44 Comments
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

I love you.

Expand full comment

I am crying with you, my warrior woman, and am so grateful for your continued work and spirit!

Expand full comment

Love this gut-wrenching reflection. Yes, you are right. We CAN do hard things! So much love and respect for all the women in my life who fight these battles! 💙🌟💙

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Love those last lines. Really beautiful, and important. Scorching truths.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Thank you for so many things in the last 4 years, and for this. Here's to survivors and understanding what we are made of.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

I've been with you, almost every day, every tweet, and ResistanceLive, through these years. I've spent my own broken daily moments moving mountains of inner and outer obstacles...and in the darkness of these thousands of nights, whispering chants of love protection and belonging and fortitude and compassion and fierce endurance to you and your children.

I got the vaccine yesterday after protecting a husband recovering from throat cancer who hasn't been in public in a year. And single parenting my teen daughter who has changed dramatically since lockdown. I've fought off her father who is a Trump sycophant and freak while he bullied all of us, and presented a clear threat to our safety. I just lost a court case where the judge decided to force my unvaccinated daughter to fly to see her fully vaccinated father because he refused to visit her once in Portland until my high risk household could get the vaccine. I've spent countless hours trying to find a vaccine for our household as a result. It's been a brutal, limbic-brain marathon of living and surviving through mass death and fascist risings.

Having the skills to track it all has been its own sentence. But here we are. One foot in front of the other. All that training for other things in our lives turned for basic survival. Reading your piece is so relieving. I'm so happy for you and your kids. Wishing you all lots of love as you make your way back into the world. You've done a stunning job of showing up for your kids and yourself. Well done.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Oh my. You are the essence of what a mother is. What a warrior is. I love you. I love your the light , the courage , the wisdom, the ferocity you bring into this world. Your children have a goddess mother.

One day I'd like to hug you.

A friend in Canada

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

In an instant and in a year we are all changed. We have walked through this year with you and even though we thought we knew you from the daily live teachings you gave us until we read your words slowly while sipping coffee do we even being to understand you. As we understand you more I believe we learn to understand ourselves more. I am not sure why that is but connection can come even if we have never spoken a word to each other. We dance with you and if we are brave enough we face our own emotions, thoughts, and actions. If we are not brave enough for that my hope is that we at least are brave enough to reach out for help! My hand is outstretched for so many women ready to understand better what has happened to them during this time. Thank you again, Elizabeth

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

I didn't expect to be in tears as I read this posting, but the sentence "The first year of single parenthood was brutal" did me in, bringing back my own first year, that feeling of "barely getting by." What you and all those other single mothers have gotten your children through this year is almost beyond imagination (and yet I try to imagine because of the young women who work with me). So many mothers are "capable of amazing, unthinkably hard things" but it just shouldn't be this hard, this lonely. Thanks for another powerful essay.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

While the entire piece resonated deeply with me, the final few paragraphs brought me to tears, Elizabeth. What you and your children have survived with only one another is truly miraculous, and your resilience utterly amazing. I would have been sobbing before I reached my car as well, knowing you are all coming out the other end of this intact. Much work is still to be done, and continued vigilence is essential, regardless of whether many like us are fully vaccinated. Just re-reading some of what we have watched you endure - the loss of Megan, the family member and friend to Covid, the evacuation of your home during two wildfires - it is almost too much to fathom. I am truly honored to be part of your extended support group, albeit only virtually, and am so grateful for the incredible support you have provided to so many of us over these past nearly 5 years now. I hear the words of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" in my head right now - they most definitely apply to you, dear Elizabeth. ♥

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Mmm, thank you.

For being an amazing human, and for being an amazing mama.

Thank you for sharing your insights with us, thank you for guiding us through the last four years, thank you for inspiring us to do what we can to change things and survive the stupidity of a fascist regime, and thank you for helping us to look ahead to the future and giving us targets for action and advocacy to keep pushing for necessary change.

Thank you for helping us survive this. Well done.

Oodles of love to you, your sweet little grrl, Ironman, and Donut. 💚

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Thank you.

