Please allow me to set my family demographic for you. I grew up in small town rural America. My father was on social security and my mother worked full-time at the local elementary school. Our household income would have been less than $50,000. My mother did not have a high school education. My father was a high school graduate. He stated multiple times that he graduated from college, I never saw proof of that.
I was not raised going to church with my family. I instead was around 8-9 years old when I started walking the block to church every Sunday, alone. I did this for many years. I was even baptized and invited my parents to witness the event. I find it comforting that the time in my life when I learned about Jesus was out of my own curiosity and that it was such an authentic experience. At the age of 12, my father became part of an extreme white christian nationalist movement and withdrew me from school and moved us across the country briefly to live with this group. This was a frightening time for me and as a result of that, I struggled with what role my faith would play for a long period of my life. The birth of my children, motherhood and experiencing the love of children was a soul-affirming experience that restored my faith in a spiritual connection and that has carried me through so many hardships in my life.
As I have gotten older, faith is not about a building I go to or about a religion I name, it is about having faith in a community of people that I see God’s grace in – just like I was born believing to do. No one had to teach me that, to see the beauty, the spirit and God’s grace in the people in our lives, to see it in the disabled people Trump mocks, in the LGBTQ+ community that he threatens, in the immigrants that make our country diverse that he stereotypes, and in the women that build up our communities and raise our families that he assaults. Faith should never be used as a weapon to cause anyone any harm.
I was surprised by the outcome of the election because I had let myself be optimistic and I underestimated the amount of people that would grant themselves the permission to act with no regard for others under the guise of being a “follower of Christ” while voting for and now celebrating a Trump presidency. Trump is NOT representative of traditional Christian values while he spews bigotry and outcasts people made in the image of God and Christians can’t hide behind their religion to wreak havoc on people’s lives with their votes.
My childhood home would have been one of the little rural counties in Georgia that turned red for Trump. My father would have voted for Trump as they shared many things in common. He was a narcissist, a racist, and a misogynist. I would have expected it from him. What I would have had a harder time understanding as a young girl, is that my mother would have voted for Trump – out of loyalty to my father or because he told her to. She would have voted against her own interests, against my interests and I would have as a result been a child in one of the households that voted against their own interests and their children pay the price. I have a great amount of empathy for these children. I learned a tough lesson over the last couple of years. There is not an endless empathy well and you have to be more selective with who you reserve your empathy for because when you give it out too freely, it is damaging to your own mental health. If Trump is going to let RFK Jr, “go wild” on health in his administration with nothing but an English degree and experience as an environmental lawyer, it is well within my right to be conservative and withhold a little empathy where I see fit in my life.
I am educated and understand that no one factor is responsible for a second Trump presidency. However, this is not informing my decision to withhold my empathy from white women in my life, who look like me but do not empathize the way I do. I am talking about the statistics showing the amount of white women that voted for Trump and did so stating he was the Christian candidate, with their continuous posts about saving the lives of countless unborn children. It’s hard for me to put the lives of unborn children over the lives of actual humans who exist the way in which it is done by so many in this group. You hear so many times that it has to hit home, before some people can care about it enough to take it on. It hit home. Women across the country are dying as a result of not getting healthcare. This could have been your daughter, your sister, your niece, your best friend. You had the opportunity to listen to a woman when she told you that she was ready to take on the challenge. She promised to restore and protect our right to healthcare – for you, your daughters and your granddaughters and for all women that make up the fabrics of your lives, your neighbors, your best friends, your sisters, your nieces – the ones you share you lives, your secrets, you build your memories with. She had a plan and she was ready to sit down with people across party lines to protect and fight for the futures of the American people. While declaring Trump was the Christian candidate, so many in this group, didn’t want to talk about what policies of Vice President Harris they didn’t agree with or her qualifications. Instead of voting for her, an educated public servant with a resume consisting of state attorney general, senator and vice president making her uniquely qualified, instead…they went as far as to degrade her by saying she slept her way to the top and then cast their vote for a man who was found guilty of 34 felonies and sexual assault who is a blatant racist, xenophobe, misogynist who insults, dehumanizes and belittles people on a regular basis that incited an attack on our nation’s capitol and democracy itself while again describing him as the candidate with traditional Christian values. Let me speak to you like Trump, I’m going to say this, whether the white women like it or not – I hope you get everything you voted for and by that I mean…I hope that everything you voted for affects you personally in some way because this is a lesson I believe you can only learn the hard way. When this happens, I hope you take the time to reflect back and remember that you had the opportunity to help protect not only yourselves but other women and marginalized groups, but you didn’t.
I’ll be somewhere, probably still waiting for Taylor Swift to release Reputation Taylor’s Version – listening to one of her other songs like KARMA on repeat. You’re terrified to look down – cause if you dare, you’ll see the glare, of everyone you burned just to get there. It’s coming back around!
MK Clinton wrote “The world would be a nicer place if everyone had the ability to love as unconditionally as a dog.” in the children’s book The Returns.
lilyinaparknlot 