Dolly Parton’s version of “We Are the Champions” is actually playing while I write this. She was a true Renaissance Woman - a term not connected to women very often. I'm not going to rehash her life here, too many have already rung that bell - suggest reading Dan Rather’s tribute - but I do believe she was in her own right a champion and a role model for everyone. From “9-5” ( September 5) to her work with children's literacy, to something as simply as recipies and collaboration with Duncan Hines to her myriad songs Dolly was a force to be reckoned with.

You’ll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try. That in itself is a mouthful for a Monday morning. And although I was the quiet one in my household that had to repeat math classes and did most of the housework, after my parents passed I was brave enough to truly begin again - to try- and look where it got me: ministry all over the country. Abilities I never believed I had. Strength to do what needed to be done and even now, the ( albeit shaky) the strength to stand up for myself in the face of adversity of different types.

I could have given up…after my parents passed … when my sister and her “crew” stole from our parents’ estates, when I decided to go back to school, when I made the decision to do mallexio facial surgery to correct my overbite, lisp and stutter, to go on after my rape, to get ordained…not to mention being a now divorced cis gender lesbian.

I rest my case. We are all brave enough to try. My ex used to say to try is to fail. I disagree. To try is to be human and G-d don't make no junque so the challenge in this world is to be brave enough to continue to try. Rest in Power Dolly Parton for you are a champion.

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

Decided today could be my weekly post instead of tomorrow. ( voice inside my head says “you can post any time you want to Andrea”…. Been one of those weeks)

The words you speak become the house you live in. I wish to heavens that some of the people who live in this building understood that. “F* this and F* that”. Calling me names and denigrating me when you don't even know me. Instigating arguments. Shall I continue? Do I need to? Negative responses cost this building a hefty investment this winter….the words we speak

And yes, anger and frustration at lost or stolen packages, overkill, louder than needed music that shakes me awake at 2am… it causes me to take the filters off my words. When I was young the old “sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me” was a mantra. I was a fetal alcohol effect kid who was shamed and bullied as a kid at school and at home. Church was the only time that didn't happen surprisingly. My prominent upper jaw, the lisp, the stuttering made me the butt of taunting often begun with my own sibling. I was a loner - it was safer.

And believe me, I can swear. Anxiety is a trigger. The lobby of this building with it's*who the h* cares” attitude can really force that issue. If you're different then they are it's time to pull out the ridicule card rather than be polite and try to simply be nice.

How did your ancestors teach you to behave? How do you react to someone new, someone different? Please, breathe before you say something you will regret. Because it might come back and bite you in the assets someday.

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

I saw this this morning while I was wandering around Facebook and it brought me up short, especially the last: You can only attend your own funeral so many times. I actually had a therapist say that the reason I served elder churches was that I kept burying myself.

Sorry that's a load of bull crackers. Yes, I grew up in an alcoholic household. Yes, my sibling was a dealer and (may still be) a sex addict and a dealer even in their late sixties. Yes, I was married to a narcissist. But no, I’m tired of burying myself.

Last Sunday I chose to be in a space my ex wife was in. This Friday is NY State Fair Pride Day and I'm singing with my Syracuse Gay Lesbian Chorus. I am back working for disability justice and decent housing for everyone. I am an old fat white beeotch and proud of it. Because I am whole and holy and almost 70 and I wasn't even supposed to come out of the delivery room.

People say I’ve changed . Guess what? The ones who stand there whispering need to look in their own mirror and not base anything else on TikTok or IG or any other social media. Your mirror reflects the real you no matter how you make yourselves known you have to see that every.single.day.

Get over it and love yourself

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

I recently finished Linda Miller's The Awakened Brain and I have spoken about it here. Yesterday was a day where Miller's awakened attention was very present for me while I waited for paratransit. Three little wrens, probably just born this year were following each other across the parking lot…a lot of hopping and flight attempts. They made me smile when many times waiting for the bus can be difficult. Then I turned towards an evergreen bush covered with spiderwebs. Every time I see this bush my first thought is why hasn't anyone brushed these ugly things off the bush. But yesterday I really looked carefully. A number of flying insects were plucking others off the webs. And then the wrens came over to check it out. Community in a different form. Pay attention.

