breath and long exhale that came with drinking slowly stopped being attainable. It was like the booze held its breath while trying to strangle me. Now that is a mean trick. For many of us, alcohol is an abusive lover, cajoling you, cunning and powerful with love promises, and then punching you in the face.

And still, there is this:

Despite this relapse, all those years and even in those seven months, I was growing and changing and getting wiser. I was. And nothing will ever take any of that away. It all matters and it is with me as I sit here writing to you from sober camp, a term coined by my 15 year old daughter.

Sober camp is a thing that’s like going to treatment, but totally isn’t. I made it up and Elsie named it. We aren’t professionals.

I had wanted (badly) to go to an inpatient program that focuses as much on mental health and trauma as it does on addiction. But due to the state of health insurance, I would have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars up front with no payment plan option, and then 20% of the rest after that—which would mean more thousands I do not have. When the nice lady on the phone told me this, after we had been making the plan for me to come, I burst into tears and I was not embarrassed.

I still knew I needed to get out of my life for some time to heal. I knew that I needed to do a lot of therapizing (totally a word) and I knew that being at home would keep me stuck in my current…condition. Home with all of its demands and distractions and interruptions and needs. So I looked for a small cabin, and I asked some friends to help me afford almost a month in it. They did. What a miracle.

Right now I’m sitting at a little round table in that little cabin. Walking in the door, strangely, felt like coming home. To myself, I suppose. My kids brought me here, all three of them. They helped me lug laundry baskets of stuff inside, and some groceries. They looked around and in things and declared it good.

My middle boy is going through a really hard thing and I said, “Maybe I should not be gone right now,” but as soon as the words hit the air between us he gave me the love and grace I needed. No, I want you to do this, it’s okay.

But that is what most mothers do, right? Sacrifice, set ourselves aside, answer to every need just as quickly as we can. I’ve over-done that all 21 years of being a mother. Everything feels urgent and overwhelming all the time. I jump to it to get through it.

Then I continued to live that way while taking care of my parents at the same time while also doing my best to serve my community. I’m no saint, I just cannot help myself. My ADHD-empath mix often spurs me to immediate impulsive action instead of a moment of reflection and assessment of what is for me to do and what is not. I’m working on it.

Again, this sounds like an excuse or blaming other things for my relapse, but I promise that it’s not. This is only story-telling.

Posting this, just as I did all those years ago, is my way of tangibly turning a corner. I let the boulder on my shoulders roll off outside this cabin door. Or wait, that’s not true. But I did begin to relax my shoulders enough to allow release to begin; to turn toward healing. It’s time to recover. I am going to make the most of this time-resting, reading, writing, grieving, therapizing (individual and group), and sitting in the quiet (or maybe learning how to sit in the quiet).

I am not a fan of phrases like, You have to put your own mask on first…or even, self care. I haven’t been able to put into words why. It’s not about thinking I don’t deserve it. It’s that I have not had the space to do it, or so I thought. Even though I have the insight and enough lack of denial that I can see it was more than a thought, it was a deep belief. Because caregivers of people with illnesses know that almost always, there really is literally no time. You forget to even look in the mirror, which means you’re probably not doing a thorough skin routine. That just seems like another chore and there are big needs all around you, all the time.

I’m too often an “all or nothing” thinker and doer. So I didn’t know how to put my mask on or care for myself. I didn’t know how to count even deep breaths as a moment for myself, or how to do something small and simple to remember myself. My belief was no time, the end. Instead of, I have very little time but progress, not perfection. Just breathe. Just laugh. Dance.

Instead of “no time to write,” maybe it’s just write a little note to yourself with one little expereince of the day that you want to remember. Like micro-journaling. These middle of the road options didn’t even enter my mind.

Because my overwhelmed rapid-fire mind, my aching heart, and my exhausted electric body took over and left me behind. In the dust. Maybe on the ground. Feeling alone and hopeless and beaten. Which is a painful place to be, especially if you’re trying to drink it away.

Here at sober camp, I hope to return to myself.

Hi, my name is Heather.
I’m not fine.
I’m getting there. No wait, I’m not. I hate that word. I’m not fine, and I’m not ever going to have a goal of “fine”. Instead, I’m going to thrive.

Thank you for being a part of my story.

That’s not racism, Heather! They are doing bad things!

Sure, some of them are, just like some of you are. And please read more history books and books about racism and what it actually means.

The same thing had happened many years before that, when the Latino community joined us out here in rural Minnesotan small towns. So for most of my life I’ve heard the worst, most vile and hateful things being said about non-white people that live here.

Sadly, I got used to it, in a way, because anyone hearing something often grows weary. But it still hurt, and now it hurts more, as it should. First the belief that all Latinos (who most white locals always called Mexicans no matter where they were from) were gang members, drug dealers, and living off the tax payer dollar. (This may have been true of the few, but mostly entirely untrue.) Then came the beliefs that Somalis were even worse, because for the most part, they are not Christians. And that fact for sure meant they were trying to push their religion on the rest of us. They had an evil scheme behind the scenes and were even planning to kill us if we did not convert.

For the record, not one Somali human I have known has ever tried to push their religion on me. But my own religion? Well, I’ve discussed this before. We Christians have a way of expecting any non-Christian to either find Our Way, or at least go along with our rules. I have never experienced that from any of my Jewish friends. Or Muslim friends. Or Atheist friends. I even have Mormon friends, known for their missions to save souls, and not one of them asked me to convert. Not one.

The more Somali people entered my life, the more confused I was about these rumors and allegations. I never did believe them to be true, but I wondered how other people could believe them to be true. Every Somali friend that has touched my life has been…well, like me. Out here trying to make a life with their loves ones, working hard and more than willing to be good neighbors. Is adjusting to living here difficult for many of them? Sure. Moving into a whole new world; a culture, an ecosystem of whiteness that they are learning about as they go; that’s not easy. And they didn’t do it for fun. They did it out of necessity. Do some reading about the places they have left behind and the reasons they had to go.

People didn’t seem to understand that arriving into culture shock means time will go by while the immigrants grow accustomed to what is all around them. And by the way, there is no requirement for them to become us. None.

People assumed any resistance to jumping right into assimilation came from a stubborn rebelliousness, when in reality, our Somali neighbors were keeping their own cultural and religious beliefs dear, just as we should all have the freedom to do. The expectation that if people “choose” to come here they need to live and speak just like we do is what is irrational and exclusionary. Have not all people in history who have come to the United States for a better life brought with them their very selves; our white ancestors included?

When this federal administration started specifically calling out Somali people as problematic, to the point that our president has called them “garbage”, I knew what was coming, right outside my door. ICE would be here, and we would see them take down and pull away our neighbors. And yes, there is evidence that they are doing this to people who are not here illegally and have not committed any crimes.

It has begun. ICE has zeroed in on this area just as many of us predicted they would, and we are seeing our small towns and our county’s name all over national and local media. And I am seeing many local people cheering it on, “Finally!! Get rid of the animals!” and “Thank God, I want my downtown back!”

So yes, I have become even more disgusted by the fear-mongering and disregard for every person’s humanity. I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m appalled. And if I say so, they come back at me with how uninformed I must be, how I need to start watching FOX News, how I drank the liberal kool-aid and when did that happen? There is no ability to listen, to soften, to simply have a decent open conversation where both people come to the table willing to be wrong about some things. I’m not right about it all, but I will tell you that I do my homework. NOT by watching or reading biased news sources with an agenda to deceive. Both sides should know by now that it’s all a sham.

Instead, I recently went to a class of sorts, to learn as much as I could about what is really happening, what the Constitution actually says, and how immigration law works. I learned what rights ICE has, and does not have, and exactly what lines are being crossed with this push from an administration that told us they would go after criminals here illegally, but have instead changed the rules as they go. They have changed the rules midway, forcing the absurd reality that people seeking asylum, doing everything right, would no longer be able to stay legally anymore.

Law abiding people who have been working, contributing, paying taxes and loving their neighbors? Too bad. You are going, too. Run. Hide. You don’t get to stay no matter how long you’ve been paying and showing up and signing the papers and going to the appointments. You don’t count anymore.

I learned that ICE needs to have a judicial warrant when snatching and detaining people, and a whole lot of the time, they do not. Those warrants would come straight from the court. They would say “judicial warrant” at the top, and they would be signed by a judge or court clerk. Much of the time, what ICE presents to people they are taking is an administrative warrant. It does not count. This is why we say people should have their day in court. Because not only has this mess gone far beyond what we were promised, but it is unconstitutional to detain anyone without a judicial warrant.

I also learned that Minnesota has lost so many judges due to Trump’s firings/cuts, that seeking assistance to fight back through the courts is nearly impossible for the people that do not deserve to have this happen to them. There is a bottle neck of cases, piling up, that the court cannot get to fast enough. That happened on purpose.

The reality is that this is happening because so many Americans simply do not want “Them” here.

I could go on. I could say more about what I learned, but those two things alone should be enough, for anyone, who has any shred of decency, to see; to take a moment to apply some critical thinking skills and to be open to the reality that this should not be who we are. This is not the “American way”. But I guess now it is. And that’s why I choked back tears through the whole one and a half hour class. What have we become? Who are we?

The answer to that comes back to my like a scream; it has always been this way. He just unleashed it in a new way. They unleashed it in a new insidious, calculated, perfectly timed, way. They revealed who we really are, as a majority. We want to be surrounded only by what makes us comfortable. So many of us want only like-minded, white, Christian people in our neighborhoods but we lie and say, That’s not true! I’m not racist! even to ourselves. We think that if we smile at our Latino and Somali neighbors and stay Minnesota nice to their faces, we’re good to go. We aren’t cruel! And then we vote those neighbors away and stand our ground, insisting it was the right thing to do because we’ve been fed poisonous lies for generations, and now like never before.

