Ally, you have a gift (curse?) of being able to articulate everything I am feeling in such a visceral way, from the parents to the political. I wish I still lived in Venice, CA; I'd lobby to be friends irl. Thank you for your beautiful writing, and take care of yourself.
You wouldn’t have to lobby! We all need to stick together right now. And whether it’s a gift or a curse, I’m very thankful we’re feeling the same things, even though I wish we didn’t have to be. It’s freaking hard right now. Sending you tons of hugs and love.
I read something this morning from a man who said (paraphrasing), I don't share my stories anymore as I don't have the emotional resources. I am grateful that you have the resources. Mine are quite depleted. You continue to stand on the front lines speaking heartfelt truth to power with the hope that we come together and make things better. You shine the light and remind me that I still believe in hope, love, truth, possibility, and another way. Thank you.
Oh Genessa, thank you for this. Truly. It wasn’t the easiest essay to get out, but your comments just made the hard parts worthwhile. I appreciate you so much. Hugs and love in this upside down world ❤️🩹❤️🩹
Thank you, Cathy. Me, too. I’m usually hopeful and I’m going to pull myself out of this tailspin, but yes. Just feeling really sad right now for all of us. Sending you tons of love and hugs ❤️🩹❤️🩹
Omg!! I just saw your video, Michelle. That looks terrible and I’m so sorry that happened to you 😩😩😩
I had a similar thing happen years ago. A woman walked by my yard with her dog and asked if she could bring the dog in to play with mine. I stupidly assumed she wouldn’t ask unless she knew her dog was friendly so I said yes, and her dog attacked my dog, and she froze. So of course I dove in.
I don’t understand people who don’t know their dogs. Or do right by other people and other dogs. I hope you have something for the pain. I’m sending you tons of love and hugs. Last thing you needed 😞
I can’t believe she asked to bring her dog in! Not every dog plays well with strangers. My dogs are older rescues with traumatic pasts. I am very cautious.
That African proverb nails it. Thank you for continuing to be able to not only write eloquently about atrocities that seem to happen almost daily but weaving in your own experiences to give personal context. I'm sure it ain't easy. Yesterday was drowning in "think pieces", I think we're sorely lacking in "feel pieces," except in the hateful comments. Your voice remains a cry for empathy in this upside down world and I am most appreciative. ❤️
Thank you so much, Eileen. Your comments just made me teary. I feel like I’m in the upside down so much of the time these days. Sometimes writing my way out of it is the only way through. So grateful to find my right side up people when I get there. Makes it all worthwhile. Hugs and love to you in this insane world ❤️🩹❤️🩹
Might be able to give you a IRL hug next month, I have some time in LA for work. I'll keep you posted, would love to meet for coffee and hugs if you're available. ❤️
I posted this to a friend yesterday as I was horrified at what females I knew were posting about being devastated.
Don’t know anything about him and never even heard his voice. I assume he had a podcast since everyone does nowadays. Such a sad legacy to leave for his family that he evidently said so many horrible things. I do find it disturbing that I have been posting about school shootings on Facebook for almost 13 years and that never gets much attention. I have also marched, written essays about, written my Senators and Congresspersons, called local and state education superintendents about implementing Sandy Hook programs in our schools to help curb the murders of children. I guess killing kids is too political. I believe our President said we just need to get over it.
I mean Mary, it is unbelievable. I barely use facebook anymore, but I do have a business page there that I can’t walk away from, and in order to access it I have a personal page. So I see things I wish I didn’t see. Posts of people I thought I knew. I’ve culled a lot, but not enough apparently. The number of yoga teachers carrying water for this man.