I read a piece here this morning that as a pastor made my blood boil. If someone asked probing questions in church they were asked to leave. I also heard that someone I know was “cast out” for not meeting their tithe. When I was a kid we gave a nickel a week to the church and would get a “bill” if we didn't meet that promise. Towards the end of my ministry I got $100 a week as I helped close churches. I now live in subsidized housing where I read of ministers who are retiring with enough money to place them in the 1% tax bracket.

I understand more than some how hard it is to work for G-d and not expect to be rich in anything more than faith. The church of G-d accepts everyone despite race, abilities, need. It's something the “political church” needs to remember.

Pay attention and tell about it. The church shouldn't have that political agenda. G-d is like those wrens…continuing to explore.. and those insects helped me re-member

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

This line from Christine Nolfi’s latest book The Museum of Lost Dreams brought me up short. Between this book and Theo of Golden by Allen Levi which I also finished last night it has been a bit of a maudlin weekend.

BTW, I highly recommend both books, and as you read Theo of Golden, have a box of tissues handy.

The third book I am reading I am treating as a textbook which means I dug out a yellow highlighter. The Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller talks about spirituality being a way to hold off depression and some of the examples being my back both to Levi and Nolfi's books. Mix them all together and add it's 2 months until I enter my 7th decade and I don't know whether to laugh or cry- probably both.

Spirituality has a basis in hope. If you believe that there is something beyond you, better possibly than what you are going through right at this moment then much like a wave that crashes on the shore you can pull back, build yourself up and try again. One of the basic teachings of the Bible is that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And having been plagued by depression on and off I often use that as a type of mantra to simply take the next step.

Theo of Golden lives truly in the present moment for a year of his 87 years and each person he touches feels that and they are both grounded. Bess in Christine Nolfi's book is trying to stay present in a house that is known as the museum that she has been forced to return to after the accident that kills her parents. And Dr. Miller is not only presenting a new discipline of treatment for depression with spiritual benefits but these spiritual benefits keep depression at bay and manageable.

Hope is a treacherous emotion but it's the one that remains when Pandora’s box is opened. I don't remember what did escape when that happened but hope remains with and within us. It keeps us alive.

🙏 Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

Been taking my frustrations out on trying to build a printer stand. Bought a “cart” that wasn't wide enough so I bought another one:

(The brown one is the one I built today, the black one I built Monday)

What's that got to do with the price of freedom you might ask. If you have been following me you’ve seen my emotional struggles through July- a month full of references to my family history. Yesterday during my monthly therapy appointment my therapist asked me what could have happened if we hadn't pulled the respirator that day almost fifty years ago? It brought me up short. As the oldest of two ACOA I really was imprisoned. I had a cooking degree, but was living at home again and not even on the driver insurance policy although I did have my license. Someone had to take me to work and bring me home. My sibling was off doing her own thing ( they were on the insurance) but it was determined that I would stay home and care for our widowed mother. I wasn't allowed to have a life outside of that home.

And then the 4th of July she had her stroke and the neighbors rallied around me as the ambulance came and they got me to and from the hospital as I contacted family. My sibling chose not to be present ( they were partying (drugs) with “friends” in the backyard seeming oblivious to what was going on). My mother's brother responded with “Call me when she dies” as his wife grabbed the phone and said they’d be there as soon as they could since he was still technically her next of kin.

So I sat there in the hospital watching her fighting that respirator and talking to her, and she just kept breathing, and I began to understand that it might be time. But like the good little girl I waited…6 days. Both sides of my family arrived - it's funny that my sibling didn't. Questions were asked as if not mother wasn't there but I know she could hear because she reacted to some of them.

On the sixth day I told Mom to go be with Dad and that I’d take care of my sibling. I held her hand and said goodbye and left. She passed a few hours later.

Without her what the hell was I supposed to do? The trustees made me sign a literal blank will and we began to settle the estate(s) as my father's estate was being audited. With the freedom I had paid dearly for I began to find my voice, started driving and when my sibling’s friends started almost living with us I left…just called the trustee and said let the people living in the house deal with it . They left soon after. I found a place to live; had to buy my mother's car and my furniture from the estate and then I lost my job as a school cook when there was a change in direction ( everyone was fired).

I got a job working at the place I was living in and as the smoke cleared I decided to try college again…and then more school…and a second Masters and ordination….

I was free because the roots I had were literally cut off. I invested some of my inheritance in jaw surgery and worked hard to tame the New England accent. I was a whole and holy human being…still am even after my divorce and my declining abilities.

