Shedding

Coping with Seasons of Big Change

This weekend, my youngest turned ten. I’m not sure why this felt like such a big marker for me, but all of the sudden the fleeting days of childhood feel like they are fading fast. And it makes me more than a little sad, but also hopeful, as my kids are already extraordinary beings. 

The love I have had for this stage of childhood and that I will always have for both my kids is so profound that– even though I know my job is to gift them with independence backed up by unconditional love and support– I’m still a little grief-stricken at the thought of an end to this era.

These are bittersweet times in our lives.

And the personal trajectories aren’t the only ones. This week, I’m expecting some serious political as well as personal events to drop– events that will be more than a little tinged with a sense of closure.

All this led me to a sudden desire yesterday to donate pretty much everything in my closet. Nothing feels like me any more. I am aching to return to the days of my New York City style of dress, with lace-up boots and a lot of black and an edge to my fashion that just simply doesn’t exist in Southern California.

I am aching for something that feels more, well, real.

And so out it all went, leaving me with just enough clothes to fit in one suitcase– I guess in case I ever decide to just pack up with the kids and, well, go.

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It’s really an understatement to call the changes we’ve lived through over the last seven years seismic. These are not mere earthquakes, the rumbling 5.0s I’ve gotten used to in five years in Southern California.

No, we’re living through revolutionary times– times of total overhaul, where all the awful is on the surface and all the work of making a better world is underway. 

We need only look to the events now known as Hot Labor Summer to see how so much is on the line, and so much is coming home to roost.

Wealth inequality is not long for this world. Folks are fed up and there is collective disgust at the power that billionaires wield over all of us to our detriment.

Indictments against the former guy are also dropping left and right, as we see accountability finally come to pass.

The GOP continues to implode, as many of us knew it would all the way back in November 2016.

And we’re seeing collective organizing against fascist initiatives in red states (hello, Ohio!) gain traction and head toward victory like never before.

That is not to say the threat is over. Far from it. 

But it is to note that this is the end of an era in America– I truly believe that. I believe we will come out the other side of this revolution (because that’s what it is) better off than we were, with real systemic change that alters the course of our history. 

And change like this— big, profound change— is never comfortable.

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So what does it mean to live through revolution, whether in your own life or in this nation?

It means you have to let go of what came before. All those American mythologies, those ideals we claimed to embody but never really did, those structures and systems of power that continue to be complicit and that created the conditions for Trump and his ilk to rise in the first place.

We have to understand that until we toss out what doesn’t fit, we can’t make space for something new, something better, something that suits us as a diverse, beautifully intersectional nation.

Sometimes, letting go is hard.

Not this time, though.

It’s time to take out the trash, donate what we’ve learned from this mess that might be useful to others, and get on with a better way of being American.

The time has come for real and profound change in this nation. Hold on for the ride.