He called them garbage; every single one. He told us all Latino immigrants are gang members and rapists. What that does to the psyche of people who already feel fearful and suspicious of others, is violence.

We’re seeing the results, and I’m so sorry. Somali and Latino (and all black and brown) friends, I love you. I will stand up for you. So many of us will stand up for you. You do have neighbors that know who you really are, and we may be the minority out here in the sticks; but we are here. There are quite a lot of us, actually. And we are with you.

P.S. If the fraud in Minnesota comes to mind, please consult ChatGPT or a reliable source for what has actually happened with the fraud in Minnesota. What they’re telling you is not true, even if true of a few. A white woman using Somali employees has been under investigation for years. I won’t go on here, because I trust you to do your own looking into it.

I don’t want to talk about it.

(I was using the wrong email address to log in the whole entire time…and you would think the thingy would say “there is no account with this email address” but no, it did not. I talked to an AI bot thingy that brought up the possibility of a different email address being associated with this account and…yeah…GENIUS.)

Anyyyywaaaaay.

It feels good to be able to write again, when I can. Of course, I have had 1,298 ideas; things I want to say and how I want to say them, for two months. And of course, I remember none of them in this moment.

Except this one.

I drive what was once my parent’s car now. In the winter, there is this thing that happens, god knows why,

DING! it says, and I look down, thinking the gas is getting low or a tire is about to go flat, but no. A light has come on with the loud DING that says, “39” with the little degrees symbol next to it. The car is telling me, as the temp around the car is dropping from the garage temp to the cold outside air temp, when it hits 39 degrees on its way down. DING!

Every time this happens, I roll my eyes, like my dad always did while he would blurt, THIRTY NINE DEGREES!, like an announcement after the DING! Then he would mumble, I don’t know why it needs to do that.

So now if my kids are in the car with me, I do it, too.

DING!

THIRTY NINE DEGREES!

Sidenote: Today it is -1 here in Minnesota (like no degrees, but extra no degrees), with a “feels like” temp of -13 thanks to the damn wind. I just thought you should know.

(There has not been a DING today, in other words, because the garage can’t be above 39 degrees in the first place when it’s this cold.) (Science.)

But none of that is my point. Well, I don’t know that I have a point, as per usual, other than to try to express how things like this most-every-day DING feels when you miss someone.

It used to feel only like a slap across the heart.

Now, it feels…sometimes, maybe, like a visit. A painful and also reassuring visit. I hear his voice. I see the glint in his eyes as he rolls them; the little grin. And just for that second, I feel like I’m riding along with him again.

People say the ones you lose are always with you, and that is the truth. But often the void created by their physical absence is so wide that you can think of nothing other than the truth of grief. It is an echo in the canyon so loud, it brings you nothing but a pain you can’t feel your way out of, and you cannot, in the worst echoing moments, remember that they’re “always with you.”

It simply does not feel true.

At least that’s how it is for me.

I once told my dad that I wasn’t sure if I would know how to be a person in the world without him here. I hoped I would be wrong, but I wasn’t.

When one of your closest favorite people, one of the most kindred, has left this world, the change and absence is so heavy and profound, the weight of it completely changes who you are. Every way they played a part in your life, every inside joke, and every shared memory, feels torn in half, tossed into that canyon. So, what is left inside you is not wholeness, and I doubt it ever will be.

I’m adjusting. Maybe that’s most of what life is.

I’m living around it, not through it. I don’t get that line, “You’ll get through it.” No, not this. Not grief. That isn’t to say there will never be peace and joy, but living out those things changes shape, too. Every joyful moment is a part of that echo of sadness because you aren’t sharing it with your person, or people, the way you once did. You then feel utterly not yourself.

The echo lives inside you and outside you all at once, making it impossible to go through it without gravity pulling you straight to the bottom of the chasm. So you step carefully around, and that’s okay.

DING!

39 degrees. 39 degrees. 39 degrees.

It was my dad’s birthday. He would have been 77 years old. The last birthday we celebrated together as two humans with bodies was his 75th—a surprise party that turned into a bit of a pre-memorial service. His friends and family members were there, speaking memories of my dad while knowing he was dying. They got to tell him what his presence has meant to them.

I read a poem to his grandchildren that night called, “You Have A Guide”. Because we all did, in that man. A life guide. A heart guide. A soul guide. A spirit guide.

So I opened the email and there were those birthday memories. A photo of dad in a chair and Elsie, my daughter, standing next to him, beaming. She was handing him a card or the notes from her speech at the party. (She is very good at speeches.) He is grinning up at her from his chair, a hand out holding her arm.

Then there was a video, something that didn’t spark a memory because it was waiting to be played with a still-frame of a door. I recognized it as the front door of my parent’s house but had to play it to remember what it was.

Then I grimaced at the sound of my own purposefully shrill and intentionally very off-key voice, singing Happy Birthday at the top of my lungs as I came through the door and very slowly walked over to him, giving myself more time to serenade him. He sat on the edge of his chair, leaning over to open a medication bottle, pretending to not listen to me. As I sang, he lifted the pill to his mouth and took it, waterless. Then his hands started doing their “make it stop” thing. They were held out flat and waving back and forth, crossing each other.

Nope. No no no…stop. That’s enough now, while he kept that signature smirk on this face, giving me the side eye.

Watching his hands in that video, I let the tears fall down my face. I waited for the end to the birthday song, which took a while because I held the last “note” for a very, very long time, as high-pitched as I could muster. SO off-key.

Then I cleared my throat and while I took a very deep breath he said,
”Yup.”

I asked him if he liked my song.

“Mmm hmm.”

I knew at the time and I know now, he did love it. He loved that ridiculous rendition of silliness on his 75th birthday. He loved my quirkiness. My weirdness. My antics. He always did.

I loved to make him laugh.

He loved to make me laugh.

I wonder how often he liked to hear my laughter because it was his mother’s laughter, and his two sisters’ laughter. I inherited the wide-open mouth and loud guffaw of his family. He was quieter, his laughter deeper. He was also the funniest one of all of us.

I write less about grief now not because I am relieved of it, but because it has become more inverted, more insular, more lonely. Grief isolates itself somewhere less noticeable inside of us in time, but we know. We know we are just one small move away from it all boiling over. Our losses are never hidden from us, but they are silenced in the presence of people who may not want to hear about the pain anymore, which is most people, if we’re being honest.

The grief has not changed shape, and it has not been politely shrinking down to a more manageable size.

They say it gets better with time but what many of us know is that this is a lie. We don’t “get over” the vacancy in our lives or its screaming silence where their voice was, the still air where they waved their hands in the way only they did. You don’t get over living without a person that made you who you are, and sustained a deep joy inside you with their everyday ordinary ways, and the surprising unfolding of every aspect of who they were becoming. We’re always becoming. Even a 75 year old.

What was next for you, dad? Had you stayed healthy, what trips would you have taken? How many more hours would you have logged listening to the details of your grandson’s days? What would his words have taught you? How much more would we have learned from you?

Over time grief’s sharp edges settle somewhere, buried, but those edges are still there, begging, always.

With every memory and wish for more, we uncover the pain again and again and that is the price of love.

I don’t think those sharp edges will ever be gone, but would I want that anyway? Would I want to remember with a quiet softness, telling people it gets better?

No.

The pain helps me remember the gestures, the facial expressions, his voice. Would I ever want that gone?

No. Please no.

We are left here wanting more. In limbo, wanting the piercing pain to stop while also begging it to stay so it doesn’t feel like we don’t care, like we’re forgetting. With all the hope we can muster many of us believe we will see them again, but that doesn’t stop the longing to see and hear them and hold them close right now.

My dad could always see the bigger picture and that is how I know this, something he learned after his own tragic losses:

When there was no other way to survive but alongside the sharp edges of a full spectrum grief, we grow. We become the guide. For our friends and children and anyone that needs us to tell them the truth.

Dear one, if you’ve lost a beloved (or two or more), maybe it won’t “get better.” Maybe in some small ways it will, so you can survive. That’s mercy. All I know is that what makes us is what breaks us. And we are floating with the spirit of everyone we love the most. We are living a holy pain, a wretched truth, a nightmare that still, somehow, lives alongside joy.

My dad’s body quit. Someone came and covered him and took him away. We had a funeral. Someone handed me a flag. And then we went home, to his empty house, and began our walk without our guide. A daughter loved well does not get over that, but whether she likes it or not, she becomes a better, more honest, more genuine, guide.

These memories and revealed issues are visits, only temporary, and they don’t mean any harm. It seems to me they are here for deeper healing because that’s how love works. It says,

Don’t look away. Remember. Trust yourself. Know. Heal.

There is so much work to be done in the spaces between those words.

Autonomy is slippery in the first place, and re-discovering it after the death of your parents puts a person in a vulnerable state. For me, feeling orphaned despite the loving support of people still around me has been jarring.

One would think my autonomy, individuation and independence had already arrived since I’m 50 years old, but then the loss of my parents came and it’s possible, for me, that the light is shining on my need to agree to a freedom in being wholly myself without apologizing for being in the world just as I am. If I’m being honest, I had never completely broken free of the expectations and beliefs of others about who I am.

I’m working on radically accepting my very truest self just as I am in the same way I have accepted life on life’s terms. I am working on maybe even celebrating who I am, just as I am.