Someone I know said he was a “decent man who taught kids to debate and listen to each other” and so I pushed back with the clip of him disparaging Black women and said he was not a decent man. And it was terrible that he died due to gun violence. And a woman got in the comments and said “maybe he’s decent to some people” - which, sure. If you’re someone who believes it’s possible to be a decent person and a racist at the same time, but if you think that, I don’t want to know you. We don’t have to debate everything, some things should be totally fucking obvious. I guess I’d rather know who these people are, but god it’s so demoralizing. Never a word for the kids. Just this guy. Smh. I’m glad you’re here, Mary. I’m sending you a million hugs.
I still don't know how you do it. The only note I restacked about this yesterday was yours. I wrote so many things and deleted them. I'm so fucking angry and broken and I cannot put together a coherent thought. Cruel, violent assholes have been fucking up the world for a very long time. And I'm so sorry for young you. There are a lot of horrific people in the world and most of them have children. I've been reading Tiny Beautiful Things and so much of it reminds me of my childhood. I may have to put it down for a little while. Fuck. I hate this. But I love you. I am still full of love for everything beautiful and kind and good.
This is the worst I’ve felt in a while. I thought I’d really culled my social media feeds, but wow was I wrong. It was just so depressing on top of how depressing reality is right now. All these people expressing despair over a guy I find reprehensible in every way. But no despair for kids week after week, year after year.
Goes without saying no one should die that way, and far fewer people would if we could have some sane gun control legislation. Ugh whatever I’m just preaching to the choir. I just didn’t realize how many racists and bigots I know I guess. It’s not close friends of course, it’s the wider community. It’s sickening. The whole “he just liked to have open conversation” - no he fucking didn’t. And if you’ve never said a word about gun violence until today, you’ve shown me who you are.
So anyway. I love and adore you and I wish we lived closer so much. Sending you love and hugs and hoping we pull out of this insanity somehow. We have to 💞💞💞
It's fucking horrendous. I'm sorry about your community. I imagine many people are seeing the same. It heartbreakingly widespread. Humans are not what I hoped they were. I wished we lived closer, too. It's easier to weather the bullshit surrounded by friends. Was it Pam Houston (I think it was) who wrote about "micro countries of love"? We will live there.
Well. Yes. It all sucks. We have to keep loving each other because those of us who are appalled aren't built of the same shitty stuff of people like Kirk and the Orange Abomination. I cannot fathom the level of hatred and fear with which these folks live their lives. I pity them. They haven't a clue how good life can actually be. And another day goes by. And yes, I'm reading this after they found out who did it. Not a lefty at all. I want to hear them explain that and then tell us this is the left's fault. They'll find a way to twist this too.
What I'm seeing is a fight between two factions. One led by Kirk (killed by a possible groyper), one by Nick Fuentes (groyper daddy). Why, it's almost like two gang leaders duking it out. The Sharks and the Jets. But no one's getting arrested. Home grown white gangs are the exception to the rules, I suppose. Oh, and most of them are white and MAGA, so it's completely different. Right? xo
The way it has been deemed acceptable to tell women what we can do with our bodies and in what ways we have to show up is wild. Thanks for being here, Liz.
I came across something that reminded me of your essay. 🔥
"You gotta resurrect the deep pain within you and give it a place to live that's not within your body. Let it live in art. Let it live in writing. Let it live in music. Let it be devoured by building brighter connections. Your body is not a coffin for pain to be buried in. Put it somewhere else."
This is so comprehensive -- amazing job tying all these points together in such a fluid way. The thing that grabbed me right off the bat was the way you coped with your family dysfunction and it took having a kid to find your voice. CAN RELATE!! When my kid turned the age of memory, which for most people is around 6 years old (but for me it was earlier because kids growing up in trauma work so hard to track their environment for their own survival it creates earlier and more vivid memories (or else they have no memory, both can be true) -- when my kid reached that age, I realized how young I'd been when my family did the things they did, and how I'd shoved it all down, and how I could never imagine treating my own child that way, and I also found my voice. Having kids can absolutely trigger your awakening. Hugs to you.
