Day 5 future-casting/working vacation dispatch: 

An unprecedented, post-inaugural uprising happened from Ajijic to Oslo yesterday.
​Postscript to The Donald: you can't really argue with the photos.

It's hard to narrow it down (so MANY inspired signs), but if pressed my favorites were:

"If male politicians could have babies, I would be at brunch right now!" and

"If my vagina shot bullets, it would be less regulated!"

Heeding Michael Moore's clarion call, I:

1. Set a M-F 9a reminder to call 202-225-3121 (even though I align with my members of Congress, they need to know we support them in droves), 

2. donated to Planned Parenthood and (re)joined the ACLU, 

3. made my Region of Resistance list, 

4. considered which office for which to run. 

Yes, I'm one of the people who will lose my health insurance.
Yes, I probably need a knee replacement at some point but may move the surgery up several years thanks to myriad misgivings—and I'm one of the lucky ones.
Yes, I'm deeply afraid for my three teen daughters.
And yes, I'm torn between flight and fight. I may do both .... if this trip—we're on Oahu—is a harbinger of things to come. #changeisoftengood

​
Finally, while Ashley Judd did a great job, I was most inspired to see Nina Mariah, the Tennessee teen who wrote Nasty Woman, perform it:


​

More and, less or.
More daring, less worrying.
More empathy, less judgment.
More average, less perfect.
More yes, less no.
More patience, less frustration.
More acceptance, less control.
More forgiveness, less blame. 
More stillness, less tumult.
More in-person, less screen-"talk."
More mirth, less brow-furrowing.
More listening, less advice-giving. 
More questions, less unraveling.
More mono-tasks, less multi-tasks.
More humanity, less hostility.
More connection, less reception.
More being, less doing.
More kindness, less exasperation.
More compassion, less anger. 
More change, less stasis.
More future, less past.
More you, less me. 
More us, less them. 
More love, less fear. ​



Speaking of ch, ch, ch, changes.
Yeah, so ... slightly leveled by the holidays, the one-year anniversary of my dad's death (oh, that trope again ... but he WAS my last immediate family member and one in a million at that), by transitions coming at us from every direction, by helping my eldest over the hurdle that is college apps—not that the fine print re financial aid and the like ever falls on the mother, by one/two/yes now three jobs. As life starts to feel beyond my control, I attempt—with increasing futility—to control more. It's an issue. Which is why I now know what "no crosstalk" means and why my college BFF's ever-trenchant, emotionally attuned lifemate, an opera singer who hails from Guatemala, recently said to me (we were in LA; it was late): "You're at the gate of releasing! Release!"  

I can only assume he meant releasing the struggle ... the eternal agon. 

And release, I will.

More AND less. 

Courtesy of Melody Beattie, from More Language of Letting Go.