I can’t say I easily survived trump’s crimes or this last year of isolation but because I have had you to listen to I am better than I thought I could be. I graduated from HS in 1965. And I was a demonstrator for civil rights and Peace my whole life. I was devastated by Hillary’s loss and questioned whether everything I had ever done in politics had made any change at all! But then I found you and ResilienceLive, I became instantly addicted to your knowledge and POV. You fulfilled a need in me and I need to say thank you to you. And as you always remind us, The work has just begun. To think you did this all while consciously raising a daughter and a son is simply heroic. Thank you.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

I turned 60 during this pandemic. I never thought I would live so long. I have done so many hard things in my life I have lost count. Each time I was sure I would never survive. It started at my birth when a woman decided I was not going to be part of the life she planned. I fought to thrive. It continued in a dysfunctional family of alcoholics who had so many demons, a child not of their blood was just so much baggage. I nursed a very broken alcoholic woman with cancer at the age of 10. I was a parent to a child who was the sunshine of his parents soul. I was “wife” to a man in way over his head with a sick wife and a job that came and went with the winds of each election. I was 12. I managed to get through high school because it was the only safe space but peers who live a normal life didn’t recognize in me the life they led. I had no friends, we had no money for experiences of normal childhoods. No one came home with me because a child of an alcoholic never ever chances that. Too much risk of exposure. I married to escape at the tender age of 19 to a person just like the one I left. We seek what is familiar. I had a child in time and that was the biggest turning point in my life. I knew I was NOT a going to allow my child to endure the childhood I had. I left with the clothes on my back and a pail of dirty diapers. He begged me to come back. He threatened to commit suicide. I offered to help him because I just didn’t give a shit anymore. Like a mama bear my child came first. I endured. I got a job in the non profit sector at minimum wage. I did something terrible. I confessed my sin and paid the price. Then the gods decided I needed a break and I met the man I would spend the rest of my life with. He was and still is my rock. We endured. We parented two children and raised them to be fine men. I taught them how to be empathetic and loving men to anyone that came into their lives. Life wasn’t done with me though....I got sick with Multiple Sclerosis just at the time when I felt I was going to survive. The changes it wrought in my life have been enormous. It has stolen so much. I remember one day sitting on my bedroom floor after falling and I was crying and wailing about my lot in life. The “why me” was strong that day and many others. My husband says to me “why not you?” I felt I had been slapped. He said “ you are strong, you are resilient, you are smart and we will deal with this”. It was the “we” that got me. I knew I would endure, survive and he would be with me the whole time. I stopped crying and pulled up my big girl panties. I guess what I am trying to say is that women can do hard things. We do them over and over and over, every damn day. We know how to get up and keep going because we have no other choices in life. Our kids are the big motivation, but I also think we have an inner strength that is invincible. The biggest trick is realizing that we can endure. That we have the inner strength needed to do hard things. I still have days when I feel I can’t go on, that this is the last day I can get up, and show up. Then I do. It always surprises me. This disease has made me realize what is really important in life. It’s not things, it’s not what we have or what we “do”. What is really important is the small flame of love we have for ourselves that makes everything else possible even when it is terrifying. We need to teach our littles to keep that small flame alive even when all we really want is for the flame to go out so we can rest.

You are an inspiration to women and to your children. A few years ago my youngest son was home from two tours of Afghanistan (that experience nearly blew out my flame) and was settling in to a home of his own. The pressures of doing this alone were telling on him. He told me that he now recognized what we went through and the sacrifices we made to raise him and his brother. That admission was the single most important affirmation that it was worth it. Someday you will get that same affirmation from your two. And it will have all been worth it. Hang on. It’s worth it.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

This was a beautiful read. Having spent this last year thanking the Universe that both my children were no longer children through all this, your experience was a peak into what could have been for us. As a single parent to my two for 10-years, I can't imagine how we would have survived this. We lived paycheck-to-paycheck and though my (former) Mormon-and-therefore-I-know-how-to-be-prepared status had me always squirreling away as much "extra" as my limited income and our tiny apartment could afford us, but the emotional toll it could have had is so hard to grasp, until I read this. I could feel it. Not only do I hold you in high regard already, but you are truly a warrior woman! Thank you for sharing.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

That was beautiful Elizabeth. Thank you. I watch your broadcast every day, and you have inspired me many times when I’m sad, scared and angry. Personally, your presence and your spirit has really made a a big impact on how I want to show up, and love and care for people. Your humor and your fierce love magic with your children is just uplifting and joyful. This piece brought me to happy tears. You did it, I did it, we have made it almost to the other side, and you really have been such an important part. Thank you so much

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2021Liked by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Your courage and resilience are powerful tools and seem to have been tempered by your many difficult experiences. Thank you sharing this. It will be a guidepost for many.

Expand full comment