I have the early memory thing, too. And also a photographic memory even though now people say that isn't a thing, but I assure you, it's a thing. Sometimes I wish it weren't. I think when you come out of chaos and trauma it *tends* to go one of two ways - you repeat the cycle, or you head in the opposite direction and try to give your kid(s) whatever you didn't get but desperately wanted. Obviously we both went along path 2, good on us, and thank god for our kids! I think it's really healing, too, to be able to create a safe and loving environment, and to see what a baby looks like, and a toddler, and a little kid...and realize they mayhem you grew up with and just...have all this compassion for yourself you might not have otherwise. Anyway, thank you, Jennifer. Hugs to you, too <3
The way you name that vanishing trick of dissociation is brutal and necessary, because leaving your body was survival and finding language later is reclamation. What you’re describing is the long arc from being objectified to owning your agency, and it’s the same arc we need politically so bodies and rights stop being treated as property. Holding your fury as sacred fuel and your tenderness as proof you’re still here 💔🌱
Thank you for writing this! I've been so incredibly incredulous and honestly quite disgusted about people on the left falling over themselves trying to condemn this vile fascist's shooting and calling the video "devastating" and "traumatic". I'm sorry but have they not been watching videos of children getting blown to bits in Gaza for the last two years? Or heard about the daily school shootings in the US which this vile fascist pretty much called "worth the cost of some gun deaths" for us to have the 2nd amendment? Those are devastating and traumatic, not the death of a despicable person who's main job was to stir up hatred and incite violence and promote fascism.
Also, I hate the chorus of "but he was a father"...I'm pretty sure Hitler didn't have kids but Göring and Goebbels and a whole gaggle of Nazi leaders had bunches of kids too, so did Stalin and Mussolini, so should we have fallen over ourselves mourning their deaths too? Not that this idiot was in the same league but seriously my head is going to explode.
Okay, sorry for my rant, I will go do a cold plunge or drink a kombucha or something.
Also, best thing I read yesterday was "Charlie would have hated all this empathy"
I really feel like I’m in the upside down so much of the time, Sonbol. Obviously seeing videos of anyone getting shot when you aren’t prepared for it is horrifying. Even if you are prepared for it. I have never become desensitized to anything, I don’t know why, but it’s how it is. It’s a terrible reality that we are all witnessing horrific videos of horrific events that are happening all the time. Children suffering does me in. This is the world we’ve created. There are beautiful images too, but my god are there things that rip your fucking heart out. I happened to see pictures of the classrooms in Uvalde this week when I wasn’t expecting it. I’d seen them before but I just wasn’t mentally prepared and I almost threw up. It is a painful thing to exist in a violent world and I have compassion for all of us because we really aren’t made for this. But we all have agency over what we post, what we share, what we think is important enough to point at and say *look, even though it hurts to look* because we’re hoping if enough people look they will not be able to stand it and change will happen. So yes, when people decide to take up the torch for a man who preached hate and sowed the seeds of division, I am flabbergasted. I didn’t see anyone celebrating, I did see people who felt “live by the sword, die by the sword”, or who saved their compassion for all the school kids who die in this country every week, but the people bending over backwards to act like he wasn’t a terrible person? Please. Save your energy for better things.
Sending you so much love and tons of hugs. Thank you for being here as ever!! ❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Ally, you have a gift (curse?) of being able to articulate everything I am feeling in such a visceral way, from the parents to the political. I wish I still lived in Venice, CA; I'd lobby to be friends irl. Thank you for your beautiful writing, and take care of yourself.
You wouldn’t have to lobby! We all need to stick together right now. And whether it’s a gift or a curse, I’m very thankful we’re feeling the same things, even though I wish we didn’t have to be. It’s freaking hard right now. Sending you tons of hugs and love.
I read something this morning from a man who said (paraphrasing), I don't share my stories anymore as I don't have the emotional resources. I am grateful that you have the resources. Mine are quite depleted. You continue to stand on the front lines speaking heartfelt truth to power with the hope that we come together and make things better. You shine the light and remind me that I still believe in hope, love, truth, possibility, and another way. Thank you.
