
When I was 16, I knew I was a woman. This realization came from the core of my awareness. I felt an assuredness as solid and calm as a growing sapling. My feet were connected to the earth and my spirit became attached to the wide forest of women in the world. I was to become the attendant of women’s power and presence. I looked out the window of my boarding school bedroom and felt at one with the trees that filled my view.
That stance of power began my feminist path. Roe vs Wade had already been passed, so abortion was not something I had to fight for. But abortion stigma was. Voiced hateful opinions that curtailed the healing from going through such an ordeal were still rampant and damaging. Even if having an abortion was not an emotional difficulty the religious hate was oppressive. For those, such as myself, who did have emotional and spiritual fallout run through their blood while still believing this was the right choice; at least not having to fight for the ‘right’ to have an abortion was off the table.
But today we have reset the table with the broken promise of the law. This is the milieu these days. The admittedly imperfect rendition of social awareness and political function is juxtaposed with the fundamentalist agenda that thrives on ignorance and lack of reasoned thought. It is a cognitive dissonance served up in a bowl with seemingly no bottom. It is both surreal and familiar. It is horrifying and it calls many of us to it because we know this dadaesque landscape is where we must begin.
Perhaps the height of this is that even though the justices lied in their confirmation hearings about Roe v Wade nothing will come of that, and they will remain in power.
Perhaps the terror of this is that we have a justice who is bent on destroying more rights that are not compliant with his beliefs, although his marriage may be part of the collateral damage of his vile values.
I am searching for words. They are as elusive as the breath I am trying to take. My body has stepped back from being able to take the deep inhales and exhales needed to regulate this news. I feel the hands of women gasping for air and grasping to be lifted from this dire pit of pain. We are called, once again, to reach toward them and ferry them to safe harbor.
I am grieving. I am grieving the loss of power for self-determination that we fought for. I am grieving the young woman who named her power and walked with the stride of self-rule. I feel her look at today from her place in my past that has embellished my life with the spaciousness of her legacy. Her heart is as shorn as mine.
How can I put my spirit back together and make sense of this when it seems there is no sense left to hold. Critical thinking and complex communication are gone; their value is disregarded.
Religion and politics are not bedmates. They are acquaintances who might share a few words at a party and read about each other in the news. They may confer on occasion, but that is mostly for show. This is what our fore-writers meant. The space between them is not to be breached. It is to be neutral.
However, it has been breached and we have fallen into the abyss between the two.
We have been swallowed and maimed by this place of despair. But maybe this will be the gust of my breath to push me forward. Despair is the sway of awakening from shock(even if expected) and anger that is too primal for anything but action. At least it is for me.

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Wang
Cheung
“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”