I switched my coffee out for tea today. After a few weeks of difficulty falling asleep, an unpleasant burning sensation in my stomach when drinking coffee, and a few days overshooting the elusive mark of “moderation,” I realized that I should just stop. It’s a ritual I’ve performed for years and years, so substituting tea will help give me something to do with my hands in the morning and taper off the caffeine a little bit instead of going cold turkey.

I always thought, why quit? I love coffee, and supposedly it’s good for you, so why worry about it? I figured it was a habit I would never quit, and I was fine with that. We change. I like the concept of “strong opinions, weakly held,” as Paul Saffo said. Things change, we learn things, and we can either cling to old ideas or respond to new information and new developments with new beliefs or opinions. Now I am strangely determined to quit. My brain will have to respond organically to adenosine! So be it. Now that I am examining it (and suffering the withdrawal headache), it also makes me uncomfortably aware of the physical nature of my dependence. If civilization collapses, this will be a problem. And in the unlikely event that civilization does not collapse, what do I do if I could actually use a mild stimulant to get through a particularly excruciating day, if all caffeine does is help me feel normal? Score cocaine?

We’ll see how it goes! I find myself curious to see what it will feel like to fall asleep and wake up without caffeine. Maybe it will be better, maybe it won’t! Maybe I will abandon this resolve quickly – honestly, the stakes are rather low. I intend to stick with it for at least a month, and then decide whether or not to go on.

Look Alive Out There, by Sloane Crosley. Oh, I like this lady, you guys. Hilarious book of essays. I especially loved “The Doctor is a Woman.”

Mrs. Fletcher, by Tom Perotta. Kept feeling like he was writing for a movie, which makes sense since other books of his have been adapted to movied (Election, for one). My book club read this and the consensus was not very enthusiastic. I found it interesting and thought-provoking, and I did think the author was compassionate to his characters, even the less sympathetic ones, but I – the whole group, honestly – was puzzled by reviews from very smart people calling this book “sweet.” It was…a kind of a bummer, actually? And we are all pretty sure it’s satire, but can’t quite seem to figure out or agree on what exactly it was satirizing. Something about sexual politics and participating in one’s own objectification and porn addiction. Maybe we just aren’t as smart as the New York Times Review of Books, I guess?

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, by Brené Brown. It’s like a culmination of all her books to date. If you only read one, read this one. I love her, as you can tell by the frequency with which I quote her. Recommended if you have ever experienced human emotions.

Calypso, by David Sedaris. I mean, yes. My favorite one of his. I think I’ve read all his books? Here’s a sample chapter – still one of my favorites from the book.

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett. Sooo challenging. The more I sit with this book, the more I get out of it. Lots of Heart of Darkness inspiration, but with science, in the Amazon, and centering women, some of whom are very dark and complex characters. Themes of extractive colonialism and how personal moral conduct is or is not distinct from one’s political ethics…and lots to say about disentangling femininity and reproduction.

It is important to note that there are so many pregnancy, child loss, and fertility-related triggers in this book, good lawd.

To what extent do we belong to ourselves, and to what extent do we belong to one another?

I was thinking about this today and I don’t have an answer for you, or even a good way to think about it. As I see it, this question is at the heart of almost every uncertain moment of my life – maybe not just mine. At this very moment, in fact, should I be writing this post, or should I open the office door upon which my preschooler throws himself gleefully?

Should alpinists risk, and in fact often lose, their lives climbing on high peaks, leaving behind friends, families, children? Do we owe our children our presence? Do we owe society our productive work? What part of us belongs to us?

It’s easiest to simply say that we owe no one anything, that our lives belong only to ourselves. After all, in the end, no one else but me has to look back on my life and be contented, or not. What other people expect may or may not be helpful or particularly relevant to my specific skills or personality or values.

There is a huge danger in giving every part of our lives over to the expectations and needs of others, to be sure. But there is something I see as an even greater risk: that we give our lives to no one but ourselves.