I had come so far in past seasons, but now, grief—it reaches down to the darkest hidden things and pulls them up into that light my parents left behind. It is the light of pure love, soul, and spirit from their new wholeness and they are pouring it over me.

And I am basking in that, while also looking around at the shadows beyond the reach of that light; into the most human parts of my…well, humanity. The light reveals new layers of the misinformed core beliefs that have been treated through therapy and sobriety and are…well…not gone.

Dammit.

I’m not sure they ever completely leave. Maybe we put them to sleep, or tame them. Maybe we speak the truth over core beliefs that are lies, but they are still somewhere inside a big oak tree on our insides, rooted in the very deepest heart-parts of us, weaving through the generations before us and keeping us stuck when we are going through so much that we can’t keep our heads on straight about what we’ve learned and grown through over and over again.

The magic is this: When we regress or feel confused or stuck, we are miraculously still in motion toward a return to wholeness.

As an Empath with a capital “E”, these intense feelings that come with loss seem to have opened the Pandora’s box of Things. Things mostly related to my past selves. I don’t know if it’s happening to anyone other than me in this particular way but I have a hunch fellow empaths might need to hear it, and so I write.

An empath as a long-time primary caregiver to two dying people will lose some of her boundaries and joy; there’s no shame in that. At times there is nothing left to build on; it’s going out, not in.

And this empath will deplete herself in the name of love, well-meaning though she may be. She will revert to co-dependency. She will allow behavior around her and from her, that is not in harmony with who she really is. Meanwhile, the sense she’s always had that she is unlikable and unpalatable to people with different personalities than hers, can creep back in. She will hear all the voices over all the years: She feels too much. She cries too much. She is too much. She’s so intense. Her beliefs are too wrapped up in feelings. She needs to take better care of herself…

I tried to perform better under the gaze of those that resented my way of being as a child and for most of my life. I tried to stay small enough for them to feel better because it always felt like it was my job to make sure everyone felt better. As a child I’m guessing I was confused about why people around me seemed to resent me. I could feel it. There was no denying it. Empaths have a meter that is accurate. We read a room. We gauge the temperature. We are aware of the feelings of others like a tuning fork in a deep and undeniable way.

As a young person, I was free-spirited—heart on my sleeve, wide open, adventurous, outgoing, curious, wildly transparent, creative, joyful, and deeply sensitive and empathetic.

And I was not mis-reading the responses from others my existence caused. The message was clear: it was not okay to be who I am. It was like I was accidentally sucking all the energy out of the room and obviously people don’t like that. Maybe they thought I was doing it on purpose.

So I tried to keep it down, like music that shouldn’t be played so loud in a shared house.

The truth of most families is that someone ends up in charge of making everyone feel better, and it’s going to be you if you are seen as “the problem”, the different one, getting in trouble at school for not shutting your yapper, for showing too much emotion, for running off to be with your friends all the time. When your existence—too this, too that—is believed to be something that makes life too feel-y, it becomes your job to stop what is in you that was meant for good, that is good, to save others from having to feel what they don’t want to feel.

This awareness of disdain for who I am was killing me.

No.

I was allowing it to kill me.

The other day was an awakening day, thanks to a friend that sent me this Carl Jung video about why empaths are often resented. Thank you, N. Thank you always.

The video is long for the year 2025, but I was captivated in every moment of it. The title of it mentions an envy of the empath, but for me the video was far more focused on resentment of the empath than envy. (I’m probably saying this because it makes me uncomfortable to come across like I’m saying people are jealous of me because I’m an empath. I did not make the video, but watch me want to protect people from thinking that I think they’re jealous. Watch me try to make sure no one feels bad.) See? My healthy person skills are a wee bit lacking at the moment. I’m working on it. Progress, not perfection.

I want to stop allowing what people think of my empathetic nature and all that comes with it to dictate my way of being in the world. If wholeness is around the corner, and it is, should anything hold me back? I think not.

I think not.

This video also encouraged me to ask myself what role l am playing in relational dances I want to take part in about as much as any middle school kid wants to dance the do-si-do in gym class. And I see my role. I acknowledge it. Not with shame, but with joy in the path to overcoming my two left feet. To overcoming taking someone’s stuff and making it mine, and then taking it personally.

I imagine any artists, writers, seekers, empaths and deep thinkers that haven’t seen this video yet may feel understood and validated by the message of it. I hope passing it on reaches you in just the right moment, to guide you back to your light, especially if you feel small and misunderstood and dark right now.

Keep walking, keep going. You are not doing it wrong despite what their tone or face or “you’re just sensitive” might be saying to you. I know you cannot help but feel it all. For better and for worse, there’s no turning it off. We intuitively read it all—all the energy in all the rooms, at all times. We feel when someone has disdain or judgment for our existence in the world, even if they don’t know they feel this way about us underneath it all.

It’s hard. And that’s an understatement. But we can do this. We can remember it is not about who we are or how we do things, unless we make it about who we are and how we do things, by allowing ourselves to fold, to smother our light in fear of judgment. We can take responsibility for the times we cannot be on top of our behavior like we’d like and then fail; have a fit or too long of a pity party. We can see that those “failures” come from times when we feel every small and big resentment from others and it overcomes us. But we can stop for a moment, and turn back to the light.

If you have experienced this resentment at home, at work, or wherever you have met it, remember with me that most people are not doing it on purpose. They may not know what energy and messages they are reflecting back to you. Your intense feelings and thoughts, from their view, need to be controlled and reduced. But of course they do not because you are just being who you were made to be, and that’s beautiful. You are trustworthy.

Sometimes the beautiful things about being an empath, like vulnerability and authenticity, feel like a threat to others. It’s not your fault.

We empaths, just as anyone else, simply want to exist as our full selves. We want to live without constantly questioning ourselves as a result of being questioned and doubted because living from the depths of emotions is frowned upon. They’ve even now said it out loud: Empathy is a sin.

Imagine that. Call it absurd. Listen to Florence & the Machine’s Shake It Out, and dance.

The irony is that our empathetic/sensitive spirit ways only become problematic when we allow ourselves to be doubted and held under the expectations of others. When we listen to those voices, we trigger people-pleasing in our core selves, along with a desperation to be understood that can get quite noisy. Oops. It’s not…appealing, when we demand to be heard, but despite what you have been programmed to believe, tampering down who you are was never the answer either. That only puts the light out.

And so it is that this video was life-changing for me especially in that it tells you HOW to deal with the pain of feeling rejected or resented by the shadows in the souls of others. And HOW to not take it personally. I took two pages of notes. May I remember, again.

Your light is also for you…turn the warmth inward and let your heart speak of its needs and fears…within the shadow lies treasures…Will you protect that light even when someone is angry that you have it?

Just keep walking down the dark halls with it, no matter what others say or do, knowing that not everyone wants to understand it. - Carl Jung

Remember, being an Empath means more than being sensitive. So much more. It is a gift. You were made this way to serve the world with love, to read every wild and multi-faceted misfit on your path, and reflect back their light, no matter what, with tender grace. That’s magic.

We don’t do it perfectly of course, but we stand up and try again. We can’t help it.

Peace to you.

Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,

It will set you free.

Be more like the man you were made to be.

There is a design, an alignment, a cry

of my heart to see,

the beauty of Love as it was made to be.

- Mumford & Sons (Sigh No More)

Then there’s the song “I Will Wait”, also my Mumford & Sons, and it brings me back to years ago, maybe 10 or maybe 11 or 13 years ago, when I would occasionally go jogging around the streets of my home. I would play that song and feel the beat pound through my feet to the center of the earth. It was…holy?

This was at a time when I wasn’t sure anymore what I believed.

Wait. Scratch that.

I’ve always known what I believe; but it was buried under a high control religion and if you don’t understand what that means, it’s a good thing to google. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are told not to wear pants if you’re a woman or that you belong in the kitchen or that you’re going to hell if you smoke cigarettes, etc.

Those exist, but my background wasn’t that…blatant? maybe?

Maybe I would have seen some things I needed to see sooner if it was that obvious. Wait? What? would have popped into my mind more readily, I think. But what do I know? I’m here now. I like here now.

The often well-meaning control of my history wouldn’t have been easily spotted by an insider that grew up in it, let’s just say that. Unless that person was a “rebel” like me; constantly digging deeper, wanting answers to hard questions that no one would answer. I believed in having an authentic, doubted, tested faith and that was frowned upon. It wasn’t until college that a professor finally acknowledged and admitted to things that bothered me. But he was the only one and he was considered dangerous, close to losing his job. For allowing…thinking.

I once sat in a bible study with other women and I asked one of those hard questions and the deafening silence and expressions on the faces around the table were a dismayed non-answer. It was shaming, to say the least.

Oh, you’re just being too sensitive, Heather.

No one attempted an answer. I was reminded again that big questions are just evidence that you don’t have as strong of a faith as the women next to you. How embarrassing.

(I’m no longer embarrassed, by the way.)

When a religion requires that you just “go with it” because of one answer; The Bible says so, the control is inherently insidious; it wilts you. And if you dare say that there are translations that don’t say it that way, or that it’s not how you understand it, the control comes in again with the disdain on the faces, the shaking of heads.

You are simply not Christian enough to understand.

I once overheard, while waiting tables, some women talking about another woman who just wasn’t as “mature in her faith” because of her questions.

“I mean, I used to ask questions like that when I was an immature Christian,” one of them said.

I felt sick.

Yes, this sounds…like it sounds. Judgment with underlying beliefs and Christianese that have been sown, watered, fertilized, deeply rooted. I couldn’t see the fruits of the spirit. Where was the joy? Why was everyone digging a path back and forth to the church door and fighting against the rest of the world outside of it and staying so…closed off and annoyed by most everything outside their doors?