I paid a great price losing my parents so long ago but the freedom I finally found would never have begun if my mother had survived that stroke. I joke that she's running the Air Conditioner store in Hades but in some ways it's the truth.

As for me, two months before my 70th birthday? I'm free in a way that never could have been. I have learned so much at times I try to explain that to my 21 year old self and these days I can even hear it.

🙏 Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

We all have disappointments in our lives and as I will be hitting the 7-0 milestone this fall I can tick off a list as long as my arm starting from being born with bacterial pneumonia and my parents being told that I might not make it out of the delivery room…. I obviously did

And then there was the surgery at less than a year old to remove the lympheageoma for my left leg that left a long scar on my upper dorsal left leg. They told my parents I might never walk… I did

Fetal alcohol effects gave me a distended upper jaw…after they passed I invested in surgery to fix that but before then I was a quiet kid that lisped and stuttered… and since then I have preached and sung.

When my parents died too soon and left me without the skills to be an adult I was forced to stand up for myself.

When I was married I thought I’d finally be able to stop being disappointed until my spouse disappointed me.

I am an out proud queer lesbian elder but haven't always been. My sibling thinks “being gay is catching” and therefore has barred me from ever meeting her grandchild.

All this to say as hard as it is to be a “disappointment” to yourself and other people, be YOU, warts and all.

If this past disability pride month has done nothing else, it proves what Pema Chodron says…we don't know what the end of the story is, it truly my be the next step towards a marvelous adventure!

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope,🙏

I did it because when I was in seminary in MN this was a case of injustice that especially LGB+TQIA2S were rallying around. How could anyone get away with this? Remember folks this was almost 40 years ago and things have changed so much since then until our present government has gotten so frightened of people who are “different”.

Although I never met Sharon, I did hear and support Karen Thompson in her fight to be able to care for her partner. That wasn't a term many used outside of business in those days.

And in those days I was an out bisexual woman supported by communities I was part of and healing from my own trauma from another seminarian. This seminary, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, allowed all the parts of me to be supported and I was thriving.

And then, the Thompson/Kolwalski case came , and my communities responded as only we knew. We held vigils, we supported rallies, we wrote letters. And the case kind of got pushed to the rear as other things, other news became prevelent.

But I never forgot. At 21 I had to turn off my mother's respirator. Not knowing any better I was forced to sign a virtually blank will- at 21- because the paperwork my parents had was never updated and a bank trustee forced me to. And I wasn't the brash loudmouth I am now. As an ACOA when someone said jump I would respond how high and when do you want me to come down?

What I learned from that time was that end of life paperwork should be done as soon as 18 years old and reviewed/updated every five years after that. The first thing I did was draft a DNR-do not resissitate that has since had a DNI- do not intubate added. I have had a will of my own writing for decades along with a DPA- Durable Power of Attorney both for heath care and legal issues. My will states that I am to be cremated and my cremains to be sent to my family plot.

And every five years, unless there is a change in my status, this paperwork is reviewed and revised if needed.

Yes, the Thompson/Kolwalski case changed me. However, it also changed how I did ministry. When I met with couples getting married -gay or straight - they were often young. I introduced them to bankers, lawyers and funeral directors. I tried to share my own struggles as I encouraged them to look towards the future.

In my career working with small rural churches I buried more people than I performed marriages. And it changed me. It made me softer and more able to be patient . My own civil union post 9/11 was an example of what I tried to teach my pre- cana couples. And when I was divorced I changed my paperwork five times in one year as I dealt with homelessness.

The article I reposted yesterday allowed me to have some closure to the case I had fought for decades ago. I urge everyone to make a will, a DPA, and decide for themselves how they should be treated and more importantly who should have a voice in your care if you can't speak for yourself.

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

This article was the best summary of why every couple, gay or straight,needs to spell it legally next of kin. I lived in Minnesota while it was going on and participated in many rallies is support of couples choosing next of kin. The lessons I learned I continued to use in every pre-cana I ever did.

Please do your homework and keep your legal documents up to date.

“On July 25, 1985, a Minnesota court gave Donald Kowalski permission to cut Karen Thompson completely out of his daughter Sharon’s life. Karen wasn’t a casual friend. She and Sharon had lived together for four years, exchanged rings and named each other as beneficiaries on their life insurance policies. They considered themselves a couple. The law considered them nothing.