Dr. Brené Brown writes about this in several of her books, but in particular depth in Braving the Wilderness. She writes about her struggle with something her hero, Dr. Maya Angelou, said about belonging in 1973:

MAYA ANGELOU: You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great…
BILL MOYERS: Do you belong anywhere?
MAYA ANGELOU: I haven’t yet.
BILL MOYERS: Do you belong to anyone?
MAYA ANGELOU: More and more… I belong to myself. I’m very proud of that. I am very concerned about how I look at Maya. I like Maya very much.

Dr. Brown had discovered in her social work research, which she conducted via what is known as grounded theory methodology (that’s worth a Google, by the way), that “connection and belonging are why we are here.” So how, in fact, can it also be true that freedom and great reward can come from belonging no place? Must we choose between connection and freedom?

She resolved this by drawing a distinction between fitting in and belonging. Belonging is when we can be completely ourselves to be accepted and loved, and fitting in is when we change ourselves to be accepted and loved.

For Dr. Brown, when we belong to ourselves, we don’t accept the shallowness of “fitting in.” If no one in our immediate vicinity accepts who we are, well, we might have to spend some time in the wilderness, as she puts it. I don’t think this means we are refusing responsibility to others, but only that we don’t accept responsibility that is defined by someone else’s values. Maybe it is the hardest way, right down the middle. We belong to ourselves to the extent that we are accountable to our own conscience and values. And we belong to one another to the extent that we are responsible for treating others in according with our conscience and values. More than that – we belong to each other because we cannot be separated from each other and survive. I mean that very literally – if humans were all suddenly separated from one another and could not reconnect, our species would not survive.

So none of this means that when someone is telling me something that conflicts with my values, that I have to accept it – but that I trust that they are not better or worse than me, that we are connected anyway, and stand in my own truth, and let them stand in theirs.

Maybe a lot of words to say what has been said many times before, but I can tell you that it isn’t easy to belong to myself, to like and trust myself like this. I find that many focus on the beginning of Maya Angelou’s quote, where she says, “The price is high. The reward is great.” But for me, here is the challenge:

More and more… I belong to myself. I’m very proud of that. I am very concerned about how I look at Maya. I like Maya very much.

The way she says it is, “More and more…” She shows the process she is going through, that it isn’t somewhere she has arrived, but that she has to choose it all the time, over and over.

I hope it gets easier the more you do it.

I love what Elizabeth Gilbert has to say about curiosity. She writes,

We are constantly being told to pursue our passions in life, but there are times when passion is a TALL ORDER, and really hard to reach….

But curiosity, I have found, is always within reach.

Passion is a tower of flame, but curiosity is a tiny tap on the shoulder — a little whisper in the ear that says, “Hey, that’s kind of interesting…”

Passion is rare; curiosity is everyday.

Curiosity is therefore a lot easier to reach at at times than full-on passion — and the stakes are lower, easier to manage.

The trick is to just follow your small moments of curiosity. It doesn’t take a massive effort. Just turn your head an inch. Pause for a instant. Respond to what has caught your attention. Look into it a bit. Is there something there for you? A piece of information?

Curiosity has become a core value for me, now that I feel that I can prioritize it. It was surprisingly hard to do – I had internalized a sort of Puritanical masochism – if I liked something, well, there couldn’t possibly be any objective value there. Like food that tastes too good, it just couldn’t be good for me.

But I have come to believe that we can think of curiosity as sacred. I lend myself a little trust – that it matters that I am attracted to something, that I want to know more about it. I trust that anything I learn is worth knowing, and that exploration is not a waste of time.

And I find that given the license to be curious, I’m most surprised by my renewed curiosity about other people, especially ones who see the world differently than I do. How do they see it? How is it different from what I see? When I get to learn about that, my own perspective shifts, and my world is always enriched. Before, I think I was afraid, somehow, to ask. Each of us has an entire universe in our own head, and it’s different in so many ways from everyone else around us. Imagining this, it’s not hard to see why people experience so much conflict – to the contrary, it’s amazing we can ever find common ground at all! Perhaps that’s part of the reason we humans have such a strong affinity to people like ourselves – the diversity of universes might be so overwhelming that we retreat into a small corner of them and hide.

