I lived under a real dictatorship, Argentina 1976-1983. Some people see that one as closer to your experience than "East block" kind of dictatorships. All started with general unrest, real (and imagined) leftist insurrection, death squads (still in democracy) and finally a "normalizing" coup (1976).
This is just to say where my comment comes from. Now to the point, my parents were mostly for the "normalization" after the coup, and me too, in a sense, I was only 14 years old. Things of course started to go bad. We did not have close relationships "disappeared", but the atmosphere was growing gloomier. You know how it ended, it was not civil resistance, rather failed economy and a desperate attempt at railing "nationalism" with the Malvinas war (while the junta did not succeed in the war, for nearly 2 months most of us were very happy to have something to be proud about).
Back to business, the expression mostly used to "explain" or justify disappearances was "por algo sera". I cannot find an english translation that conveys the full vagueness of the sentence, “There must be a reason for it” is not enough, but I presume you may get the full depth of the original. Or what you already read in the media/social: "They must have had it coming".
This may be the tone you will encounter when facing your parents. Think carefully at all the meanings in the original retort, "por algo sera"... This is how a dictatorship works. This is the corrosion level of your mind.
Again, as you cleverly indicated, we were from apolitical middle class, nothing to worry about, as long as we stayed away from.... "Something".
Tragically (but in a relevant way), the pre 1976 death squads were irregulars (with strong backing from the right wing part of the government). After the coup, the "duties" were transferred to the regular forces (acting openly or undercover), that absorbed much of the death squads. After the dictatorship ended, these death squads "disbanded" as such... but not completely. Some (many?) of them, especially the irregular ones, turned into "private businesses", bank robbery, purely economical kidnappings, and probably some extra judicial work too, but mainly "regular" crime. There is an "interesting" case, the Puccio family. Former thugs turned professional kidnappers/murderers. It even made it into a Netflix series (History of a Clan).
Keep an eye on these thugs, they may come back one way or another. Use our tragic story as a warning. History does not repeat itself, but some times it looks like it
Thanks Liz for sharing this. Both my parents supported Trump, but it's my father, who over the years, has become increasingly difficult to talk to - whether it's a conversation about religion, healthcare or the cost of living. It seems no topic is safe from a political lens, not even the weather. I honestly don't know how to have a true discussion, when my father already has a preconceived notion of who I am and dismisses any argument I make based on that bias. Is it even worth trying to convince someone whose mind is firmly made up? Sometimes I think the only people who will convince him are other white, hetero men, the Trump-Bernie types who are actually now feeling the effects of this administration. I hope you can have a productive conversation with your mother where, maybe, if there's not agreement, there's some understanding on both sides.
I feel the same. My father is 96 years old and still mad at FDR for his New Deal. He is a white hetero man who got some raw deals in life, and therefore hates pretty much everyone. There is NO discussing anything political with him, including the weather (you know, this snowstorm we;re in right now is proof that "global warming" is a lie). I have to call him today, for complicated reasons, but we will talk about nothing substantial. I dread it every time.
I had this same conversation in my head all day yesterday—and your courage to write these inside thoughts out for the rest of us to read is nothing to sneeze at. Thanks for all of this. I’m headed to a clergy prayer vigil in Phoenix today…it seems like such a small thing in comparison to Minnesota—no freezing temps, no one being killed in the streets here (yet). Peanuts, it seems. But little things like these add up, I figure. Courage comes in all shapes and sizes: vigils, writing emails, donating dollars and writing columns counts. Keep writing, Liz. Your words are so big right now.
I hear you, Liz. Perhaps we all have close family members we're too scared to call. I do. Yes, I hear you. And still, your writing - both raw and thoughtful - is an important contribution.
Last night, a small group of us gathered to sing songs of peace and solidarity. Then we went outside. Singing our version of "This Little Light of Mine," we directed our flashlights and candles into the sky, standing in the cold with the people of Minneapolis who too are standing in the cold and against the unrelenting cold-hearted violence around them. This afternoon, we will join in sacred circle dance. It all seems so small. Yet it gives me a sense that I am not alone. It gives me the fortitude to keep calling my uncaring representative and senators day after day when it feels like such a waste of time - and say yes to the rest of the "to do" list you included.
My long-winded point: Courage is fueled by supportive community. We need each other all the time - and especially in these times. Thank you for your bold and important post. I hear you.