“Sharon had been 27 when a drunk driver struck her car on November 13,1983. Her niece, Melissa DiIorio, was killed. Sharon survived with severe brain injuries that left her using a wheelchair, impaired her speech and damaged her short-term memory. She needed extensive care and rehabilitation.

“At the hospital, Karen learned how quickly a relationship could disappear when the government refused to recognize it. Sharon’s parents received information and authority. Karen had no automatic right to medical updates, visitation or participation in treatment decisions.

“Sharon’s parents hadn’t known that the women were lesbians. After the accident, they refused to recognize Karen as their daughter’s partner. Both Karen and Sharon’s father petitioned for guardianship in 1984. Karen eventually agreed to Donald Kowalski’s appointment because she believed she would retain visitation rights and a voice in Sharon’s care. She badly underestimated what guardianship allowed him to control.

“Donald gained authority over Sharon’s medical care, living arrangements and visitors. On July 25, 1985, the court approved his request to terminate Karen’s visits. Sharon was moved to a nursing home in Hibbing, roughly 200 miles from the life she had shared with Karen in St. Cloud. Karen wouldn’t be allowed to visit her for more than three years.

“The case became a brutal lesson in the difference between having a relationship and having a legally recognized relationship. Karen and Sharon had rings, shared property and insurance arrangements. None of it gave Karen the standing a heterosexual spouse would ordinarily have received without explanation.

“The family and some doctors argued that Karen’s visits upset Sharon and caused depression. Early court decisions described the women’s relationship as uncertain and repeated family claims that Sharon had considered leaving Karen before the accident. Those claims mattered because Sharon’s disability made it easier for everyone else to speak over her. But Sharon wasn’t silent.

“She communicated through facial expressions, hand signals, written choices and one-finger typing. As her rehabilitation progressed, professionals evaluated whether she could reliably express whom she wanted to see and where she wanted to live. Their conclusion was clear: Sharon wanted Karen.

“In 1988, a court-ordered medical team determined that Sharon could make rational choices in important areas of her life. She repeatedly indicated that she wanted to return to St. Cloud and live with Karen again. Visitation finally resumed in January 1989.

“By then, Karen had turned the private fight into a national campaign. She and Julie Andrzejewski published “Why Can’t Sharon Kowalski Come Home?” Feminist, lesbian and gay-rights organizations rallied around the case. The National Organization for Women joined the campaign, and Lambda Legal and the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union later filed briefs supporting Karen.

“The case also became important to disability activists. This wasn’t only about whether a lesbian relationship counted. It was about whether a disabled woman’s wishes counted once courts and relatives had decided other people knew what was best for her.

“When Donald Kowalski stepped down as guardian because of his own health problems, Karen petitioned to replace him. Approximately sixteen medical professionals testified about Sharon’s needs, Karen’s involvement and the women’s interaction. The testimony overwhelmingly supported Karen.

“Doctors and therapists said Sharon consistently wanted to live with her. Karen understood Sharon’s condition, participated in her therapy and could motivate her through difficult rehabilitation. She had built a wheelchair-accessible home and was the only person willing and able to care for Sharon outside an institution. The trial court still refused.

In April 1991, a judge appointed Karen Tomberlin, a family friend who had not formally petitioned for guardianship and who wasn’t willing to care for Sharon at home. The judge called her a neutral choice, partly because Sharon’s family threatened to stop visiting if Thompson became guardian. The court was prepared to override Sharon’s preference to accommodate her family’s refusal to accept it. Karen appealed.

On December 17, 1991, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the decision and ordered that Karen Thompson be appointed guardian. The judges found that the lower court had ignored uncontradicted medical testimony, undervalued Sharon’s expressed wishes and selected a supposedly neutral guardian without adequate evidence of her qualifications. The appellate court called Sharon and Karen a “family of affinity” that deserved respect.

It was significant language for 1991. Same-sex marriage remained illegal throughout the United States. Most lesbian and gay couples had no automatic protection when a partner was hospitalized, incapacitated or killed. During the AIDS epidemic, biological relatives sometimes appeared after years of absence and excluded surviving partners from hospital rooms, funerals, homes and inheritance. Karen understood exactly what was at stake. After the ruling, she said it wasn’t a victory but “a right decision, a just decision that should have been made eight years ago.”