But this concern about asking – my fear was exaggerated, but I still think caution is justified sometimes. After all, people aren’t just books to open up and read. It’s not my prerogative to get into people’s heads and see what they see. When I seek to connect, I need to be careful not to see people as mines full of data to slake my curiosity. After all, isn’t that what we hate most about social media? The way it has turned our most sacred bonds into data to be extracted and monetized? (Oh – just me?)

I believe that curiosity can reconnect us across these vast divides we seem to live in. But that’s only true if that curiosity is rooted in respect and compassion. I want to know about you so that we can connect as we should be connected, because I hold you in high regard as a fellow human being. Because I see you as intrinsically connected to me, because I see the image of God in you. Not because I want to know your weakness so that I can turn you to my side, or so that I can add you to my demographic data tables and charts to inform marketing or campaign strategy. Not so that I can look enlightened or write a better novel or enrich my world. Not when it turns the person I am curious about into an object – literally objectifying them. So I have slightly tweaked this core value – I call it “ethical curiosity.”

Curiosity can help us draw a map back to one another, but only when it connects, not when it extracts.

My sister and I used to joke that we already knew the answer to any question we asked our parents before we even asked it. Depending on the question, it was either, “No,” “Put ice on it,” or “Get a job.”

“I hurt my knee, what do I do?” “Put ice on it.”

“Can’t I have a less embarrassing car?” “Get a job.”

“Can I stay home from school today?” “No.”

At the time, we were vaguely frustrated by it, but my parents were endlessly amused. They would just laugh at us as we protested the unfairness of it all. And maybe a little bit at themselves, since ice was my dad’s version of the dad’s reliance on Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Now that I’m a parent, I appreciate this arsenal of answers more than I ever did as a kid.

Now, obviously my sister and I exaggerated my parent’s harshness, as kids do. I didn’t get everything I wanted, but my parents gave me opportunities that they felt were important. The rote answers that my sister and I joked about were lessons that stick with me even now, and I recognized even then the love that was behind them.

“No.” You don’t get everything you want, whenever you want it. Instant gratification is bad for everyone.

“Put ice on it.” Don’t make a big deal out of physical injuries – scraped knees and bruises build character. We believe you are strong enough to overcome this.

“Get a job.” Seriously. Get a job. Make your own way. No one owes you anything.

I like to think sometimes about how my kids will remember me. Thinking about the long-term helps remind me how I want to parent my kids and course-correct if I’m not going in the direction I want to.

I stayed up way too late last night watching Ava DuVernay’s 13th. You don’t have to read what I have to say about it; in fact, I’d rather you just watch it.

Please just go watch it. Conservatives – there are about 40% conservative interviews, including Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist. This doc does not let Democrats and progressives off the hook, as you can tell by this trailer.

For those of you who are familiar with the realities of mass incarceration and its historical evolution since the Civil War, there may not be a lot of new information, although I will say that despite having done heavy reading on the subject, I learned a bit (particularly about ALEC). I also found, as did some other friends that are informed on the subject matter, that the way DuVernay presented the narrative visually was so compelling that it brought it home in a truly urgent way.

One thing that I have been meditating on recently is a statement from a Eula Biss piece in the New York Times called “White Debt.” In it, Biss recounts a story of being interviewed at the Amherst police station for pasting posters all over town for a talk she and some other college students were hosting. She says, “The first question the Amherst Police asked was whether I was aware that graffiti and ‘tagging,’ a category that included the posters, was punishable as a felony. I was not aware. Near the end of the interrogation, my campus officer stepped in and suggested that we would clean up the posters. I was not charged with a felony, and I spent the day working side by side with my officer, using a wire brush to scrub all the bombs off Amherst…Even as the police spread photos of my handiwork in front of me, I could tell by the way they pronounced ‘tagging’ that it wasn’t a crime invented for me.”

“It wasn’t a crime invented for me.”

That statement reminded me that laws are human creations and subject to human fallibility. Obvious, I know. (“But they are criminals – they broke the law.” No longer any need to racialize our complaints; there is an easy, objective way to justify any kind of treatment of those that broke our laws. But who wrote the laws?)

