I’m anxious and depressed again, so I need to start writing more. Journaling has always been the best form of therapy for me.

Last night I was able to cry some. 

Crying is almost never on my Bingo card. I was raised to be stoic.

Stoic or ballistic, there was no in between.

My dad was ballistic, my Mom stoic.

I learned both coping strategies from them.

And both of those strategies are dead wrong for me.

I am not a Stoic. And I’m not ballistic. I learned those behaviors. They are not native to me.

I’m a sensitive soul, someone who needs to feel things as deeply as I do!  

My sensitivity to my surroundings, and to the state of the world, is where my empathy comes from.  I walk miles in other people’s shoes before I feel competent to “judge” them; the only exception to this is when it comes to bigots.  I have never been bigoted, and I keenly realize my societal privilege as a white person in this country.

As a person assigned female at birth, I also recognize my marginalization in this society, which helps me identify with, and feel utmost compassion for, those who are also (politically) deemed “less than” by virtue of their race, nationality, gender identity, neurodiversity, ability to function physically, mentally, or socially, or sexual orientation.

People without empathy frequently become monsters

Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Putin, Trump, Musk, and their most ardent backers are prime examples of empathy-free, bigoted ghouls.

Unless they were born fatally flawed, their childhoods must have been horrific for them. Somewhere along the line, they must have decided that being vulnerable was a mortal sin and that only false bravado and that their own escalating cruelty was all that could keep them safe from the bullies in their own lives. Their fear of other people turned them into the very people they feared most: someone bigger, stronger and less caring than the people who reared them. And their fierce hold on people is cemented there by the fear and terror they and their “armies” promise to deliver to anyone who “crosses” them by disagreeing or opposing them.

My Gratitude List 

So, last night I was reflecting back on the many human beings, living and dead, who showed me that there is a better way to navigate through life than stoicism or ballistics. I lay in bed verbalizing each and every name as they came to me. On this too-long-to-reprint list were Mark Twain, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alpha and Susan Rossetti, DeForest Kelley, Robert F. Kennedy (the Senator, not his doofus namesake), Bernie Sanders,  Robert Preston, Mary Jane and Judi Cooper, Jessie Richards and her parents Jesse and Frances, Billie Rae Walker, the Dalai Lama, Leo Buscaglia, Robert Reich, Dick Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Wayne Dyer, Alok Vaid-Menon, my grandmothers, my unknown/unnamed ancestors, and many, many more. None of them were perfect, but all were kind.

I listed my pets, too…

Deaken, Puddles, Snazzy,  Charli, Patches, Bursties, Charisma, Ivanhoe, Sultan… so many critters who showed me what unconditional love looks like.

…and my Body…

Because I’m transgender, for most of my life I had a love/hate relationship with my body. But last night I thanked it for its robust resilience and for being such an amazing vehicle, even though it isn’t the model that my brain firmly believes it ought to be.

Anyway, after taking this extended inventory, I realized I was basking in the deepest sense of gratitude that I have felt in a very long time, and I started to cry. My eyes  leaked tears down the side of my face as I pondered the compulsions (human, animal and physical) that have kept me feeling mostly joyous, positive and hopeful during most of my life.

And two poems that I have had on my walls here for years until recently bubbled up inside me, as did the song Til There Was You from the Music Man.

A Bag of Tools