Quick update: I am removing my Substack. I am not happy with the quality of writing on it and I haven't built much of a following, so I am sticking with this blog for the foreseeable future. I will also be leaving Twitter in the new year, so this website will be my focus.
Reposted here is one blogpost I was pleased with from my brief stint at Substack.
Thanks for reading!
This is not a positive time.
It's ok to grieve.
Melody Kay Young Aug 7
I have had some thoughts lately about whether I should have continued teaching this year. Life comes first in my priorities, and I didn’t feel like I had enough information to decide whether to take a year out of teaching and homeschool. Financially, I needed to continue, if we are to move at all. And I am aware many people don’t even have the option of moving somewhere both spouses can work, just as our family is not made of money and must work very hard to get out of Texas. I feel, due to the leadership in power in the state of Texas, as if I can’t protect students or my own children, right now, and such a dilemma breaks the hearts of all caring professionals and loving parents.
In sum, many of us have been put in impossible situations this year, and yes, it is hurtful. Mixed in with that grief emotion, I am also of that middle of the road opinion that it is absolutely necessary to have fun and laugh and joke, even now. My caveat is we should do so with respect to the lives of others. And so many normally innocent things can threaten the lives of others right now. The situation has been so mishandled in Texas so as to be leading us to a major lockdown and/or collapse, and that is disheartening to endure.
Furthermore, many preach about positivity and faith as if these will magic away our poor choices or dangerous situations. And silently, among us, people pass into the night. I read something recently about how the history of the Spanish flu and polio epidemics were not really taught as historical events, although they were. The impact of them on society must have been massive. I wonder often, after September 11th and now, January 6th, if our failure to grieve has anything to do with our callousness as a culture. We are heading for another kind of collapse, quick.
And yet I am not hopeless. I see a lot of love between people at this time; it just isn’t shouted from the rooftops like the selfishness is. One thing we need more of is the ability to respect grief and weep with those who weep. Love is not always positive; love is real. I feel heavy today. There has been so much death and suffering. Perhaps my small contribution, right now, can be to share that heaviness in the form of a love offering: we are in this together.
We grieve with each other. And those traumas unspoken by those who erroneously believe they can be free without loving others, haven’t gone away. But we can live free, even now, if we love always.
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Melody’s Musings was on Substack – the place for independent writing
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