Oh Genessa, thank you for this. Truly. It wasn’t the easiest essay to get out, but your comments just made the hard parts worthwhile. I appreciate you so much. Hugs and love in this upside down world ❤️🩹❤️🩹
So sad for you all Ally. For all of us. So very fucking sad 💔.
Thank you, Cathy. Me, too. I’m usually hopeful and I’m going to pull myself out of this tailspin, but yes. Just feeling really sad right now for all of us. Sending you tons of love and hugs ❤️🩹❤️🩹
I feel all of this so much
Thanks for saying that. The last whatever it’s been…30 hours or something, have really kicked my ass, Michelle.
Me too. And I’m lying awake in pain (dog attack) and the world just feels so terribly lost.
Omg!! I just saw your video, Michelle. That looks terrible and I’m so sorry that happened to you 😩😩😩
I had a similar thing happen years ago. A woman walked by my yard with her dog and asked if she could bring the dog in to play with mine. I stupidly assumed she wouldn’t ask unless she knew her dog was friendly so I said yes, and her dog attacked my dog, and she froze. So of course I dove in.
I don’t understand people who don’t know their dogs. Or do right by other people and other dogs. I hope you have something for the pain. I’m sending you tons of love and hugs. Last thing you needed 😞
I can’t believe she asked to bring her dog in! Not every dog plays well with strangers. My dogs are older rescues with traumatic pasts. I am very cautious.
That African proverb nails it. Thank you for continuing to be able to not only write eloquently about atrocities that seem to happen almost daily but weaving in your own experiences to give personal context. I'm sure it ain't easy. Yesterday was drowning in "think pieces", I think we're sorely lacking in "feel pieces," except in the hateful comments. Your voice remains a cry for empathy in this upside down world and I am most appreciative. ❤️
Thank you so much, Eileen. Your comments just made me teary. I feel like I’m in the upside down so much of the time these days. Sometimes writing my way out of it is the only way through. So grateful to find my right side up people when I get there. Makes it all worthwhile. Hugs and love to you in this insane world ❤️🩹❤️🩹
Might be able to give you a IRL hug next month, I have some time in LA for work. I'll keep you posted, would love to meet for coffee and hugs if you're available. ❤️
I would love that so much, Eileen!! Please keep me posted. A love thug in-person meet sounds so good right now ❤️🩹❤️🩹
Hugs from thugs, the west coast edition!
I posted this to a friend yesterday as I was horrified at what females I knew were posting about being devastated.
Don’t know anything about him and never even heard his voice. I assume he had a podcast since everyone does nowadays. Such a sad legacy to leave for his family that he evidently said so many horrible things. I do find it disturbing that I have been posting about school shootings on Facebook for almost 13 years and that never gets much attention. I have also marched, written essays about, written my Senators and Congresspersons, called local and state education superintendents about implementing Sandy Hook programs in our schools to help curb the murders of children. I guess killing kids is too political. I believe our President said we just need to get over it.
I mean Mary, it is unbelievable. I barely use facebook anymore, but I do have a business page there that I can’t walk away from, and in order to access it I have a personal page. So I see things I wish I didn’t see. Posts of people I thought I knew. I’ve culled a lot, but not enough apparently. The number of yoga teachers carrying water for this man.
Someone I know said he was a “decent man who taught kids to debate and listen to each other” and so I pushed back with the clip of him disparaging Black women and said he was not a decent man. And it was terrible that he died due to gun violence. And a woman got in the comments and said “maybe he’s decent to some people” - which, sure. If you’re someone who believes it’s possible to be a decent person and a racist at the same time, but if you think that, I don’t want to know you. We don’t have to debate everything, some things should be totally fucking obvious. I guess I’d rather know who these people are, but god it’s so demoralizing. Never a word for the kids. Just this guy. Smh. I’m glad you’re here, Mary. I’m sending you a million hugs.