Beyond this obvious statement, that laws are human creations, was for me a clarification of the insight that laws are created with specific demographic targets in mind – sometimes, as my husband pointed out with the example of the Rico laws, with specific individuals in mind. Those specific individuals are not the only ones caught up in the nets of those laws, because once they exist, they can be used however law enforcement wants – and herein lies the flexibility of making race implicitly rather than explicitly targeted. But the laws were designed to punish someone in particular. The laws against tagging and graffiti were not designed for young white female college students. Clearly not. They could have been charged, but the police recognized that perhaps they were not the intended targets and let them go.

I’ve been talking with some friends who are concerned about the path of the current administration. As I have explained, my position is that we as a country have begun down the path of authoritarianism. My friends reference Japanese-American internment camps of the WWII era, and many other historical precedent across the world and time of detaining people who fall outside our concept of “our people.” They say, Could it happen here, do you think?

I say, It would look like a new law. It would not mention race or ethnicity, but rather a broad spectrum of behavior that falls along racial or ethnic patterns that allows law enforcement to target people based on race and ethnicity. We would fill up our detention centers and jails and need to create new ones, private ones. It would be the same thing as internment camps with the most recent fashionable veneer of legitimacy.

It would, theoretically, look like that.

But then I realize, almost as I say it, with shame and horror, that this is not theoretical, and it is not new.

It is already happening. It never stopped happening.

Please go watch 13th.

We are becoming overwhelmed.

The daily assault of news stories, some of which are pure distraction techniques, has caused so many people to withdraw, claiming not to want to see political stories in their news feeds. Wanting a filter. Wanting to take a break. Wishing things would just be kind and civil.

It’s OK to take a break when you feel overwhelmed.

When you are ready to come back, I will be here. I promise to be kind, civil, respectful, and honest. Seeking truth has always been my highest priority, right up there next to kindness. And both of those priorities, above and beyond my political beliefs, are currently under attack at the highest levels, and that kind of model filters down to our collective discourse. It’s meant to turn you off of politics! Don’t let it. Politics may not have impacted you before; if the election didn’t do it for you, recent developments signal that everyone’s lives are about to be very affected by politics.

Six days after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, it’s become clear that we all should have been taking him fully at his policy promises, such as they are, throughout his historically divisive campaign; but more than that, we must armor our institutions against attack from within. I’d like to summarize a few of the most abnormal and worrying developments so far and give you a little context to support this concern.