Your gathering last night sounds loving, and just the sort of community I am carving right now (and I am finding some version of if here). And thank you for this: "I hear you"
The journey of a thousand steps has to start somewhere. Throughout the day yesterday, I was barraged with memes from my formerly MAGA family member who finally gets it. It's been a long 9 years, but sometimes we can get there. It takes openheartedness and perseverance and an endless reserve of patience.
I see you. And I see you seeing me; seeing us. Thank you for saying this.
It feels almost unlivable sometimes, trying to metabolize the rage, the helplessness, the deep hopelessness, and still perform the stupid choreography of normal days. I cried for a long time too. The kind of crying that just empties you out. Then I wiped my face, sat down, and played games with my 10 year-old daughter.
She knew. She could tell before I said a word. She’d already absorbed enough, from school, from the careful whispers I use with her older siblings, from the air itself. She told me she thought I was sad because of the government, because the president is working to split people apart. I tried to school my face into something neutral, something safe, but it was too late. Kids always know. So we talked, at her level, with the softest language I could find that didn’t lie. And she cried. And then I cried harder, because what the hell does it mean when children are grieving the state of the world?
Today we’re making soup. We’re doing that very human thing where you chop vegetables and pretend nourishment might also be an answer. We’re trying to be okay. I’m trying to stay present with her instead of dissociating straight into oblivion, which would be easier, honestly.
I can’t talk to my parents about any of this either. My mom calls herself progressive, but treats me like a lunatic when I say I’m afraid of civil war. She’s the kind of progressive who is ride-or-die Democrat, who still half-believes Bernie Sanders will save us all, like that faith hasn’t already failed us. There’s no room there for terror. Or for grief. Or for naming how bad this actually feels.
I don’t know where we go from here. I really don’t. But I know we don’t get anywhere by keeping quiet. We have to keep talking. Keep building solidarity. Keep lighting stubborn fires of hope in each other simply by saying, yes, I feel it too. By refusing to pretend this is normal or acceptable or survivable without each other.
So thank you, for writing this, for posting it, for cracking the silence. I hope you can find a breath today. And I’m sending love and strength to you and your family, from this same shaking ground.
thank you for writing all this...it makes me feel like I'm not in this crazy space of trying to--as you put it--"metabolize" all the suffering and uncertainty and fear alone....and not being alone is something....
What if, instead of trying to convince someone of your reality, you approached it with these questions:
1) are there only two different realities (a binary) or is there a possible third reality outside if this binary?
2) what is it like to be you? Truly curious about what it’s like to be in someone’s shoes. Empathy the likes of Thich nhat hanh’s poem about the pirate.
I also wonder why we need everyone to think as we do, believe what we do? If we want true democracy, doesn’t that imply that we can live together accepting that others believe differently?
And perhaps courage is needed in this conversation not because of how the other might react but how you might be called to change a little too. The courage to face one’s own unwillingness to be moved and convinced that one’s own point of view is not the superior one, that another might have some good things to consider also.
I read your Substack because it makes me uncomfortable, I aim to be apolitical (I don’t live in the US), and to see where I might be dogmatic about my beliefs. I don’t always agree with your assertions. But I am aim to see both sides to remember compassion. To remember we are all human. To practice empathy instead of cynicism.
Ultimately what exactly are you afraid will happen when you call your mother? What is the worst thing that could happen? I did not talk with my mother for a few years before she died. I have to live with that. Would it have killed me to call her? Probably not, but I did think so at the time.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment, and for continuing to read even when you don't agree with me. That really is the whole point of what I'm trying to do here, and I'm grateful you're part of this conversation.
You raise important questions about third ways and binaries, and in general, I'm very much with you. I've spent my career looking for the complexity beyond binaries. But I think we're living through a particular moment in US history right now where our institutions have crumbled, our government isn't trustworthy, and honestly—I wish there were a middle way, but I don't think our political leaders have created one for us. I'd be delighted to find one.
When I say I need my mother to see my reality, I think I mean something more specific than agreement. I need her to hear that I'm scared and angry. She's my mother, and I want her to be able to hold those emotions with me. I want to share with her why I'm scared, why I don't want my daughter/her granddaughter to go to college in the US, why I'm grieving for my country and for communities I'm not even part of. That involves her not dismissing me or thinking I'm just overreacting. It's less about convincing her of my political views and more about being heard as her daughter.
What I'm ultimately afraid will happen in the conversation with my mom is that she won't understand why I'm politically active, why for me that's not a choice I can make—to be inactive. And I think that would be a real barrier between us.