I still don't know how you do it. The only note I restacked about this yesterday was yours. I wrote so many things and deleted them. I'm so fucking angry and broken and I cannot put together a coherent thought. Cruel, violent assholes have been fucking up the world for a very long time. And I'm so sorry for young you. There are a lot of horrific people in the world and most of them have children. I've been reading Tiny Beautiful Things and so much of it reminds me of my childhood. I may have to put it down for a little while. Fuck. I hate this. But I love you. I am still full of love for everything beautiful and kind and good.
This is the worst I’ve felt in a while. I thought I’d really culled my social media feeds, but wow was I wrong. It was just so depressing on top of how depressing reality is right now. All these people expressing despair over a guy I find reprehensible in every way. But no despair for kids week after week, year after year.
Goes without saying no one should die that way, and far fewer people would if we could have some sane gun control legislation. Ugh whatever I’m just preaching to the choir. I just didn’t realize how many racists and bigots I know I guess. It’s not close friends of course, it’s the wider community. It’s sickening. The whole “he just liked to have open conversation” - no he fucking didn’t. And if you’ve never said a word about gun violence until today, you’ve shown me who you are.
So anyway. I love and adore you and I wish we lived closer so much. Sending you love and hugs and hoping we pull out of this insanity somehow. We have to 💞💞💞
It's fucking horrendous. I'm sorry about your community. I imagine many people are seeing the same. It heartbreakingly widespread. Humans are not what I hoped they were. I wished we lived closer, too. It's easier to weather the bullshit surrounded by friends. Was it Pam Houston (I think it was) who wrote about "micro countries of love"? We will live there.
Yes please.
What an absolutely amazing piece of writing. You know what's in my head and heart. Thank You!
Thank you so much, Jeanne. Hugs.
Well. Yes. It all sucks. We have to keep loving each other because those of us who are appalled aren't built of the same shitty stuff of people like Kirk and the Orange Abomination. I cannot fathom the level of hatred and fear with which these folks live their lives. I pity them. They haven't a clue how good life can actually be. And another day goes by. And yes, I'm reading this after they found out who did it. Not a lefty at all. I want to hear them explain that and then tell us this is the left's fault. They'll find a way to twist this too.
What I'm seeing is a fight between two factions. One led by Kirk (killed by a possible groyper), one by Nick Fuentes (groyper daddy). Why, it's almost like two gang leaders duking it out. The Sharks and the Jets. But no one's getting arrested. Home grown white gangs are the exception to the rules, I suppose. Oh, and most of them are white and MAGA, so it's completely different. Right? xo
Closed toed shoes, pantyhose, covered shoulders and skirts below your knees for senate internship 1998 in DC.
The way it has been deemed acceptable to tell women what we can do with our bodies and in what ways we have to show up is wild. Thanks for being here, Liz.
And that so many women still want to police others, that’s the part that I struggle with and have been guilty of myself even recently!
I came across something that reminded me of your essay. 🔥
"You gotta resurrect the deep pain within you and give it a place to live that's not within your body. Let it live in art. Let it live in writing. Let it live in music. Let it be devoured by building brighter connections. Your body is not a coffin for pain to be buried in. Put it somewhere else."
-Ehime Ora
I love this so much. Thank you for sharing this with me ❤️🔥
I’ve read this 3x over the last few days. You’re an amazing writer. Thank you, Ally.
Thank you so much, Harry <3
This is so comprehensive -- amazing job tying all these points together in such a fluid way. The thing that grabbed me right off the bat was the way you coped with your family dysfunction and it took having a kid to find your voice. CAN RELATE!! When my kid turned the age of memory, which for most people is around 6 years old (but for me it was earlier because kids growing up in trauma work so hard to track their environment for their own survival it creates earlier and more vivid memories (or else they have no memory, both can be true) -- when my kid reached that age, I realized how young I'd been when my family did the things they did, and how I'd shoved it all down, and how I could never imagine treating my own child that way, and I also found my voice. Having kids can absolutely trigger your awakening. Hugs to you.
