Happy Belated Thanksgiving! 2016 Edition

Hi darlings,

I hope you had a wonderful food-based holiday with your loved ones and friends!

I am honestly pretty exhausted on this particular evening but am also stubbornly resolute in writing at least one post per month, as I am perilously close to actually writing at least one post per month this year.  So damn the tired torpedoes!

Reasons I am tired:

• Long workday.  Happily, "long" only in the literal sense and not in the emotional sense.
• Very recent return from an incredible overseas trip with husband.
• Ongoing emotional processing of a disastrous presidential election.

Last year, I commented with genuine gratitude that I was not experiencing the intense burn-out-y fatigue of years past.  I'm happy to say that the trend continues; although new job has been demanding in ways I could never have anticipated, I feel that I'm getting solid footing, enjoying the fruits of significant labor, and benefiting from truly special and wonderful colleagues.  I'm really glad to come out the other side of my admittedly arduous transition into my new role feeling proud, accomplished, and gratified.

So there is that.  That is of course significant.

I'm also humbled by my gratitude for the new life I have with Husband in our new city.  New City may lack much of what I miss in Old City, but for that trade, it has given us a beautiful, spacious, peaceful home in a neighborhood we cherish for its sweetness and quiet.  I feel held by my home and my new little community in a way I did not in Old City.  I'm so grateful that we can finally step into a phase in our lives in which our material needs are meetable.  Grad school aggressively robs you of that, and it is taxing on a level that is extremely difficult to tolerate.  Because of the amelioration of that burden, we are happier and better able to turn toward pursuits that bring us happiness, including the wonderful trip from which we just returned.

That has an immensity of value I cannot calculate.

Then, nearly half of my fellow citizens made the potentially literally catastrophic decision to elect our future president.

Maybe at some point, I will have the strength to write about this at greater length.  As a psychologist and a citizen, I am overwhelmed by the number of ways in which this outcome could be processed and understood.  I am still very much in the midst of my grief process, as are so many of the people I love.  There are times when my horror, despair, and devastation are so vast I lose my ability to articulate its textures and its objects.  I struggle to understand what may come to pass and how to confront it.

So lastly, I am deeply grateful for all of the people in this world who are mourning with me.  I eagerly await, over and over, being humbled by the formidability of their strength and courage as we face the next four years together.  I am grateful for the organizations comprised of brave, principled, decent human beings whose aim is to fight for precious and vulnerable people and causes.  I am grateful for the opportunity, however powerful its bitterness, to continue my education in how to be a better instrument of justice.

I'm looking forward to standing up with you.

{Heart}