I was the weirdo that found the most joy in that scary “secular” world. Well, for a time, I did not. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I just drank a lot. But the majority of my experiences through my life; in social work, being a server for years, the bar scene, in artists’ circles, and experiencing other cultures and beliefs, were rewarding and renewing experiences that brought me true joy. This “worldly” living did not taint my faith, it grew it.

What fed me was how people loved outside the church, and even more, how much I loved them. For their vulnerability and authenticity, their curiosity and openness. They emulated Christ like I had never seen.

What is under what we’re experiencing in our country right now is what I’m talking about here. No room. No questions. No deep dives. No understanding of people outside your faith.

This IN YOUR FACE Christian Nationalism and the MAGA beliefs that blow the minds of people that did not come from a high control religion. I know you see it. And it is because of what I’m describing. It’s hard to take and infuriating, I know. But to hate the people who come from it does nothing about it. To make fun of them, does nothing about it. To stoop to the level of the way Donald Trump talks does nothing about it.

But please, be angry. Be hurt. And respond in whatever way your gifts lead you. Stand up. Speak out. Keep going.

For “them”, it is that it’s easier to sit back on “what the Bible says” no matter if they understand the true history of the Bible or what the historical purposes of the changes were when the changes were made. And just as much as conservative fundamentalists accuse left-leaning progressives of cherry-picking verses used like swords, they do the same and therefore all the points are moot, from either “side”. We simply will not believe each other. It’s too opposite.

They will know we are Christians by our love is lost in this mess right now. This is a reckoning. It can be a road back to what Jesus taught, or it can be Christian Nationalism. WE get to choose, if only we can stay a democracy and not a theocracy.

What upsets folks outside the religion is the blatant lack of love living in Christian Nationalism, though “they” would say it’s love to make these self-focused changes to an entire country. To make it Christian. To make all people Christian. Isn’t “bringing them to Christ” in the end, a loving action?

You see, they do believe they are saving souls, but it’s beyond that, so far beyond that now. This evangelistic effort crossed lines long ago, and now we’re seeing its rotten fruits.

I love to dig into meaning. “What does love like that of Christ really mean?” is one of my favorite questions. This is something that has been a part of me, the divine way that I am. And yet I still hear the responses to that integral centering part of who I am. Your heart is deceitful. You can’t base what you believe on feelings. That’s not what the Bible says…

I’m working on muting the voices. It’s hard, hard work. It is not how Jesus would ever speak to me. It’s how religion speaks, whether it aligns with the truthiest truths of Christ or not.

Because if we don’t truly understand historical context and therefore what Jesus was really addressing, really saying, what he meant, then what is our religion? His name is in the title, but where is he in the religion? Inside Christian Nationalism, I cannot find him. No matter what people in bible studies or pastors or fellow Christians have ever thought of me, I have a keen spiritual core; a Jesus compass, if you will. I know the absence of him in his faith when I see it-FEEL it. I know it like I know the absence of my earthly father; the gaping hole. The love with nowhere to go.

Christian Nationalism takes the love of Jesus and ties it up, Jesus in a hard wooden chair, nailed down to the floor, his wounded soul with all its feelings bound and gagged.

So many follow the Bible and believe it says things about government that should be applied now. But this is a forgetting of the new covenant, the fact that Jesus came to fight oppression, to point out the dangers of worldly power, of kings and Pharisees. Therefore many Christians don’t seem to understand the difference between the teachings of their religion and the teachings of Jesus, and there sure is one. It’s complicated and hard to admit, for a fundamentalist, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

Does that make even the Bible an idol? The words themselves; at face value, a God? One that ends up keeping you insulated, unaware, and demanding the same from others? One that means you will not hear any outside perspective for fear that you will “fall away” or be tainted somehow? Or is it a fear that you might be “wrong”?

I don’t claim to know what all the thoughts and fears are, but I know what mine used to be. A person can only see it clearly as an outsider, and therefore I want to scream THANK YOU from a mountain top, for making me an outsider. For all the little jabs, the eye rolls, and the downright finger-pointing. Thank you for pushing me to a true “relationship with Christ” that sustains me like religion never could. Thank you for pushing my rebellious nature so I could rip out the roots and sow the seeds of attempting a life that begs to both literally and figuratively understand the words of Jesus and strive to live them outside of a bubble.

The last straw, that should have come sooner, years and years ago, came when sitting with a pastor in “marriage counseling”. My first marriage was revealing its truths and we were in so much pain. Long story short, the dude told my then husband that he was at fault because he didn’t have devotions every morning, after we had explained that our baby was screaming around the clock and we were both so exhausted we couldn’t see straight and then said husband would have to travel for work and I was not just figuratively losing my mind, but totally and completely losing it, and we were scared.

He said nothing in response to that.

THEN, he held up a little statue of Jesus carrying the wandering sheep back to the herd, how he went after just one, how beautiful, to take that risk. I had always thought that was a brilliant picture of love. But this pastor said, Do you know why Jesus had to carry the sheep home? And we said, “Because he went to get him, like you know, a shepperd, a father…um…” and he interrupted,

“No. He had to break his legs. To teach him not to wander.”

This was never the Jesus I was curious about or in awe of, for the way he loved, and railed against any power-hungry capitalistic, un-love. But I know that I know that I know that for anything I say as I write this, there is a rebuttal. Because only high control religions need a constant rebuttal at the ready, formed in the religion, not the image of Christ.

But Heather, that’s a person failing you, not Christianity…

No. Full stop. That’s a fundamentalist doing harm, which comes from a fundamentalist religion doing harm.

Today?

Knowing the freedom of pure radical unconditional love, forgiving seventy times seven, experiencing the artist hand of God, the beauty of creation and protecting it, standing by the “least of these”, and believing Jesus about the poor and the immigrant, that’s who I am.

I am an insider.

Who wants a love that makes sense anyway?

Pure and true love never will make sense. It’s too radical, like Jesus. It scares people and they attempt to tamp it down so as to not go nuts and condone “badness” and the sinners outside that need to be set straight.

But I am free to love as I am made to love. And I will always be loving those that religion despises. And this, my friends, is not just a feeling. It’s action. It’s not thinking about making people come closer to your religion. It’s allowing the image of God in every person to shine and then embracing it all. I have learned far more about the love of Christ from the weirdos, renegades and questioners than I ever did in church.

“But Heather, as a Christian, you are called to correct sin…”

Okay, then let’s talk some more about Christian Nationalism and how it defies the heart and teachings of Jesus. I welcome that conversation. I don’t have all the answers, but I have the tenacity to see it through, in defense of those being harmed by this administration and any religious or political movement that demands for the world to live in its image.

Don’t you sit with folded hands and become blind.

To learn more about Christian Nationalism head over to see Tim Whitaker and his essay, Christian Nationalism 101.

(All quotes from Mumford & Sons lyrics)

Have you come across Melani Sanders and her We Do Not Care Club? I love it. It’s hilarious. She starts her videos with, “We are putting the world on notice that we simply do not care much anymore,” because she’s 45 and in peri-menopause and she knows women around her age are feeling the apathy with her. We’re too busy fighting hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, itchy skin, digestive issues, mood swings that include rage, ETC., and therefore we are apathetic. NOT to the pain of others or critical issues of the world, but we certainly don’t care what you want for dinner or if your baseball pants have been washed. We also don’t care if we look ridiculous when we leave the house in a baggy t-shirt and sweatpants and Crocs.

I say this to preface what I’m about to tell you. I had an epiphany of sorts this morning about writing and I started to laugh because I realized this might be a phase, but I think it’s worth sharing, especially for those of you that write.

I do not care if my writing is good, whatever that means. I do care about engaging with other writers and anyone who wants to read my words. And I still care to learn the ways of great writers. But for me, writing has never been about impressing anyone with a skill. It hasn’t been about a big goal to become a famous writer. And I’ve been hard on myself about this until today. There was a little voice telling me I’m simply (ACK! An adverb! Bad!) not good at sticking with anything like a book just like I’m not good at sticking with exercise. It isn’t that I’m lazy, I go and go with gettin’ things done all the time, but mostly likely, therein lies the “problem”.

People ask me when a book is coming. The honest answer is, “I don’t know” mostly because I have way a lot of ideas for books and I get scattered. I want to write about being a caregiver in today’s culture in America, and I have done a lot of that online, which could turn itself into a book pretty fluidly (ACK! An adverb!), but the only reason I would try to publish that is to help others going through that, not to attain a reputation as a writer to a broader audience.

Because I do not care about that at all. Which is maybe why I am not as driven as most people who write books. I fell in love with writing because of the conversational nature of blogging in the old days of the Internet. I had no education in writing, had never been to a writing conference or class at the time, and had no idea words ending in “ly” were naughty. I still don’t even really understand why. I think adverbs can be lovely.

So I’ve always written how I talk. I’ve written with my heart, with a sprinkle of brain in it. I’ve now been to many, many writing conferences and classes and I honestLY cannot tell you I can remember what I was taught. The deeper, juicier things about letting go without fear have been good reminders, but the nuts and bolts things are lost on me. I can’t help it. I don’t mean to be rebellious. I just do not care.

I’m writing this to other writers, probably. To let you know that you aren’t alone if you have some apathy like I do. And I’m writing for anyone who reads it because we all care about things in different ways, and sometimes that means not caring much about what everyone else seems so worked up about and focused on. (Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about Big Things regarding our fellow humans. If we don’t care about others or the issues that harm others, we might need to work on that. Like go to a caring class or conference, perhaps. And take notes.)