I have the early memory thing, too. And also a photographic memory even though now people say that isn't a thing, but I assure you, it's a thing. Sometimes I wish it weren't. I think when you come out of chaos and trauma it *tends* to go one of two ways - you repeat the cycle, or you head in the opposite direction and try to give your kid(s) whatever you didn't get but desperately wanted. Obviously we both went along path 2, good on us, and thank god for our kids! I think it's really healing, too, to be able to create a safe and loving environment, and to see what a baby looks like, and a toddler, and a little kid...and realize they mayhem you grew up with and just...have all this compassion for yourself you might not have otherwise. Anyway, thank you, Jennifer. Hugs to you, too <3
The way you name that vanishing trick of dissociation is brutal and necessary, because leaving your body was survival and finding language later is reclamation. What you’re describing is the long arc from being objectified to owning your agency, and it’s the same arc we need politically so bodies and rights stop being treated as property. Holding your fury as sacred fuel and your tenderness as proof you’re still here 💔🌱
Thank you for this incredibly beautiful comment. I appreciate it and I'm very glad you're here.
You’re welcome. Your writing has great depth, and I noticed you have a podcast! ☺️
Thank you for writing this! I've been so incredibly incredulous and honestly quite disgusted about people on the left falling over themselves trying to condemn this vile fascist's shooting and calling the video "devastating" and "traumatic". I'm sorry but have they not been watching videos of children getting blown to bits in Gaza for the last two years? Or heard about the daily school shootings in the US which this vile fascist pretty much called "worth the cost of some gun deaths" for us to have the 2nd amendment? Those are devastating and traumatic, not the death of a despicable person who's main job was to stir up hatred and incite violence and promote fascism.
Also, I hate the chorus of "but he was a father"...I'm pretty sure Hitler didn't have kids but Göring and Goebbels and a whole gaggle of Nazi leaders had bunches of kids too, so did Stalin and Mussolini, so should we have fallen over ourselves mourning their deaths too? Not that this idiot was in the same league but seriously my head is going to explode.
Okay, sorry for my rant, I will go do a cold plunge or drink a kombucha or something.
Also, best thing I read yesterday was "Charlie would have hated all this empathy"
I really feel like I’m in the upside down so much of the time, Sonbol. Obviously seeing videos of anyone getting shot when you aren’t prepared for it is horrifying. Even if you are prepared for it. I have never become desensitized to anything, I don’t know why, but it’s how it is. It’s a terrible reality that we are all witnessing horrific videos of horrific events that are happening all the time. Children suffering does me in. This is the world we’ve created. There are beautiful images too, but my god are there things that rip your fucking heart out. I happened to see pictures of the classrooms in Uvalde this week when I wasn’t expecting it. I’d seen them before but I just wasn’t mentally prepared and I almost threw up. It is a painful thing to exist in a violent world and I have compassion for all of us because we really aren’t made for this. But we all have agency over what we post, what we share, what we think is important enough to point at and say *look, even though it hurts to look* because we’re hoping if enough people look they will not be able to stand it and change will happen. So yes, when people decide to take up the torch for a man who preached hate and sowed the seeds of division, I am flabbergasted. I didn’t see anyone celebrating, I did see people who felt “live by the sword, die by the sword”, or who saved their compassion for all the school kids who die in this country every week, but the people bending over backwards to act like he wasn’t a terrible person? Please. Save your energy for better things.
Sending you so much love and tons of hugs. Thank you for being here as ever!! ❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
The equal rights amendment (passed by Congress when I was 17) is still not officially ratified because men still have the right to vote.
Hard to argue.