Thank you for your story about your own mother, and for the reminder of what regret can feel like. I'm holding that.
It’s hard to be misunderstood by a parent, one that it seems you’re otherwise close with (my mother was an abusive narcissistic type and so I never was close to her to begin with). Although I am but really afraid to share my thoughts and opinions with my mother in law, it is challenging in ways that I’d just rather not, and there have been times when she’s been particularly bypassing when all I needed was someone to say “I can see that you are having a hard time” or other empathetic statements.
I think we (myself included) often mistake empathy for agreement or enabling. And when I drop into true compassion, I find that I can still empathize even when I don’t agree. It is a muscle though. I have a friend who obsessively keeps up the news and is very distressed about the going’s on. (We don’t live in the US). I don’t read the news because it is so distressing to me and so it’s an act of radical self-care and I sometimes am not all that empathetic to her, because a part of me is like “why do that to yourself?!” But there have been times when she had feelings and I just held her, let her cry, without need for discussion about what and why.
I wonder if you just told your mom your feelings without the r what’s and why’s if she would be able to hold that? “Mom, I’m feeling sad today, will you give me a hug?” I think I might try this with my mother in law.
It does not matter if your parents agree or not. Perhaps you waste energy trying convince them. What matters is that you organize and devote resources to whatever resistance looks like for you. Recognize the rupture as real. Grieve the American that has been irretrievably lost, and devote whatever you can to next. From your friends, but no longer allies, to the north. 🇨🇦
Meg, thank you for this—and for the solidarity from the north.
I hear you, and I understand the impulse to let go of the convincing and focus the energy on organizing. But I actually think it does matter if my parents agree with me. Not because I need their validation, but because these hard conversations with our closest family members are where the work starts.
A lot of people complain about politics on either side of the aisle and throw their hands up like we can't do anything about it. But I think having these difficult conversations with the people we love IS part of organizing, IS part of resistance. My values come from my mother. We agree on way more than we disagree on. And if I can't have hard conversations with her, what hope is there that the ruptures in our country can be healed?
I'm not trying to convince her to think exactly as I do. But I need her to hear that I'm scared and angry. And I don't think that's wasting energy—that's the most important conversation I could be having right now.
I am grieving the America that's been lost. And part of that grief is about whether I can still talk to my mother about what matters most.
I hear you. I’ve had this conversation so many times with my mother who lives in rural Minnesota (who has also voted for him the last three times but looks me straight in the face and says “I didn’t vote for him, I voted for the party”) I predicted this exact scenario and she laughed in my face more than once. Now that it’s all coming to fruition I’m waiting for my phone to ring, I’m waiting for that apology and guess what? It’s been three weeks. Part of me still wishes …. but truly I know it’s never coming.
Thank you for sharing this. I can feel the hurt in your words, and I’m so sorry you’re carrying this. The combination of being dismissed, proven right, and then met with silence is its own particular kind of painful.
I completely understand the impulse to want that call, that apology, that moment of “you were right and I was wrong.” I get stuck there too—in being right, in wanting vindication, in feeling like maybe if they just acknowledged it, something could shift.
But here’s what I keep learning (often the hard way): being right and being effective are two different things. Waiting for someone to admit we were correct keeps us stuck.
I’m not saying you should call and pretend everything is fine. And none of this is fair to you. You shouldn’t have to be the bigger person. Sometimes the apology we’re waiting for simply isn’t coming—not because we don’t deserve it, but because the other person isn’t capable of giving it.
You wrote the other day, Liz, about faith as trust. That comes up here for me. We put our trust in particular news/information sources, and our relative level of faith in their processes and paradigms subsequently defines, or at least colors our view.
Extrapolating a bit from your wonderful piece: What does it say when we can no longer trust the people in our relational networks to have faith that we are equally good-willed and logically minded? Is this not a big part of the rupture, the breaking of our society that is so personally hurtful? When I think of families with Right and Left divides that I minister to, it seems that the tolerance for a willingness to trust the fabric of the relational web itself is thinning, or in many cases already snapped. And this destroys faith in families as emotional safety nets. Seems like the degrading of the value of family as a “basic unit of society” is more acceptable than the survival of families as social foundations if ideology is a prerequisite for maintaining a thriving one. But, I dunno. I just live here and try.
Thanks for this & best of hope for your phone call.
This is such an important extension of that trust piece, and you've named something I've been feeling but hadn't fully articulated: the grief isn't just about losing trust in institutions or information sources. It's about losing the presumption of good faith in the people closest to us. That's a fundamentally different kind of loss.