I’m speaking to things like how it seems like most other mothers my age are super humans with perfect hair and nails and I do not care much at all about what I look like in public unless I realize in an elevator that my fly is open and I’m carrying Gas-x in my hand like a presentation. Then later I realize these things and get embarrassed. Then I laugh and laugh and can’t help telling everyone I see what I did.

Anyway. I’m embracing this. I want to write like I talk to you. I want to tell you stories like I do in emails to my friend, Sarah, and I want to write in the way I talk when I send a voice memo to my friend, Steph. She almost always says she loves listening to me, like I’m her favorite podcast. Back atcha, my Stephy.

I’m in a hotel lobby right now and Cold Hearted Snake by Paula Abdul is playing. I know all the words. My 14 year old daughter is not impressed. She was eating breakfast and suddenly I was captivated by her beauty while eating bacon. Right now she cares a bit about what she looks like, which aligns with teenagerdom. She knows I do not care, and sometimes I embarrass her. For instance today when I sit here in a large hoodie with no bra, pajama pants, and loafers, in public. When I go back upstairs and get dressed I will put on what makes me feel comfortable. Maybe this is what I do with my writing, too.

Dear fellow writer and other humans, if you have trouble applying the rules of being a more impressive person we’ve been programmed to believe are hard and fast, join the club. And instead of it being a guilt club, let’s squash that and just…write. Just be. Just let go. Take the bra off and use the adverbs if you feel like it.

I love you.

His name is Pasquel and he hails all the way from another small town very nearby my small town. But he was still asked, there on the sidewalk (by someone who is not me), “Where are you from?” because he’s brown and I could see he knew from experience he has to give the name of his birth country to satisfy the questioner. Cuba, he said quickly, before adding that he lives in Raymond, for the last thirty years.

Not everyone takes the “Where are you from” question to mean, “You don’t look like you belong here,” but I understand why many people do feel that way. They’ve been treated as such, sometimes for thirty years.

I spoke a little Spanish with Pasquel. And when I say “a little” I really mean it. But me trying and fumbling had us both laughing. I told him I worked in restaurants with Spanish speaking people for years and I learned what I learned from them. From the people working those endless hours; more hours than I ever put in. Always exhausted and always showing up.

Don’t get me wrong, a little Spanish is not all I was taught back then, by my co-workers, in my college days and beyond. I learned a lot about love, too.

There is a gentle love from Latino people that you know if you know. And then this exuberant joy that bursts from their souls in riotous laughter, freely and often. What a gift.

More often than not, to know people is to love and come to trust them. It’s all it takes, really, getting to know people outside your bubble, your faith, your culture, your community, your shared…mindset. Outside of you.

There’s less fear filling in the cracks of our ignorance, if we simply get to know our neighbors, right? These fears are too often born of the words of bigoted politicians or religion or slanted media sources, begging us to believe we are being taken over, when the facts do not reflect that.

Pasquel was looking to buy a car that’s been sitting for years in the parking lot next to the coffee shop/bookstore. I told him the man that owns the building has gotten very sick, but small towns being small towns, the coffee shop regulars knew where to get a phone number for a guy that could answer questions about the car. Pasquel said he works on cars a lot. I said I don’t, I just work with books. We laughed again.

As we said goodbye, my new friend said, “Thank you for your kindness. I will keep you in my heart.”

Te guardaré en mi corazón.

I will keep you in my heart.

I tell you the truth; I didn’t really do anything to deserve this gift of words. I certainly don’t think it was because my Spanish was great. But I knew what he meant because sometimes you just connect with someone. Your soul sees them, really sees them, and they feel it.

He made me feel seen, too.

Maybe that’s why we’re here, to at least attempt to see each other, no matter how different we are. Sometimes I can’t find many other reasons. We are so cruel and divided and selfish. Stubborn. Closed off. We sit with whatever slanted news sources align with our beliefs and we start to see shadows where there is only light. We gobble up manufactured extremes and we grow dark, shut down, go numb, or get mean.

I don’t know about you, but if you ask me, it’s certainly time to let go and simply connect. To stay open. To learn. To be curious beyond, What country are you from? while remembering we’re all the same; out here on sidewalks, souls waiting to meet.

My own response revealed to me how confused we all are about death and grief.

My mom died almost two years ago; dad just over a year ago.

That’s like five minutes in grief time.

Lately my focus has been on local families and their enormous losses. There has been more loss this spring and summer then we’ve seen happen all at once in, I don’t know, maybe ever? Babies. Children. Young people. Lifelong community members that impacted our lives. Illness. Tragic accidents. Suicide.

So many.

We keep looking at each other, eyes glassy, whispering, What is happening? And this comes after a few years of huge losses locally, so I don’t know…we’re scared. Maybe scared is the word.

In essence, my funeral director friend was asking, How are you doing with all of this, as a griever yourself?

Well, I’m triggered. I’m sad. I’m worried about the “other shoe” dropping all the time. I am bracing myself for more bad news. I am fully aware that life is largely about struggle and loss and most of me has come to terms with that, but I’m still scared. I’m still human. I still hate it so much when people are hurting.

But yesterday I was reminded what “checking in” on a grieving person looks and feels like. We talked about that. The checking in. The support grievers so desperately need.

After my dad died, there were two to three days when no one showed up. Don’t get me wrong; people had been there…but then, after they took his body and everyone left my sister and I to ourselves at our parent’s house, there was nothing. Two days of nothing felt like everyone outside of our immediate families had been raptured or maybe just…didn’t care that much. Of course that was not true, but that’s how it felt while we were the most fragile we’ve ever been.

So the funeral director and I, we talked about why that happens sometimes, and I do realize that it’s more often than not totally innocent. We can blame the pandemic and how it shifted us to more isolation and less showing up. Or we can recognize that people assume grievers are getting inundated with visits and food and they decide to wait. But then life happens and they forget, or they move on to the next struggle, or have the weight of their own burdens keeping them from showing up. And let’s also not forget we are all terrified of screwing it up so we don’t show up at all, while many of us are also so afraid of death and all that goes with it that we avoid, avoid, avoid.

Sometimes we just need to get over ourselves.

After these last few years of personal losses (four close family members, in case you lost track), and the many years before, as we lived the daily losses that come with Alzheimer’s Disease and the wasting away of bodies bogged down with terminal illness, I cannot help but know. I know what it’s like, even if I don’t fully know what each unique situation is like for another person. I know pain. I know strife. I know the ache of soul; how it hurts deep down and through you to your bones.

And then I know that I know that I know I am meant to show up, to do better, to make sure people feel seen and heard in their pain. It is not an obligation. It is one of the only truly important things we are here to do. All the success and busy-ness in the world is nothing,

nothing, nothing.

The connection, the vulnerability and the mercies we show one another; these are everything

everything, everything.

I don’t know how to do it “right” either, friends. I mean, I have definitely said things that came out wrong, or I was too much or too little, or just…off. But the more I show up, the more comfortable I get in the showing up. The more willing I am to be messy, fumbling and trying, the more I let go of my fears and bring a dose of peace (I hope) to grievers.

Hello. I’m here. I care a lot. Here is a meat and cheese tray. I don’t need to stay but a minute, but I want you to know I am thinking of you all the time. I am not just hitting the “care” emoji on Facebook. It’s not enough. I want to hug you in person, if you’re into hugs. I want to tell you to your face that my heart is breaking with yours and I don’t claim to know exactly how you feel in your unique situation and I won’t pretend I do, but I’m here. Send me on an errand? Do you need tissues? I want to feel useful. I am so so sorry. Peace, peace, peace.

Sometimes I say all of that with words. Sometimes the action speaks for itself. Either way, we enter into authentic relationship when we are broken and clumsy and fumbling, and honest about it.

Is this my point: Being alone too much of the time, right after someone you hold dear has vanished from this life, should never happen. Even when a griever wants to hide, to be alone, to not talk…even then, showing up with a tater tot hotdish or a fruit tray is a gift. No pressure, no sitting down to chat, just a drop off and a building of trust. How about that?

This thing I’m writing here today could have gone in many directions after it was inspired by my conversation yesterday. I went with the flow. Maybe someone needed this one today. I hope so.

I love you. Peace to you.

When the beloved Dahl family lost their two boys in a tragic accident over a year ago, our small community covered them in love. At that time, I wrote about how quickly those not directly affected by loss move on. We don’t forget, but our connection to the grief wanes as the business of life takes over.

We often don’t know what to do, on-going. Aside from hitting the “care” response on a grieving mom’s Facebook posts and sending our thoughts and prayers, how do we support these broken hearts without over-stepping?

We are afraid of getting it wrong, so too much of the time we say and do nothing, especially as more time passes.

Another mother in our community that lost her precious son has a practice of regularly sending cards to people who have lost a loved one. She keeps a calendar of anniversaries of losses and takes the time to send a note. This inspires me. It is just one example of showing grievers on-going care.

When the accident happened and the days passed with the terrible news that both boys would not survive and then did not, I talked about having a Story Show in their honor and giving the proceeds to the family. So much of the time the only thing we know to do is to give money for medical bills, time off work, etc. This is important and should happen, but I wanted to do something that not only raised money, but also spoke to our need for long-term, even lifelong, connection through our pain.

Grief does not leave.

We need to hear one another’s voices; our stories about our losses and our pain. We need to know we’re not alone, for the rest of our lives.

If you aren’t familiar, you may be wondering what a “Story Show” is. A Story Show often makes people think of a librarian reading picture books to kids. Or someone reading their favorite paragraph from a beloved book. Those are good things, but that is not what a Story Show is.

