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What Knocks Me to the Ground [1]

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Date: 2022-07-20

The day Reagan was shot in the 80’s, I was in 8th grade. When my father picked me up from school that day, I thought that he’d be happy about the news because our family hated his politics. My dad was anything but happy and gave me a lecture that I’ve never forgotten. He said that no matter what you think of someone’s beliefs, you should never celebrate when harm comes to them or wish harm upon them.

I’m struggling to uphold my dad’s values. I hate people who wield their beliefs methodically for power. I hate hating them, these people I’ve never met who impact my life and shred any semblance of “progress” so instantly. I hope to wake up to news of their demise. The line my father taught me to hold is thin and wavering.

I’m so fed up with decades of powerful men I will never meet. The manipulating McConnell and Injustice Thomas. The Carlson who claims women don’t really feel pleasure, and the Trump who only cares about his own. The hordes of men and women coming out of the woodwork to splash our computer screens with their attempts to codify misogyny. The mistaken belief that women are not entitled to anything but what men give them. The enraging daily dismissal by men who think women are not to be trusted with their own bodies. That mothers are murderers and should drown in their own ectopic blood. The people who care more about babies than mothers until they are children in classrooms. The redefining of life to be independent from the beginning – all spinning out of the Christian idea that life ends.

It hits close to home too. The friends who’ve been raped. The clients who share horrific incest stories. The friend who has been maligned and discarded by the leadership of an organization we are long time members of because they name too truthfully too often what those in power chose to ignore and maintain. The friend I once loved lost to misogyny and the pain of discovering that ugly truth.

Patriarchy in 2022 is rearing its head and spitting out hard. Blasting the world with the grease and fumes from centuries of oil-slick talking. Regurgitating sexual threats and making real power grabs. Causing actual ongoing harm. I exhale the vestiges of men who entered my bedroom or grabbed me in dark corners and crowded buses. Homage to the time when repeated kicks to the shins didn’t stop the groping. All the way back to being eleven and the bearded kiss that left me with an unwanted first and red marks on my arms.

But what knocks me to the ground are the words of my teenage daughter while she screams at her dad during Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony and says – “it’s not you dad, it’s men”. And then runs upstairs and curls up on her bedroom floor, screaming, sobbing and speaking truth to power. “That man (Meadows) was on his phone doing nothing! Men do nothing except take our rights away! I don’t know if I want to live in this country anymore. Why are you watching this shit mom? It won’t matter. No one is going to do anything. Look at the climate. No one is doing anything about that. No one gives a shit about my future!”

The powerlessness she feels is real and raw. I marvel at her truth, wisdom and power as it fills the room.

I know my years of loving her and encouraging her voice and dreams matter. And I wonder how much. I see what she sees and the truth of what she says. I have no words to make it better, only that I’ll be here with her and go with her wherever we must go. We both know there’s nowhere to run to get away from it all, only from some of it. That we’ll pick the battles we can fight and grieve the losses we can’t stop. I curl up on the floor with her and hold her tight, wishing I could stop time and protect her forever.

There is only one thing worse for a parent than not being able to protect your children from their pain -- knowing their pain will get worse.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/20/2111500/-What-Knocks-Me-to-the-Ground

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