She was correct. Courts had spent most of a decade debating whether Karen’s commitment was legitimate while she built an accessible home, learned Sharon’s care and fought to preserve the relationship Sharon herself repeatedly chose.

The ruling did not establish marriage equality, and it did not automatically bind courts outside Minnesota. It also shouldn’t be remembered only as Karen’s victory. Sharon was not a passive object being fought over by her partner and family. She was a disabled adult whose attempts to express her own wishes were repeatedly discounted. That is the part legal history often cleans up.

Sharon eventually returned to community life with Karen’s care and continued attending public events. She died in St. Cloud on October 1, 2023, at 67. Her obituary named Karen Thompson and Patty Bresser among her chosen family and remembered Sharon as someone who loved nature, motorcycle riding, jokes and gathering with friends.

The Kowalski case became an argument for legal documents, medical powers of attorney and eventually partnership and marriage recognition. Those protections mattered because love alone had no legal force. Without paperwork or recognized status, a partner could become a stranger the moment an ambulance arrived.

Marriage equality didn’t solve every guardianship abuse, and relatives don’t always act against a disabled person’s wishes. But Sharon and Karen’s case exposed the danger of a system that automatically treated biology as family while forcing chosen family to prove itself in court. Sharon told them where she wanted to live. She told them who she wanted beside her. It took eight years for the law to stop pretending it couldn’t understand.

📚 This post was researched and written by me, a human, so there might be grammatical or historical errors. I make every effort to ensure everything is accurate, but corrections or additional info are welcome in the comments.

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope🙏

I have been trying to write this week but it hasn't been an easy week. One of my closest friends here almost made me lose my paratransit privileges because they didn't show up in time. They will never understand that I can't trust them anymore.

Trust has always been an issue for me. Maybe because people I have trusted have taken advantage. This time I set up this trip for them and they just had to go back up to their apartment. I really didn't need to go grocery shopping but I was downstairs 30 minutes early as I always am. They show up 19 minutes before and just have to go up and get their list. And the look they gave me as we were driving away…

They just don't understand that when we didn't stop it was because of scheduling. I’ve been with this program for over a decade so I know the rules especially on a Monday morning. And I know the penalties that were explained to them as they are also applying to the program. Basically, you follow the rules or you lose.

And without this program I am up a creek. I use it at least once a week and am blessed to have it. I always call in according to the rules, am always a half hour early waiting for the pickup and know many of the drivers. But I will also send in written complaints if there is something viable to complain about (like when a driver refused to tie down my UpWalker and broke the brakes) or someone forgot to schedule an evening pickup ( which has happened more than once).

So someone I trusted, someone I set up a ride for chose not to listen. And in order to take care of myself I have to radically accept the loss of a friend.

It's taken me a long time to trust myself after growing up in an alcoholic abusive household. I'm sorry to have lost this friend that I still have to work with but I hope they understand that I Come First

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope,🙏

Dear Barbara ( aka my mother)

Yesterday was a day I wish never had happened to a 21 year old almost 50 years ago. We turned off your respirator (and let you join my father who passed the year before).

I was so young (even more emotionally stunted) and my sibling didn't even seem to care. Your brother didn't care much either as he told me to “call me when she dies”.

As I watched you fight every breath against the respirator I had to grow up really fast. You didn't even respond (obviously) and I promised to take care of my sister and said goodbye and left. Friends who came in after I left reported that you had stopped fighting and was peaceful for the first time since they intubated you.

After all the usual stuff that follows a death I actually learned I had a voice and began to use it as I questioned trustees, your brother and others as we settled estates, sold houses and went on with our lives. For years I wondered what would have happened had the opposite decision had been made, especially every tenth of July.

But look at what has been accomplished since then: 5 degrees, almost 40 years in ministry ( that you laughingly told me I couldn't be because of my lisp and stutter), traveling, a 23 year marriage (to what turned out to be a kind of bad carbon copy of you) and recovery of the life G-d gave me which you dismissed over and over with psychological abuse.

That's a hard won gift. I am not only surviving, I am thriving. I wish I could tell you that at times. One of my therapists had me pretend Dad was in a chair next to me and had me do a similar exercise with his ghost, and it really helped. This exercise now is for you. I may never handle July well but I am doing better in the rest of my life because I am reclaiming it. I am almost 70 and I am a thriving adult who lives one day at a time, remembering that I am a gift you weren't expecting. I am proud of ME.