A Story Show is an event in which regular people (with talent they may not even know they have), share their well-written, moving, powerful, often funny and sometimes mind-bending true stories from the stage. It takes courage and it’s always inspiring, thought-provoking and entertaining.

On May 25th here in New London, Minnesota at 1pm, storytellers will hit the stage of the New London Little Theatre Auditorium to tell their stories of grief. Then another variety of tellers will hit the stage at 4pm. That’s right, TWO SHOWS. What a gift! There were so many submissions sent to me that it called for more than one show! This means you can come to either show, or both, since they will be different.

The essay written by Will and Harry’s mom, Lara, will be read at both shows. I will read Lara’s story on her behalf.

It’s been a long time since a Story Show has not sold out, so I encourage you to get your tickets! You can do that through this link, or if you live nearby, stop by Flyleaf Book Shop and pay with a check, cash or card. Tickets are $25 each and all proceeds will be donated to Wild Haven, a sportsmen’s club for youth, created to honor Will and Harry and their love for all things outdoors.

Local and local-ish friends, if you are available for the show, we hope to see you there! If you cannot make it, please spread the word to your friends and family and even consider sharing this update on your socials. If you have questions, comment here or send me a message on Facebook.

While Jesus napped, I napped.

So forget the tater tot hotdish I had planned to make for him, I slept instead. All the miles of walking circles in my mind took a nap with me. The miles did not dream, but I did.

When I opened my eyes, there he sat, over by the fireplace.

Sorry! I said, sitting up fast.

Jesus laughed. Oh Heather, do you want to know how many times you’ve given a reactionary apology for doing nothing to anyone?

It’s in the millions, isn’t it? I asked, and then I guffawed, with my loud and embarrassed laugh which is my laugh most of the time.

Maaaaybe, he said.

Hey now, JC, as you well know, I’m a recovering alcoholic and former co-dependent people pleaser and a woman and a Minnesotan and a former Christian fundamentalist…what can I say?

I guess you can say your’e sorry for being human.

I loved this joke, and laughed with him. But then I followed my thoughts to the usual serious places they seem to want to go,

Jesus? I asked. Will it ever stop? Will I ever grow into a person that doesn’t have a sneaking suspicion I’m…bad? Will I stop believing the voices?

Yes. When you’re dead, he joked. Again. I figured he always had a great sense of humor, and this is one of the few times I’m right about what we cannot know for sure.

But really, Heather, Jesus continued. People come here and get the gift of an innate sense of their own God-given goodness beaten right out of them; it’s not just you.

Amen to that.

He went on,

I know what you want to talk about while I’m here; this Christian Nationalism thing. So I want to start by reminding you that the most religious ones believed I was crazy, too, when I stood up to the very same things. They saw me moving on from the old way and into a new covenant, and it made them very uncomfortable. They watched me crossing man-made boundaries and borders, and speaking of mystery and magic. Of course it made no sense to them. So I get it, how frustrated you are right now, I do. But…

Say goodbye to attaching meaning to what they say or think about you. It keeps you from staying focused on action.

I answered, Let me ask you this, Jesus. Did the Pharisees and Super Religious ever care what you thought? Did they ever listen to you? Did they ever believe you? I can’t think of a time that they did. Not over anything challenging anyway; not if what you were saying didn’t fit their script, which was pretty much always.

There’s a long pause. I’m looking at his hands. They are a lot like my father’s hands; my husband’s hands, except brown, of course. Dry and cracked from work, dirt under the nails. I wondered how he still builds things, and I wondered again if heaven is an actual place. His hands made me think yes, and his hands also made me think that “place” is not what we think it is. I highly doubt Jesus is using his carpenter skills to build mansions in the sky.

Anyway.

Then he said it. Right now, none of this is going to change. There will be people that never listen or change when it comes to what they think Christianity is, but you know that. So let’s go deeper. I know you love going deeper, and you know I do, too.

He went on. Remember what your big burly Jason told you on that night you fell apart the very most, while trying to take care of your sick parents and your kids with loved ones dying at least every six months, and you were clawing at the dirt to survive? Remember what he said when you told him you could not do it anymore, not for one more second? When you wanted to give up, because it was all so big?

I answered him past the lump in my throat, a little squeaky. Yes. He said…”You are not made of giving up.”

Yes. Yes. And you still are not made of giving up. You are witnessing a government that worships money and pretends at religion. The Pharisees are gonna Pharisee, my friend. They’re always going to want to kill me, and then kill me again and again. Listen to me? No. Live like me? No, they don’t want that. There’s no power to ease their fears, and no control to ease their discomfort, not in the way I’ve said to do things.

It poured out of me then, super fast.

Jesus, this is what baffles me the most. You are being erased from a story while it’s being re-written to suit agendas. They are using you to do what they’re doing. They use the religion with your name in it, and then deny you with political horrors because it helps them to succeed with this wildly chaotic and cruel master plan. The misuse of Christianity has been so blatant I can’t even see straight, and yet…yet…there are so many Christians who want a “Christian Nation” so they refuse to see it. To protect…to protect…their…oh, I’ve been watching it my whole life…it’s this fear that drives them to stay closed off, insular, exclusive…to avoid the discomfort of admitting they don’t truly care what happens to others if those others are not like them. Have I gone too far in saying that?

He stayed unflappable, purely free of judgment despite my rant. I said we should go deeper and that means being able to say things and work through it. It’s okay. You’re not necessarily wrong. They do not want to care sometimes because loving all people the same way, is uncomfortable. Setting aside certainty, for so many people, is far too uncomfortable. Most born-again evangelical theology is a response—an avoidance of discomfort. It takes something complicated and multi-facted and difficult, and turns into a checklist. Even though I did not leave here saying, Make sure you pray a certain prayer, get baptized only as an adult, and then start believing you have gotten it the most right out of everyone else ever.

Right?! You said a lot of things that are being totally ignored. I shot up from the couch, stood in the middle of the room, pointed at him (how rude) and asked, Aren’t you mad? NO, aren’t you furious? I’m furious for you, but honestly, you seem so….not mad?

He sat a moment, then stood up. He looked at me and his face softened and the answer was simple, as usual, but with a tear slowly escaping and running quick-slow, quick-quick-slow down his cheek, slipping off with his words, No, I’m not mad. Because remember, so often, they know not what they do. But I’m with you in your anger over the harm and pain, the suffering, that is being caused by the people in power now, who claim to believe in me and follow me, as history repeats itself, again. But more than I am mad, I am with you in your sorrow.

He put a hand on his heart.

I started to sob with grief for what all of this has become. Then I half-yelled,

Oh look Jesus! Here I am with my terrible empathetic feeeelings. Feelings get in the way of knowing the real Truth, you know.

I couldn’t help it, sometimes sarcasm is a good release.

Well, he answered. Feelings turn tables, feed the poor, and keep hope alive. Feelings move you to refrain from a dangerous certainty. If you look at the stories of my own life here, you’ll remember that I was led by compassion, love, empathy, sometimes anger, all kinds of feelings that kept me responding, kept me really seeing people and caring for them. Your feelings are your superpower, too, my friend.

I’ve never totally gotten it, Jesus. But it hit me right now…

I never needed to be told how to believe, I only needed to believe…you.

It’s so obvious. I mean…I knew this, but I keep forgetting; I’m just so programmed to believe I am not to be trusted because I’m bad, sinful, sliding down slippery slopes, people thinking I’m just making up my own version of Christianity. But I get it. I get it now.

I knew it all along, deep down, under the miles and miles of lies.

It was never about me not being Christian enough, as I was told in a thousands ways over so much time. That was the ultimate distraction. My religious indoctrination was a distraction, keeping me from fully trusting my innate goodness, and from staying focused on the Jesus sitting right there with his tears and the Squishmallow and his truest of true ways of loving me, and all people, no exceptions.

He looked at me. I looked at him. I handed him a tissue and then blew my nose while it honked. We laughed.

You, my dear, he said all choked up, are trustworthy.

Then I snort-sobbed, immediately.

He went on. It’s the truth. But I also need to remind you to keep seeking compassion for those that have not broken free of certainty and its lies.

Time is of the essence. We will continue to see a religion that seeks power over others for what it is, but to live under it? No. It’s only an illusion anyway. You’ll see. Stop swirling around in their stew; we have work to do. Because what I’m saying to you does not mean you cave to injustice; it means you stop feeling like you somehow deserve to be defined by the ways they think you’re lacking. And when you feel like shit, you can’t move into action. And friend, I mean action outside of words on a screen.

Oh, I responded. Should I not be saying stuff all the time on social media and Substack? For real, I’ll stop if you tell me it’s a bad idea.

No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying it can’t be all that you do. Remember, do what you’re good at, you have gifts for a reason. Write. Write a lot. But also remember that you are good with people in person; you love well. Keep going. Keep making connections. Build more relationships. One of the things I wanted the most for all of you was, and still is, unity—be as good at inspiring others toward unity as you can, but don’t forget to take naps.

I started crying again while I giggled over the nap thing, and then went and sat down next to him, pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them; let myself tip over until my head hit his shoulder.

So Jesus, what are we going to do today? Are you going to wash my feet or heal my shoulder pain?

Nah, you’re going to relax and probably think too much, which doesn’t really help with resting, and I’m going to try to make this Minnesota tater tot hotdish thing.

I laughed and said, Obviously.

Jesus, I really really like you.

I like you too, Heather Jo, a whole lot.

(This is the final essay in a three part series. You can find the first and second essays by clicking the links at the top of this post.)

