Thank you, Davina. Who doesn't love a good hug!!!
U recently wrote this, and I thought I would share it here:
Sometimes you just need to embrace joy when you can.
I started this story about walking through a societal minefield as a transgender woman.
Watch the news, read a newspaper, and, God forbid, go on the internet, and you find transgender women being accused of assassinations, child grooming, molestations in the ladies' room, and the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it.
What utter nonsense!
What amazing fabrications and lies!
Hateful statements are shouted with absolutely no facts to back them up. They are screamed endlessly from the mouths of bigots with the blind confidence that only monumental ignorance can support.
I want to stop hearing their voices. They say painful and hateful things that give me an emotional headache.
Like you, I feel like this assault has broken through my traditional walls of resistance. Every day, it feels like the world has added more mines to the field of hate, and I have to navigate through each of them without blowing up.
Since the U.S. Congress and the courts seem incapable of protecting me from this endless stream of hate, I have decided to replace the daily additions to their minefield with one of my own, a mimefield that makes me laugh!
It sounds silly, but I remember my theater professor suggesting that I see the audience without their clothes on to get over my fears of public performing. Seeing these bigots as mimes makes sense.
A mime is a performer who doesn't speak and uses gesture, bodily movement, and facial expressions to express themselves. So, if the media influencers and political clowns want to continue their hateful words, all I will see is their ridiculous gestures and contortions. I will laugh at their comedic ignorance and not allow myself to be baited or depressed by their words.
Their mouths will no longer make any sound, and I will laugh at their ridiculous mimes.
That doesn't mean I won't fight back, but I will do it from a position of intellectual maturity.
I will vote, I will share my beliefs with those who will listen, and I will defend myself.
But, I will also remember to periodically kick off my shoes and dance blissfully barefoot through the mimefield of hate.