Your loving daughter Andrea

🙏 Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

I can't understand why people are so enamored with fireworks. I think I’d like them better without the noise.

My parents locked us in our green Oldsmobile station wagon when we were very young during a thunderstorm so we would be safe ( rubber tires grounded us) and then continued to party down by the river during what to this young kid saw as something that could really hurt us. I was somewhere around seven.

I will be 70 this fall and fireworks and thunderstorms are still triggering for me. Earplugs, weighted blankets hiding under pillows do very little. Sometimes I can actually set all of it aside but….

July 4th is the anniversary of my Mother's final stroke that eventually killed her. It was brought on by fireworks some of which my sister and her cronies were setting off in our backyard. It was two days after the first wedding anniversary without my father and the multiple stressers set the whole thing off.

We turned off her respirator 6 days later. Two weeks before her 58th birthday.

Yesterday I spoke with my old neighbor who helped me that July 4th. She and her husband are now in a step up community near where they lived. Around ten years older than me, she is living with a number of issues that will eventually end her life, and I am saddened at her diagnosis and deteriorating health as I remember how much she helped me at 21 get my mother to the hospital and all that followed.

I’ve spent years in therapy trying to forgive myself for being a kid who had no control over what was happening. I cried a great deal after my conversation with my old friend and reminded her how much she means to me. When she dies I won't be able to go to the funeral because of my own situation. However, one thing I learned from being a pastor: tell people you love them because you may not be able to say it the next time.

Charlie Macksey is right: Often the hardest person to forgive is yourself. And having to forgive yourself repeatedly is hard but necessary. We do the best we can with whatever we have to deal with and G-d bless the friends who help us along the way. Amen and Amen

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

Wasn't going to bother with a America 250 post. I have personal issues around the 4th as my mother's final stroke was brought on in part by fireworks but that's for another day.

I am embarrassed by our government right now and actually overjoyed that the DC parade was cancelled today rather than turning into a copy of his last parade where no one showed up. I’ve seen the “Fox News” reports of the “thousands of people” at America’s State Fair (yea right) and read about the products removed at the Ohio booth (go Mt Olive) and am just…disappointed.

Why take all that money and all that time and effort to try to distract us from reality: gas over $4, eggs out of sight, removing people from the only country some of them have ever known, trying to remove hard fought for rights, taking benefits from elders like me, the rise in homeless, drugs and guns….and it keeps going on ..and on… and on.

There is absolutely no reason to celebrate this country right now. It is truly on life support. I had to turn my mother's life support off, I would hate to see the world turn the country’s off.

I have to keep reminding myself it's' OK to be a left wing, cis gendered, lesbian, elder, minister, who is divorced, disabled, and scared to death at timesto even go down and use the laundry room let alone stand up to a bunch of reverse racist homophobes. They can't hurt me even if it seems like they can. Question is what is my response. .. just like our response to the government misusing our reputation.

🙏 Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

Instead of celebrating my parents’ 71st anniversary today I am remembering them. My father died in ‘78 and my mother died in ‘79.

Instead of spending the day at what had become “our” favorite place to swim, I am spending my day in an air conditioned ( thank G-d) apartment.

Instead of a lot of things I used to do or even take for granted I‘m feeling not ready and doing it anyway.

Because that's what being present means. Not so much remembering but acknowledging what has gone before. I can tell you how hard it it to drag the past with you all time. Maybe that's why I am half the size I once was. That…stuff…is heavy. But I ‘d be lying if I said it wasn't still around…my mother's alcoholism, my ex's narcissism, the eejit that violated me all those years ago, my sister's addictions and theivery, her idiocy around my queerness. These are the things in my past - some still affect my present. But I am trying very hard not to keep them so close that they affect my present or my future.

That's what I will be celebrating this Independence Day. My mental health is in the process of being liberated. And with that comes fireworks of all kinds.

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

I’ve been a bit out of the loop lately as I'm still coming back from our concerts a short while ago as well as dealing with some issues in my community. I kept thinking about people I used to know when I was still married and how I wish I could reconnect. And I did go back to the community center I used to go to regularly until there was a shakeup(?) dustup(?) in the leadership that made me sure I wasn't going back.