Because I am not a conservative fundamentalist, I have been labeled liberal, a leftist, etc. People assume immediately that they know what I am, forgetting who I am.

Christians, our political…atmosphere has highlighted our differences. And because I’m not conservative or Religious, there are people that seem to think of me as, “oh ye of little faith.” That sort of thing. Or they believe my faith isn't the right kind, leaving me and my family at risk of a hellfire eternity.

Thankfully, it no longer concerns me what people think about my side of the Christian street, my heart and soul, or the beautiful loving free souls of my children. I know who and what we are, and I'm grateful, so grateful, that our faith is focused on the common good, on all others, free of judgment and misinterpreted scripture.

There is a lot about my religious background I have seen for what it is, and set aside, not out of hate and anger, but more like detaching, with love. There is a lot about my religious background that sustains me and has given me peace. What I’m saying is that I did not throw Jesus out. But I did free myself from the ways a religion supposedly based on his life got all twisted up and damaging.

I’m not really anything, friends. There is no box for me. I fit no mold. I do not pop up from a cookie cutter like the gingerbread man, ready to think like everyone else in my faith. I’ve lived how dangerous that is.

Therefore, I will never align myself with fundamentalism or Christian Nationalism and its attempts to make an entire country of all beliefs and valuable differences, Christian. I don't believe Jesus was a Religion-pusher. I believe he said, "follow me" and we took that in a million different ways. For me it means "like a child." You know, the ways that little ones feel so loved by certain people, to a degree that causes them to walk in the footsteps of that person; to do as they do and say as they say. They become as much like their love hero as they can while staying their own little person. Kids are inherently good at this, and so often we take this from them with all of our rules and constant “stop being bad” attitudes and words toward them. My dad used to say, when kids were hyper-disciplined in Christian families, “I hope they don’t break her spirit.”

Amen.

There was a lot about the theology I grew up with that did not lead to the freedom and joy that I believe Jesus was looking to give us. It was a focus on sin, lifestyle and behavior to the point of shaming, and more shame, and then some warnings, week after week. Many of those in The Church don’t notice this subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) messaging anymore; it feels like home, even if it leaves them feeling a sense of loneliness and pain they can’t pinpoint.

Maybe this is why many of the most disgruntled, angry, unhappy people I know are living in that faith “tradition” I came from. I’ve been thinking on that for more than twenty years, too. Trying to nail down exactly why that is when what Jesus did was what Jesus did. What a rebel. What a renegade. What a surprising speaker of truth; always moving and speaking in ways so different from the Pharisees and religious “leaders” and kings of his time. He spoke truth to…power. Over and over and over, and never wanted it for himself. He did not tower over others with threats of damnation. Sure, he set people straight sometimes, like the woman at the well. But I imagine he did that with a gentle mercy. And I have grappled with his words to her,

“Go and sin no more.”

Because he wasn’t stupid and he knew she was human so how in the world can a person live their whole life after meeting him…perfectly “sinless"? What he meant might not even mean what we think it meant. That’s the thing about faith and the Bible. We have to stand on a foundation that is made of radical love and acceptance and freedom, grace, unity and joy to be able to decipher the mysteriousness of this dude and the things he said.

I think he didn’t leave it up to her to get it perfectly “right” from then on out. I believe he had to know that kind of messaging was too daunting and unattainable, leaving people feeling like they can never measure up.

Maybe simply being in his presence (despite that in those times he wasn’t even supposed to be near or speak to such a woman) took away her need to try to find love by sleeping with the whole town. Here was a guy that wasn’t like all the other men. Here was a safe person, oozing with peace and a trustworthiness she was drawn to. Once you find love as love should be, your desire for the things that look like love but aren’t goes away.

Maybe it wasn’t that she was never going to make bad choices ever again; maybe that wasn’t his “demand”- go and sin no more. Who knows exactly what was said, but I feel Jesus, I do. And I wonder if he was saying, It’s okay, you don’t have to do that anymore. You just wait. The fulness of self-love is what I’m leaving with you. Go, and love yourself more. I love you.

Because when we love ourselves, it’s harder to self-destruct. I believe that’s what he wanted for each of us. His radical love—>unconditional self-love—>freedom. Lather, rinse, repeat. Screw up, remember, come back. Stop the slow belly crawl of shame down there in the dirt. Rise up.

Today so many Christians are striving to center their lives and faith to the political realm in a way that demands others conform to what they believe. This seems to me to be a Religion that Jesus had no interest in and most likely, in my humble opinion, has a lot of disdain for.

I have noticed that these politics-focused Christians that idolize certain politicians don’t do it in Jesus’ name—they have to say “God” instead.

God’s country.

Bring this country back to God.

Trump is God’s president.

Through this writing exercise I’ve been doing here in previous posts, where I pretend to meet with Jesus in person at my house to discuss this, it’s been impressed on me that of course they cannot swap out “God” for “Jesus” when making these statements, especially after the last 60 days of harm being done, even if they believe the good outweighs the bad.

“Trump is Jesus’ president” rings a little differently, doesn’t it?

Maybe that’s because we all know, whether we support this president or not, what he’s done and how he lives ego first; how he claims to need no forgiveness and to do no wrong. We hear his vitriol and read his degrading social media statments and we can’t unsee it. And even Trump’s most faithful followers then know that his name doesn’t belong in a sentence with JESUS—the opposite of a Trump-like savior.

And that should make us wonder what we believe about God, if we can go on claiming this current administration is serving him and making statements that confirm that belief?

Most Christians believe God and Jesus are one, along with the Holy Spirit. But using “God” in these political statements must soften the dichotomy for them in some way. I don’t know. I do not understand it. I am grateful to not understand it.

I think out loud. I process. Thank you for “listening.” I don’t claim to have all the answers and never will. I believe certainty is the death of faith (and unity and authentic relationship), so I will keep steering away from it, admitting that I am only doing the best I can to follow in those love hero footsteps, like a spirited child.

It appeared at my doorstep yesterday, and as I carefully opened it, little by little, with my scissors and my heart, my whole body felt what was coming.

Astonishment. Joy. Grief. Sorrow. Weeping.

I tried to take a photo with no glare but decided the light, causing an imperfect picture, is symbolism for their light; how their light was there through it all. The suffering through ten years that were meant to be golden could not steal their heart light.

I was watching a video of a griever sharing something online and he said, “Grief is a chronic illness,” and I wanted to shout THANK YOU at my laptop when he said that.

It isn’t going away. It’s chronic.

What shape it takes is both out of my hands and in them. On any day, in any moment, grief strikes with such velocity that no human could ever quickly and neatly tie it up, transform it, and put it back out into the world like a vase of flowers. You can’t do that when you’ve been taken out at the knees. You’re on the floor with your heart in your throat and somehow, at the same time, outside of you. You can hardly breathe. You feel hollowed out.

Looking at this portrait will continue to be a reminder that carrying this grief is how they won’t disappear, you know? We don’t forget people that were so close to us—that we loved deeply—thank God.

To carry the grief pain and the relief over not forgetting them is how it’s going to be. And when we remember how we loved them, and how they loved us, the clashing emotions will always come.

I used to think people “worked through” grief, and to some degree that’s true. But now I know more than ever before that we do not “arrive” on the other side of it, ever. We do not “walk through fire” and shake it off, gleaming like diamonds.

All I know to do with it so far is to give myself grace for all the days in bed, the sobbing in my car and in the shower, and for not being able to get the weight off my chest.

We can be healing and in terrible pain at once. That’s how we discover we have become more compassionate, more authentic with others, and more true to ourselves. Not because we arrived anywhere or finished anything, but because we know we never will.

I’m a little afraid of joy if I’m being honest. As if it will mean I’m forgetting them. I’m deeply afraid of forgetting them. So this, “grief is a chronic illness” way of saying it? It’s true and freeing, when it could sound defeatist. It’s not. I know because my parents lived their chronic and terminal illnesses and still loved, cracked jokes, told stories, laughed, and laughed some more. The dementia and the cancer and then graft versus host disease did not have to disappear for that. Even on their hardest days.

Look at my portrait. Look at them. Linda and Mike. My mom and dad, beaming.

(I think there’s a subscribe button on the top right side of the page if you’d like to read more of my words in the future. I did not include the Substack subscribe thingies this time because they interrupt the flow of the post and I wanted you to be able to not get distracted from that amazing portrait. Thank you for being here.)

In reality, there are plenty of people that know far more than Donald Trump does about the world stage.”

Oh wait. I could not stop there.

”And of course, this kind of response (and people immediately "liking" the response) always has to have these lists of what the person thinks is going well. Off topic lists that have nothing to do with what was posted. Because keeping it relevant to the specific topic of the post will what? If it’s admitted that Trump is making some awful decisions, what? Will that negate the rest of what they believe, is that the fear? Most of the items on these “rebuttal” lists can be debunked by people that DO understand the world stage better than we or Trump ever will. But we just go round and round in circles instead of collecting both "sides’" information and then believing we DO have the ability to use common sense and research. Not everything a person sees and doesn’t agree with is fake news or lies.

Yes, we should all recognize misinformation is everywhere, but we are going to have to believe the truth still exists and then use our own personal brains, not a general MAGA mindset, or a general “liberal” mindset.”

That comment (not my own, the Trump support one), left me thinking one key thing,

“They are trusting Trump more than they trust themselves.”

Read that last part again.

They are trusting Trump more than they trust themselves.

And if that’s the case, there is nowhere productive to go in responding.

I don’t know what I’m saying other than “don’t waste your breath” with people that believe in this president like he’s an all powerful perfect deity.

