Last night, excepting her Lifetime Achievement Award, Mary Louise “Meryl” Streep delivered a dynamic speech at the 2017 Golden Globes, eloquently expressing her heart break over Trump politics and her hope in spite of it. We’ll be hurting for a while—grief doesn’t disappear over night, you have to work through it—and it helps to connect with others, listen and read good wise words, make art.
Feeling the paradox of life, after three score and two years on the planet, I look around for the first few days of 2017 and feel I’ve lived too long. My cataracted eyes has already seen too much and I cannot abide that which my ears are sometime forced to hear.
Meryl and my late sister, Betty are “same year children”, born in 1949. 20 years ago today Betty lost her life in a plane crash and my family’s world turned upside down. I remember the moment, walking along the road in the Riverdale subdivision of Albany, Georgia with my husband, both of us filled to the rim with grief and shock trying to figure out why the birds were still chirping and electricity was still coursing through the wires above our heads and why a few miles in toward town the traffic lights still worked. I remember at the moment thinking this is bad as it gets and yet I am putting one foot in front of the other, and unless I choose to die with her this is what I must do. It was not a hard choice because we had a daughter two and a half years old ~ she was a gift: I saw my reason for living and the beauty of the world through her. She was the choice to live, already made. That little girl now a splendid young woman on the precipice of her adult life and I grateful for her again now that the whole world has turned upside down.
Life is hard enough with loved ones dying, children all over the world hungry and running for their lives as wars rage. It’s hard enough to breathe through the casual moments when even the music in a playlist can have lyrics that pierce your soul. So on top of that to have to endure public displays of ignorance and pure hatred from a man who would be the leader of the free world can bring me to say my eyes have seen too much. Yet again I am here putting one foot in front of the other following the path of beauty and good forged by the young. I’m happy to see that—by the fact that you are reading this—perhaps you have chosen to do the same.
Hopefully for another year you and I will meet here and converse and share and hold each other up. Toward that end here’s the video with good wise words from Dame Meryl:
https://youtu.be/NxyGmyEby40
I felt so good hearing Meryl Streep . Bravo This man is a dangerous clown for this Nation I love so much
Amen, Sister! Such truth! What insight! I love that she challenged the press to play a positive role in what will undoubtedly be a challenging future for all of America. Thank you Anita for sharing this…Meryl is inspiring. We must all do our part to create the America we want and deserve. Flora
I too was moved by her speech and the thoughtfulness of it and we have to remember the only thing to do it keep moving forward and to do it without regrets we must do it with hope and yes if you have a moment of doubt look into the eyes of a child and know we do not have the luxury of surrendering to the enemy of hate.
It is so easy to succumb to the hatred and negativity spewed by both sides of this thing called Trump. I have gone down that path myself, and somedays can’t seem to stay off of it. But I am a firm believer that thought is energy. Energy has a vibration. Vibration can make things shift. So what kind of energy do I want to throw out into the ring? I think I will choose to try to “raise it up”, as a friend says. It’s the only thing that will keep me sane. That and coming together, like you said. We need to keep raising each other up. There is power in that. Thank you Anita for giving us the place to do that.
Thank YOU, Charli.