And then my phone picked up some kind of repetitive ad bug and that took going beyond my comfort level to patiently fix. ( I may still have to get a new phone but it's working 🤞 again)

However, one of the songs we sang in the concert came back to me written by Abbie Bentinis after the Pulse Nightclub shooting:”Love, love, love, All we need is love, love, love…” (I am actually very proud I didn't cry in those two concerts during this song). It was this song and my own tendencies to hibernate that got me up last Thursday and out to the van to spend the day with people that actually missed me. And I will return. Maybe not this week shortened by the July 4th holiday but at least once a week going forward.

And I did screw my courage to the sticking place ( sorry Mr Shakespeare) and contact someone I had lost in the divorceand we are now connected again. I was honest with her that she had been on my mind and it was great when we “friended” each other. It is true that all things come back multiplied. I am relearning that as I release the old. What comes back- or doesn't - is better than before.

🙏 Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear

Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes

How do you measure, measure a year?”

We closed our 35th Syracuse Gay Lesbian Chorus season yesterday to a very full house and a bittersweet song or two reflecting love in all forms. It was our director Brian Ackles final performance as he is retiring and that in itself is hard for our 60+ family of singers.

I used to be an active part of this wonderful like minded misfits. Friday evening and Saturday afternoon we were there in all our sparkling glory surrounding each other as our audience surrounded each of us with love and support and pride of 35 years of courage and challenges.

I am overjoyed to be back in this welcoming community when most of my last “community” left after my divorce. When most of my professional community now ignores me because I have fought not to have to continue to take the classes required by denominational law to be recognized as a minister because I cannot afford the outlay of money to do it nor to be able to travel where it is held.

SGLC is built on the foundation of everyone is welcome despite where you are on your life's journey.

“It's time now to sing out

Though the story never ends

Let's celebrate

Remember a year in the life of friends”

Thank all of you for being my friends. Thank all of you for welcoming me back.

“How do you measure, measure a year?

Measure in love (love), sweet love (love)

Seasons of love, oh yeah

Love (love), sweet love (love)

Seasons of love

Love (love), sweet love (love)

Seasons of love

Measure your life in

Seasons of love”

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

Been gearing up for the 35th Anniversary concerts of the Syracuse Gay Lesbian Chorus this weekend. Last night was dress rehearsal and as usual I ended up.very late winding down, hence the late post tonight.

SGLC is one of the oldest mixed voice queer chorus in the US. Many of the founders have passed on. But we are still packing the current venue at 50+ members

I love to sing. Even though I can't read music - although I have tried numerous ways to learn. Music is mathematical progression and I am plagued by dyscalclia. But I have a fairly good memory and remember words and tunes with ease

Charlie Macksey says is well above: ”Always remember your voice is important and has more value than you could possibly imagine. You have a song no one else can sing.”

When I was young because of fetal alcohol effect my mouth looked very different than it does now. My maxilla stuck far out from my mandible and the surgery I had to correct it in 1982 was complicated including wires up under my eye sockets and baby food as my mouth was wired shut. It was successful because my stutter and lisp were almost eliminated ( I still stutter when I'm tired). However, I could always sing and when younger I had a fantastic vocal range. Now I happily plod along as a mezzo soprano. And I just love to sing almost every genre out there. The concert is a reflection of the past 35 years of queer folk singing together - like To Sir with Love, The Boy from New York City, Hand in Hand, A Perfect Day and many others too numerous to mention. I'm planning on this celebration. I hope you are planning a great weekend as well

🙏 Be careful out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

I ran across a song this morning and it compelled me to actually write today:

I won't let yesterday decide my name I am not the ashes, I am the flame. Every scar is proof I survived the fall. I'm still standing, still rising through it all. Hear me now, I'm breaking free at last. I am more than the weight of my past. Oh, tomorrow, open your sky for me. I am becoming who I'm meant to be

Mm, mm

Dear Diary, tonight I choose to fight. I'll turn my wounds into my light. The girl I was is not my end. She's just a chapter I outgrew, my friend…”

song and lyrics by The Silent Partner ©2026

A few days back I received the first monetary request letter from my first seminary. Years ago I accepted that I got my first Masters in Counseling and Church History from this school although I had entered hoping to receive a dual degree in Ministry and Social Work.

And then I met another student - interesting, intelligent and attractive and we started hanging out together. And then he sexually violated me. Devastated, I went to the Dean and he dismissed it and said I had led him on, suggesting I take Reading Week to decide if I would consider leaving rather than maybe he might be arrested?

