Finding Comfort Where You Can

nature is a backdrop, a sanctuary, a place to rest your heart

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It’s been cold. Very cold.

And very, very windy. It’s not unusual right now to wake in the middle of the night to the vaguely unsettling sound of the wind rattling the entire house. Not unusual to see the chickadees clinging resolutely to maple branches whipping about in eight-seconds-rodeo style. Then bailing out into a jet stream that seems certain to whisk them away for good, before expertly blowing onto the seed pile that they were aiming for all along.

(What? Of course I had that, what am I, an amateur?)

Still, there’s something really restorative about a frozen landscape. Like an icepack to a worn soul. Something healing and soothing and calming about sparkling drifts and long blue shadows draped in patient blankets while storms rage through treetops.

Life has gotten a little busy. Because every single day, an insatiable evil empire commits new acts of violent overthrow against American citizens. As I told my Congressman’s office, “If I skip one day calling Congress, there are too many illegal and unethical activities piled up for me to even list them all!” This is not actually an exaggeration. You see, sometimes you have to leave a message, and there is a time limit. I learned this with Susan Collins’ office once as I ran out of time to list the most urgent atrocities that should (but didn’t) prevent her from supporting RFK Jr’s confirmation.

And it’s quite a draining sort of busy, as well. Because I’m just one tiny voice in a great big country, and this is not some sort of personal political project or single-issue passion. It’s a matter of the welfare of my family and the future of my children being threatened and darkened and stolen by a regime of insatiable bigoted delusional psychopaths that poses new threats every single day.

And of course there are those who say, “Stick to nature, I don’t want to hear about politics.” But the thing about authoritarian regimes is that they are never content to only overthrow your politics. You can’t actually compartmentalize fascism, no matter how much you pretend to. You can only accept it and assimilate it as your new normal, or resist it with every fiber of your being.

Regimes come knocking on your front door, worming their way into your daily finances, tunneling through your safety nets of healthcare and savings and job security. They’re stealing your Pell Grants and shutting down your national parks, obliterating job opportunities and siphoning off your benefits, surveilling your free speech and asking if you know anyone who might be illegal.

And there’s a really deep evil resonating through the chaos and disruption, far beyond even the destructive forces of constant lies and reckless irresponsibility, a disturbing lack of empathy that is costing lives already, and more every day.

As Kentucky suffers through a devastating natural disaster, the President soaks up praise at the Daytona 500 and then goes golfing. He has no words of sympathy or solidarity, only self-obsessed social media slop. He couldn’t care less, and this is the regime’s new normal.

Elon Musk celebrates shutting down USAID, the world’s richest man taking from the world’s poorest children. Food rots as kids starve. Medicine sits under funding freezes while pregnant moms pass HIV to their unborn children. This medicine was there, and these children could have been saved - many will now die within the first year of birth. Elon Musk calls it a pause, but there is daily death in this pause. He couldn’t care less, and this is the regime’s new normal.

RFK Jr launches an assault on depression medications, while visions of forced-labor farm-camps dance in his weird heroin-and-worm-ravaged brain. Bird flu, measles, these are just natural experiments to him. He’s watching with curiosity, like he did with Samoa, to see how many people die. He couldn’t care less, and this is the regime’s new normal.

So I take a deep breath. And take a moment to stare out the window into a winter world.

I’ve called and written my representatives. I’ve signed up for some phone-banking and registered for Indivisible’s statewide Zoom call. I’ve moved the Pell Grant out of my financial planning. I’ll keep my fingers crossed but I won’t hold my breath. I’ve emailed a friend at the school district to connect over changes that will impact our entire community.

We joined our local chapter of Indivisible, and we signed up with Maine Dems, and we bundled up for Not My Presidents Day.

We’ll get more emails and join more Zoom calls and make more signs and stand in more protests. We’ll think ahead about how we can prepare and compensate for the Trump-Musk zealots raiding our Social Security and Veteran’s benefits and healthcare, and we’ll talk about how life changes under a fascist regime and what to look out for when criminals are running the government. Maybe I’ll temper my dreams, but I’ll also hold tight to them.

There is only so much I can really do, each day. Everything else is waiting and seeing and defiantly living. So many things are changing. But some remain the same. The snow sparkles.

The chickadees are cute. And hungry.

The squirrel is so, so busy.

And a few moments of sunshine melt my house into a sparkling waterfall.

And in a world of chaos, nature is a backdrop, a sanctuary, and a place to rest your heart.