come join me on a quest to Appreciate America and all she has to offer!
About #AppreciateAmerica
Have you ever loved something so much that you just want to hug it and squeeze it and give it a sloppy, puppy dog-style wet kiss all over its cheeks? Well, I feel that way about America. Now listen. I’m no Pollyanna. Things have been rough. Very rough. I get it. My husband and I live two blocks from a COVID hospital in midtown Manhattan. We did not leave our apartment for three months! We lost three friends in one month. Tragedy comes in threes these days. Things went from trauma to terror when our neighborhood got boarded up because of looting.
Fast forward. It’s been five months since that fateful Friday, March 13th when the city that never sleeps turned off its taxicab meters and went into a gelatinous, lethargic freeze.
I froze, too. A survivor of war and revolution, trauma is near but not very dear to my psychological heart. I felt like I was back in the war. I slipped into darkness and fell into the inkwell of a heavy, saturated grief.
It is said that the novel coronavirus is like a magnifying glass, taking the small and invisible and making it irreverently large and conspicuous. On a massive, life-and-death kind of a scale. Indeed, it has. For the pandemic of COVID revealed the epidemic of social, health, economic and mental ills that have plagued our country for many generations. Objects in rear are closer than they appear.
When I could dry my tears long enough to look up and see the landscape around me, I connected with the stories of so many of my fellow Americans who are hurting and struggling, too. In this time of great darkness, I knew there must also be a light somewhere. Or at least a light switch. Because we would not have darkness without light. So by definition, there is always a light. And sometimes we just need to clear our eyes long enough to see it.
For me, the way out of trauma and tragedy has and always will be through gratitude. Gratitude does not mean denying that there are problems. It means acknowledging that we have more than we think we have as a resource, a foundation; a base for rebounding. Gratitude is the bedrock of resilience. It’s the fertile soil in which shame is healed, denial is devalued, and pain becomes promise.
So I’m on a quest. A little experiment from this big ‘ol heart of mine that’s been broke a thousand times. I’m on a quest to find gratitude in the grief; freedom in the fright; possibility in the pain. So strap on a spacesuit (and a mask, of course!) and come join me on a quest to Appreciate America and all she has to offer!
With love... and, of course, much appreciation,
P.S. If you are seeking a platform oriented toward national statecraft or the federal government, I encourage you to visit the many sites that cover these topics far better than we can. This site is deeply local. And personal. It’s created by Demicans and Republicrats. Independents and codependents. Octogenerians and fruitarians. Meat eaters and mad tweeters alike. Without incitations about party, politics, or presidencies. The flag belongs to no one person because it belongs to everyone. And so we seek to understand the humanity beneath the headlines. America beyond the jargon. Without judgment. Only with gratitude. #AppreciateAmerica