• Agencies including Interior, EPA, USDA, and others have been subjected to a media blackout. This level of restriction goes beyond any previous presidential transition and is reportedly “chilling” to employees. It’s not obvious that the order specifically violates First Amendment rights as it is worded, although it does create a (theoretically temporary) barrier between critical government science findings and the public. We do have the opportunity to watch how it is enforced; alternative, unofficial Twitter feeds such as “@AltNatParkSer” have been created by government employees in order to continue providing information that is of “public interest,” which is a protected form of speech for government employees.
• An investigation into “voter fraud” in “two states,” following an assertion that over 3 million votes were cast illegally. Senator Lindsey Graham (R – SC) stated that this assertion “shakes confidence in our democracy.” Indeed, this is a common preliminary tactic in the installation of autocratic and authoritarian regimes, in which shaking trust in voting, the fundamental institutional mechanism of democracy, is a critical step in removing or replacing the democratic structures entirely.
• The President issued a statement via Twitter threatening to “send the feds to Chicago” if Mayor Emmanuel does not “clean up the carnage” in his city. He has previously endorsed the use of “stop and frisk” in Chicago, a failed tactic first widely used in New York City, which was found to unjustly and ineffectively target people of color. Martial law, particularly targeting ethnic minorities, is also a common tactic among repressive and authoritarian regimes, particularly right-wing, fascist, and ethno-nationalist varieties.
• The administration is planning to propose the elimination of all 25 grants that support the Justice Department’s Office of Violence Against Women. It would save the government “a little more than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget” and would defund support to some of the country’s most vulnerable populations, including child victims of assault and abuse, residents of tribal lands, women with disabilities, and children who have witnessed the abuse of a parent.
• In the first press briefing of the administration, the press secretary issued statements directly contradicted by knowable and reported facts and refused to take questions from the press. The President has also referred to journalists as “the most dishonest people on Earth,” among other epithets. His campaign fueled continual mistrust of the press. As with the investigation into voter fraud, this shakes trust in an institution absolutely essential to the functioning of our democracy and raises questions in the minds of many followers or neutral folks on whether facts can be knowable. This centers his own outlets of information (i.e. Twitter) as an authoritative source of facts. These fissures in the institution of the free press and the attempt to undermine and control structures of information flow in a democratic society are the bases of the classic authoritarian state-run propaganda complex and are a well-documented tactic of authoritarian regimes.
• According to Reuters, “U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders starting on Wednesday that include a temporary ban on most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries, say congressional aides and immigration experts briefed on the matter.” A Cato Institute report concludes, “The security threat posed by refugees in the United States is insignificant. Halting America’s processing of refugees due to a terrorist attack in another country that may have had one asylum-seeker as a co-plotter would be an extremely expensive overreaction to very minor threat. Resettling refugees who pass a thorough security check would likely decrease the recruiting pool for future terrorists and decrease the long-run risk.” This overreaction and scare tactic by the administration is known as scapegoating, and besides being, per Cato, an “extremely expensive overreaction,” it provides an external, nationalism-fueled enemy around which the authoritarian leader’s party may rally.
  • Another notable quote from the Cato report: “A refugee from Burundi was detained by DHS for 20 months for materially supporting a terrorist group because rebels beat him up, stole $4 from him, and took his lunch (it’s unclear from the story, but he might have been an asylum seeker).  Many good candidates for resettlement in the United States are turned down for these silly reasons.”
• President Trump may be in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which says: “No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust … shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State,” according to George W. Bush ethics Richard Painter. Emoluments are essentially payments for labor or services. His “blind trust” does not actually fulfill any of the technical requirements of a blind trust, which works on a high-level by putting all assets into a fund that is re-invested and managed by unknown parties. In that case, the owner does not know how their assets are being managed, and others outside of the trustees are not aware that the owner’s funds are involved.

However, the President has simply resigned from leadership in his companies and placed his family members in charge. The use of the word “blind trust” to describe this arrangement is wildly inaccurate and intentionally misleading. As it stands, he is aware of decisions made in his former businesses, and all the world is aware that they are doing business with his personally-designated family members. This puts him in a conflict of interest that could easily compromise national security, as his loyalty is divided between what is best for the country and what is most profitable for his companies.

Walter M. Shaub, Jr., the director of the Office of Government Ethics, expressed his concern that this was not sufficient to avoid conflicts of interest and in response was sent a letter from Jason Chaffetz (R – UT), Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, threatening investigation, which was widely seen as a measure of intimidation.

It was not generally believed that a civil suit could correct this; impeachment, or, short of that, a resolution by Congress directed towards the President, would need to be considered in order to remedy these potentially compromising conflicts of interest. However, on Monday, January 23, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit against the President, but while they believe they have standing, their status as a directly injured party is not clearly affirmed by precedent. If the suit is upheld, the President could face a court order requiring him to divest fully from his current assets.

• The administration’s cabinet nominees are the wealthiest in history, making ethics review long and complicated; Senate Republicans are attempting to confirm these nominees before ethics reviews are completed.

Of course, I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been said. But political discussion is a marked change in the direction of this blog, and it is likely an unwelcome one to many of my readers – mostly family and friends. Some of you may have voted for Trump. You have as much reason or more to hold him accountable as those of us who did not. Join me in paying close and careful attention, seeking facts, evaluating context, and resisting any attempts – from any side – at eroding the basic tenets of our democracy and human rights.

You may note that I am not addressing everything. There are a number of areas of already-signed and anticipated executive actions that are not surprising in terms of their content, given the Republican Party’s stated stance on these issues. The substance of these issues, and whether or not they are the right direction for our country, can be debated – and believe me, I will debate that. But for now, regardless of your political leanings, I hope that we can all agree that our democratic institutions and rights are worth protecting, and that we can all unite against these threats to the core of our American – and human – values.

Having a hard time sleeping? You’re not alone! The good news is, science is on your side! Here are some research-based tips to a better night’s sleep.