Let’s continue to seek the truth and be the reasonable creatures we were made to be. And let’s continue to speak out in ways that make more sense than engaging in online arguments with people that have traded themselves for a doctrine that insists they value Trump’s claims and plans over everything and everyone else.

Mostly, let’s continue to trust ourselves, our intuition, our ability to discern, more than we trust any politician, and then get out there
and help someone-
care for the poor
and the oppressed,
visit a griever,
take the dog for a walk,
and stay grateful.

I witnessed an online conversation yesterday that didn’t get heated. Amazing.

One commenter who is hoping Trump is doing the right things was very focused on the economy and nothing else. She continued to say that we don’t know if what he’s doing will succeed yet, so why hate on him? People responded with valid concerns about his means to an end. An end that isn’t looking great, to at least half the country and so many other people in countries across the globe.

Someone left one simple profound line for the rest of us:

I responded, “This. I sure hope so.”

I’m not putting my little pile of money on “all of us” but I will continue to hope this is true for most of us. The aha moments. The light bulb moments. The “come to Jesus.” I hope.

The commenter that was seemingly stuck on the economy alone was saying the most common Trump supporter things:

I don’t like him at all, he’s a horrible person but I believe his policies align with my values,

followed by things like,

I don’t worship him, but I’m hopeful that even though there will be temporary struggle for all of us while this administration deals with federal money, it will be worth it.

No pain, no gain. Shrug.

To me and many others, the Project 2025, far right current team in power who wishes to convince us they are serving us through “Christian principles”, are working to plow through lives and resources, and now even our long-standing good relationships with foreign allies.

They are doing this as if they are driving their Teslas mock 200 in a Nascar race.

In this race, civilians are driving the same track, even if we didn’t sign up for it. Some of us have shitty old cars that meet their max speed at 70 mph. Some of us have the newest fastest most expensive vehicles, which I for one know nothing about.

But most of us are somewhere in the middle, driving decent cars that never had a chance to keep up with the Teslas. Many middle and low class drivers have been convinced that their cars will be granted magical powers at some point, so they can keep up.

It’s a lie.

An artificial intelligence search tells me that “Tesla vehicles currently range in price from roughly $38,990 for the base Model 3 to over $113,630 for a fully customized Model X, depending on the model, trim, and optional features.”

Most of us cannot afford that, obviously.

And most of us cannot afford the cost of this administration’s means to their end. An end that serves them alone.

We know that our country has wasted a whole lot of money over its all-time existence. But there are a lot of us that also know that destruction and chaos never leads to a positive healthy end. Just like anything else, deconstruction of systems that aren’t serving the people takes time and careful consideration. No, it wasn’t getting done very fast before, not entirely. But with all its moving parts, multiple views, and diversity of all humans living here, there is not a quick and dirty solution for lasting positive change that honors the freedoms and rights of all of us. It’s not possible.

Quick and dirty doesn’t feel right, especially if you’ve lived it. If quick and dirty are the means, pain and suffering are the end.

Just ask any person that has been sexually assaulted how quick and dirty went for them. Or ask an immigrant that has been detained even though they have a green card and are taking the appropriate legal route to citizenship. Or ask the farmer whose subsidies are now not coming, after all their careful planning and purchases made to make their work more efficient. I could go on.

So far, we’ve seen nothing but quick and dirty.

The Teslas are barely staying on the track, taking corners at top speed while crashing through the lower and middle class drivers and their cars without even noticing, not that they’d care. This administration was only ever capable of honing in on the so-called benefits of rapid fire erasure of the good with the bad. Because of a hyper-focus on the illusion of a finish line.

What they don’t seem to understand is that these tactics are cruel realistically, there is no end to this race.

You’ve seen Nascar race tracks whether you wanted to or not. (That there was the part of the analogy that means: some of us don’t engage in critical thinking about about the government’s speedy car races all that much, so our heads are in the sand and apathy is reigns.)

But sooner or later the destruction will be front and center for all of us, undeniable, pieces of our own vehicles all over the track, making it impossible to keep going. But if you aren’t paying attention, or believing what they say, all you see is someone who you think is winning and that’s all that seems to matter to you, as long as you don’t have to consider the cost. As long as you are comfortable.

Trump, Musk, Vance, etc, have big speakers on their Teslas and they’re shouting into tiny microphones for all of us to hear, while plowing through people, cars on fire, and screams for help. They’re calling us stupid and laughing, no matter the pain that’s being caused.

This is an analogy, but not a dramatization.

Crash after crash, old jalopies being pushed off the track, no break in the action. And half the crowd goes wild while the other half looks at them, mouths agape, wondering how they became so calloused; how they can’t seem to see what we see from the stands—human suffering, everywhere.

Whatever we have believed about the last many years in this country, no matter our financial “status” or our personal beliefs, it’s true that most billionaires are certainly not brilliant government leaders, and the suffering poor are not all lazy bastards.

To race well together, our thinking would have to stop going to extremes.

So many seem to have forgotten that we can find lazy bastards at every income level, and that most of our country’s wealthy have become morally bankrupt on their way to the “top”. Perhaps you’ve heard, "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10).

We find corruption everywhere and most of us want to change that. That’s why we’re driving around this never-ending track in the first place. The problem is that some of us believe that following, (and never ever defying) the Teslas, is the means to a wonderful end.

These are the Americans that seem to want “biblical principles” or only Republican ideals abided by no matter the background, traditions, beliefs and unique personal experiences of all human beings. And it seems a lot of these people believe money is the means to that end. No matter the cost, pun intended.

The reality is that we believe in Teslas or we believe in the little guys with every unique kind of vehicle. It’s one or the other, morally, if we can be honest with ourselves.

It should only take a look at what we’re being literally sold, including Trump shoes and bibles (???) and now his push for us to get out there and support his Elon Musk by buying Teslas. These people are walking advertisements for themselves and only those like them, crashing through the rest of us as if our bodies and minds and lives don’t matter.

There is no end. Our government is circular, cyclical, and so broken, especially now. The work needs to be done over many years by people with sound minds and at least a little heart.

Instead we are being told empathy is a sin, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and those on it are parasites. We are being told that we need to cut Medicaid because of all of those lazy poor people, when the majority of it serves our country’s elders in nursing homes. We are being told all immigrants are a drain on our systems, and also criminals. Oh, and Canada and Ukraine are now our enemies. We are being told our LGBTQ+ neighbors are the problem, while ignoring greed, hate, selfishness and discrimination.

And when the proof is in the actual pudding we are poisoning ourselves with, too many of us are so dedicated to power and control, that we disregard the current and inevitable upcoming strife that will be a direct result consuming what we’ve been sold; demolishing everything everywhere no matter what.

These “leaders” are not any sort of holy deity, but they are being worshipped. For people to believe so whole-heartedly in what they do and say, despite any corruption or red flags, is to worship them.

I can hear people, even the little guys with their shitty cars who have been misled, shouting out their windows as I drive my middle of the road car as carefully as I can around and around this track, “But people worshipped Obama and Biden too, Heather!”

To that I can only say that I, for one, and many of my middle to liberal-leaning friends of all economic statuses that supported democrats in the past, have not seen who they voted for as infallible and god-like. What Trump calls “extreme leftist lunatics” exist, just like far right bigots exist. But most of us are not on either end of the spectrum. What we have not seen is this level of hero worhip. The red hats, the painted trucks, the Trump flags and shoes and bibles…

That argument also fails because we have seen nothing like this ever before in the history of the United States. Nothing. Nothing even close. Billionaires are running our country to serve only millionaires and fellow billionaires. While the racetrack that was meant for the common good is becoming a junk yard, littered with our rights and freedoms.

We will all understand what I am saying here completely as time passes. We will understand it through our own suffering. While the rich get richer and the rest of us can’t afford the cost of living. While people believe Trump when he says tariffs are paid for by those we impose them on, when we the people actually do. While our neighbors who don’t fit the so-called Christian values mold (or the white male Christian mold) are mistreated and oppressed. And that is why it’s time for us to get off the race track, get out of our banged up cars, and walk to a wide open field, together. Both “sides”. Liberals and Conservatives. Democrats and Republicans. All labels aside in an effort to overcome.

It takes courage to walk away from a fight we are having only with each other while the Tesla drivers demolish our existence. It takes courage to set down our big egos and stubborn pride and unite. But it’s been done before, and some of us still believe in it.

The fight cannot continue to be among us, just as they wish, while they zoom past the wreckage, laughing and calling us names, like childhood bullies.

The fight, should we truly rely on “Christian principles” should be against the idols of power, wealth, politicians, and attempts at ruling over others with agendas that serve only ourselves and those like us.

I cannot convince the unconvincable (totally a word). I can only tell you that I will not turn my back on you when you need help, no matter what you have believed or who you voted for. Many people want to punish those who voted for this madness, but I can’t get on board with that either, no matter how frustrating it has all been. The principles I believe in, because I’ve seen them create positive change many times, include a wild grace and radical acceptance.

The votes for the Teslas have and will continue to cause great harm, and those votes will continue to attempt to erase misunderstood groups of people. People that I love and will continue to fight for. But if those Tesla voters should admit they’ve been misguided and want to make it right, I will meet them in the field with another chance, because that’s the only way we’ll get through this with something that still looks like a democracy.

I’ll end with this comment from the conversation I witnessed yesterday:

“A true democracy has people living next to each other in peace, being neighborly and minding your own damn business! Why is that so hard? Also- billionaires don’t care about religious values. You are a means to a bigger plan that will benefit them.” - Amy M.