This was prior to the codification of the term date rape. I did take the week off and headed to my cousin's place and after spending time “recovering” contacted a lawyer, swore out a deposition and had it delivered to the school. (In the meantime he had been arrested for exposing himself outside my dorm.)

Turns out he had done this violence to others as he “seminary hopped” and it always happened in his first semester so there never was a record of why he had to leave. We worked to make sure that his next seminary never accepted him and please G-d may he never have been ordained. And I chose to receive a “lesser” degree and graduated in 2 years because I never wanted to ever set foot in that place again and have steered others from even applying there.

Sexual impropriety is often hidden. I’ve seen it's devastating results in churches called on the carpet for generational abuse where the pastor ignored or worse enabled it. As a Professional Transitional Specialist I have watched churches sadly close not only because of aging congregations but because of issues that sometimes are hiding in plain sight.

That seminary was told decades ago that I wanted off of all mailing lists and that I would never give them a dime. To get that letter tripped a very old trauma trigger for me that has scared me. I am slowly putting that back in it's locked emotional box, but it also caused me to choose not to attend PRIDE today.

How dare they disrespect me yet again?

I am stronger than that. But it might take some self care before I can be in the public arena again. This is why I always sign off …

🙏Be safe and remember that there is always hope 🙏

Today is not a day I thought I would ever “celebrate”: I have been divorced for a year. I was just listening to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me where the latest suggestion for after a divorce is Rumspringa.

For those who have no idea what I am talking about, within Amish tradition, Rumspringa simply refers to adolescence. During the period known as Rumspringa, beginning at about age 16, Amish youth are no longer under the total control of their parents on weekends and, because they are not baptized, they are not yet under the authority of the church. During this time, many Amish youth adhere to traditional Amish behavior. Others experiment with “worldly” activities like buying a car, going to movies, or wearing non-Amish clothes. Contrary in the media. Rumspringa-age youth typically live at home until after joining the church and then getting married and moving into their own homes.

To tell you the truth I did have a bit of a fling this past year, but it didn't last. What I have done is begun to rediscover things I love to do: sing, be a leader, and mourn the loss of what I had hoped would be a life long love.

That's the kind of thing we pastors work with in pre-cana: helping people work towards being together for the rest of their lives.The current U.S. marriage rate stands at 6.1 marriages per 1,000 population. While marriage rates have decreased over the last half-century, they have largely stabilized, and the average age for tying the knot has risen to 30.8 years for men and 28.4 for women. Researchers estimate that about 41% of first marriages currently end in divorce.

My marriage lasted longer than my parents as my father died before they celebrated 21 years and my mother followed 15 months later. The question I keep wondering now is if 9/11 hadn't happened would we have married at all. We saw each other through life issues, through medical issues physically as mentally. However for whatever reason I was bodily kicked out and an illegal hotel lock was put on the door so I could get back in….

However in some ways as angry and hurt as I was I literally got my life back. The set boundaries are my own now. My world may be rooted in a small 1 bedroom apartment in the 4th poorest City of it's size in the country but I can afford to live here and I chose to remain here because of my health care and the accessablilty of paratransit.

It really is hard to believe that I am where I am now as almost two years ago I was crying in the parking lot while waiting for friends to rescue me. I wish my ex wife no ill but ….

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏

And I admit I haven't been as present as I need to become so I took some time out to work on that and have not posted a lot.

Therapy helps. Being outside helps. Being triggered by old long buried history doesn't and I’ve been sliding backwards a bit as fireworks and verbal boxing matches have reactivated very old emotional trauma responses. Last week I was ready to run. However I am so close to having my own home as I want it I decided to stay despite the issues with other tenants and management.

You’d think at almost 70 and working in my fields in the past that I would have an easy way to re-act. But we are all humans and conflicts and emotional outbursts can cause irrational responses. There was a “reel” story this morning that reminded me that you can't reach for joy with a closed fist. And then Jeannie Ewing’s story about Sarah's seed card for her vet. These are present moments that activity represent joy to me. And they help when websites go down in the middle of transactions, and the walker that said it was wide enough in paper wasn't in reality, and you have to order another. Or you make a positive choice to represent your community at a bigger meeting for the first time run by someone who thinks she knows it all.

These are when staying present is imperative and with strength, stamina and joy I plan to move forward instead of running away.

🙏Be safe out there and remember that there is always hope 🙏