1. Minimize screen time at bed time. Upon entering your retina, the blue light from electronic screens will suppress the release of the hormone melatonin and stimulate the release of cortisol, making it difficult to fall asleep. Also, entering into the distorted nightmare-world of internet trolls and local news article comments living in your Facebook feed carries the risk of despair, existential dread, and insomnia, which can be a real bummer for your sleep hygiene. But maybe try this screen filtering app I read about?
2. Keep your room dark. Even the tiniest bit of artificial light can disrupt your sleep, reminding you that beyond the flimsy walls of your house, evil gathers in the darkness. Try not to think about it, girl – it will do nothing good for your sleep debt.
3. Start unwinding an hour before bedtime. Set an alarm and create a soothing evening ritual to prepare for sleep. Some people take a bath, meditate, read fiction, or spend quiet time with loved ones. Anything soothing you can think of to distract yourself from the knowledge that there are forums full of men who believe you should be subjugated and silenced forever and are plotting ways to take away your IUD. They probably won’t be able to that, so try not to worry about it and enjoy your bath. You’re most likely going to be just fine and I’m betting won’t be forced to have five more children against your will!
4. If you read, read a real book – try some fiction! – instead of an eBook. Whatcha readin’ there? What is that, Ayn Rand? Honey, I wouldn’t.
5. Engage in spiritual rituals and prayer. Studies show that among the religious, prayer can provide protective health benefits and has a calming effect. Also, since only divine Providence can help us now, this may just be your best bet for a good night’s sleep, mama!

Hope these tips help! Sweet dreams, sweetheart!

The youth leader gives some upbeat directions to the group on setting up the chairs for the program. I begin to pull the stacking chairs apart, finally feeling like I have a reason to be there. A large boy a year older than me comes over and takes the chair from my hands, barely meeting my eyes.

“No, I’ve got it,” I say. He gives a short chuckle and leaves me there empty handed.

I walk back to the stack of chairs and grab another. Another boy walks over and takes it with a condescending smile.

“I’ve got it,” I repeat, a bit desperately. Again, a short chuckle. Again, I stand empty handed, alone, and useless. I feel the fear creeping back in. I am 12 years old.

You see, when I was young, I was very shy. I had developed a fear of strangers and acquaintances over the years. It may have had to do with the bullying I dealt with in elementary school; I have always been a nerd. (My dear young people, being a nerd has not always been cool.)

But this post is not about my preteen struggles with social anxiety.

It is, instead, about how we allow certain categories of society to participate socially.

This was only my first experience with this particular slant of exclusion. I was still young, after all. Like many girls my age, I was taught that I could do anything I wanted, as long as I worked hard. Perhaps even become the first female President of the United States. Oh, women of my generation, do you recognize this message, even the words and phrasing I’ve used to state it? Did you, like me, find it strange that it even had to be said, when you were a young girl?

I don’t find it strange anymore.

These boys did not mean any harm, of course. We call this type of gendered interaction “chivalry,” and many loudly lament its downfall. These boys were taught to carry things for girls (perhaps, though, only for certain kinds of girls, but that is a subject for another essay). I, however, was not taught to let boys carry things for me, as young ladies in the true Age of Chivalry learned. I was supposed to be able to do anything I wanted, and I wanted to carry the damn chairs. I learned through experience that sometimes it’s OK to let people do things for me because it makes them feel better, even if I don’t need help.

Later, I had to learn yet another lesson: I don’t always have to make the other person feel better, especially if it means I feel worse as a result.

As a painfully shy 12 year old, this “chivalrous” interaction made me feel much, much worse. I was not allowed to participate in setting up, and I was much too anxious to make friends, and so I did not participate at all. I hid as best I could, most of the time. In a book, in a tree, walking around as though I had somewhere to go. I was fully excluded. How silly it seems, in retrospect, and how ruinous at the time.

