I marched in Oakland. I was still sick but it wouldn’t wait. We were too many for the train station, too many for the route, too many. It was beautiful. There were children and the elderly, there were folks of every color, there was music and singing and zingy signs and pink hats as far as the eye could see.
For the record, no one paid me to do this.
I’ve been talking a lot about current affairs in therapy. I suspect everyone is. My therapist, who protested the Vietnam War in the ’60s, gave me her theory about why this giant step backwards: that before we can really move forward, we have to deal with the darkness. We can’t become a better society without facing up to all that we still struggle with—our prejudices, our divisions, and especially our violence. All this shit has to come to the surface first.
I think about this a lot. I think about this as a woman, as the spouse of a permanent resident, as the child of a Vietnam veteran and a cancer patient. I think about this all the damn time. And then I spray my sore throat to make the next phone call, and then I sit down to write the next postcard, and through it all I try to keep my focus on getting through by being better. We all need to be our best selves now.