I began to learn, over the next few years, the categories of interaction for which I would receive  censure or shunning from authority figures and peers – manual labor, questioning the premises of school curricula, questioning religious apologia, loud laughter, acting out in class, or talking about science fiction (for which I would be quizzed incessantly to determine whether or not I was a “true fan”). I began to see gendered expectations, but I did not know what to make of them. Boys questioned, acted out, moved heavy things, and laughed uproariously and were encouraged or, at worst, tolerated with amused exasperation. If we tried, we girls, we soon felt the consequences: shunning, mocking, or skepticism. (Manly – bitchy – faking it – wants attention – so annoying – )

These days, I get the most resistance from elsewhere: asserting political opinions. It’s not polite, you see.

But I didn’t really see, not until recently. Why, I wondered, as I spent more and more time in the real world after college, why would it be impolite? Why does it seem as though no one will talk to me about politics? They must be talking to someone about it. It’s clearly important in public life. I had only a few friends that would talk to me about the issues, and even then, it was taboo to disagree.

I learned from my husband about the political opinions of men we knew. About their prejudices. All these things that they would not share with me, they would share with him. Meanwhile, they asked me about hobbies, trips, friends, and family.

What am I missing? I wonder. Why are people telling me not to talk about it? There were unspoken rules that eventually became spoken – that you don’t talk about politics at gatherings, or on Facebook, or ever, ever, ever. It’s not the time – it’s never the time – no need to stir up trouble in relationships. After all, you’re sure to offend someone.

Talking to a friend the other day, we remarked on how afraid we were to make any kind of political statement in this election cycle, especially on Facebook. Someone will jump all over you either way, we sighed with wide eyes, both somewhat dumbstruck, I believe, at the vitriol we’ve witnessed.

I kept thinking about this conversation later. Some people were speaking up, after all.

And then comprehension dawned on me slowly and painfully – why I was afraid.

Women are supposed to share pictures of puppies and babies, not political opinions. Political opinions offend people. Good women are not supposed to offend people. That’s not kind and nurturing. That’s not good for the family. Many female politicians experience this kind of backlash. The ones whose likeability numbers and favorables stay highest are the ones that put their families at the front and center of their image and their rhetoric. Stay on message. Stay positive.

But if we give in to this pressure, we are excluded from public life. We may vote, if we wish, and we may keep our ballots to ourselves. We wield no further influence or power. We have no stronger voice.

So many admirable women are doing it anyway, and the backlash is tangible. But they seem to glow with strength, if only in my imagination.

I have given into this pressure for a long time, but there is no way to be whole if I do not live a public life as well as a private one. Ultimately, I am privileged enough to make this decision one way or the other.

Perhaps the largest part of my problem is that I have this perception that I will damage a relationship by disagreeing. But I have come to believe that this does not need to be the case. After all, I disagree with almost every friend and family member I have on at least one large issue, but I still love them with all my heart. I would die for my husband, even though he hates – or firmly dislikes, perhaps – Hillary Clinton, whereas I voted enthusiastically for her in the Democratic primary. My goodness, how frightened I have been to say that. I believe out of the hundreds of people on my friends list, there may only be two other people who are enthusiastically pro-Hillary. (Let’s talk about drones, some time, though, shall we? I can’t even agree with my candidate on every issue.)

But damage to a relationship does not come from disagreement. It comes from incivility and a refusal to try to understand where the other person is coming from, and that comes from fear. Compassion is not avoiding disagreement. It is leaning into it, seeking out its root, understanding it more fully. Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia were good friends before Scalia’s recent passing – brilliant, caustic people who believed that the political opinions of the other were wrong in every conceivable sense, but still friends. I understand that friendship. I want friendships like that. I want Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson friendships.

The compassionate thing for me to do now is to live as a whole person, a little more fearlessly, to speak my mind with love, and to feel uncomfortable sometimes, to be challenged sometimes. I am, in fact, pretty excited to ask what other people think about important issues, especially when I don’t quite know what I think about those issues myself.

I want my friends and family to know that I want to hear what you think. I want to hear you out. As long as you’re ready to be challenged and to hear me out. I will certainly disagree with you – I have yet to meet a person I agree with completely – but I believe I’ve learned to disagree in a loving and respectful way. Perhaps we can put some love and respect back into the political discourse, instead of reserving all of our love and respect for the private sphere.