What strikes me about your ministry work with these divided families is that you're witnessing firsthand how ideology has become a litmus test for relational belonging. When we can no longer hold the tension of "this person I love sees the world completely differently, AND I can still trust their fundamental goodwill"—that's when the fabric snaps, as you put it so perfectly.
I think what makes this particularly painful is that it reverses something we thought we understood about family as a given, as unconditional. The idea that shared blood or history could be overridden by political difference feels like a category error...like we're being asked to choose between loves that shouldn't be in competition. And yet here we are.
Your observation about the "degrading of the value of family" being more acceptable than ideological flexibility is so sharp. It suggests we've elevated political certainty above relational covenant. That's worth grieving, because it represents a profound reordering of what we consider sacred.
Thank you for doing this work, and for this reflection. It's helping me think more carefully about what we've lost.
Has Mom responded? Hi, Liz’s mom. My mom voted for him the first time. Then we stopped talking fully, we started armoring up and rolling our eyes at one another — increasing the distance that geography already created. Early on in the pandemic, when she was alone and all our holidays were virtual, she realized none of his promises were real, that he was another big talker, small-hearted man who took advantage of her trust. I never EVER said I told you so — why start our way back to one another with that energy. She’s heartbroken about all this now, but I don’t tell her all my plans. Like, I’ll be outside with whistles and cameras when it comes to my suburb. I told her I have masks in my car so they can’t facial ID me and have started carrying goggles. She said “that’s smart.” I know you love your daughter. When she cries, your entire body reacts. Well, she’s crying now . She’s opening this wound, not to shame you, but to make her way back to you. Please please meet her there — in the truth.
The hardest courage isn’t marching. It’s the quiet, shaking kind that happens before a phone call you’re not sure will end with love. Fear doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you understand the stakes.
Thanks Courtney for naming your own courage faulltine and inviting us to find our own. In these times, with so much info pouring down on us, I feel as if I'm standing under Niagara Falls with a tin cup, or a goose being forcefed for fois gras. I grew up in Minneapolis and am sickened that it's become ground zero for our own fascist takeover. The unsurprisingly, the demons who fueled the actions on Jan 6 are joining the ranks of ICE.
I lived under a real dictatorship, Argentina 1976-1983. Some people see that one as closer to your experience than "East block" kind of dictatorships. All started with general unrest, real (and imagined) leftist insurrection, death squads (still in democracy) and finally a "normalizing" coup (1976).
This is just to say where my comment comes from. Now to the point, my parents were mostly for the "normalization" after the coup, and me too, in a sense, I was only 14 years old. Things of course started to go bad. We did not have close relationships "disappeared", but the atmosphere was growing gloomier. You know how it ended, it was not civil resistance, rather failed economy and a desperate attempt at railing "nationalism" with the Malvinas war (while the junta did not succeed in the war, for nearly 2 months most of us were very happy to have something to be proud about).
Back to business, the expression mostly used to "explain" or justify disappearances was "por algo sera". I cannot find an english translation that conveys the full vagueness of the sentence, “There must be a reason for it” is not enough, but I presume you may get the full depth of the original. Or what you already read in the media/social: "They must have had it coming".
This may be the tone you will encounter when facing your parents. Think carefully at all the meanings in the original retort, "por algo sera"... This is how a dictatorship works. This is the corrosion level of your mind.
Again, as you cleverly indicated, we were from apolitical middle class, nothing to worry about, as long as we stayed away from.... "Something".
Thanks for your posts
Andrea, thank you for sharing your experience here. It doesn't provide much comfort but some important context, especially for tough conversations
Death squads, that is what ICE has become…
Tragically (but in a relevant way), the pre 1976 death squads were irregulars (with strong backing from the right wing part of the government). After the coup, the "duties" were transferred to the regular forces (acting openly or undercover), that absorbed much of the death squads. After the dictatorship ended, these death squads "disbanded" as such... but not completely. Some (many?) of them, especially the irregular ones, turned into "private businesses", bank robbery, purely economical kidnappings, and probably some extra judicial work too, but mainly "regular" crime. There is an "interesting" case, the Puccio family. Former thugs turned professional kidnappers/murderers. It even made it into a Netflix series (History of a Clan).
Keep an eye on these thugs, they may come back one way or another. Use our tragic story as a warning. History does not repeat itself, but some times it looks like it
They already have, they were the pride boys, and so on, KKK, etc.
Thanks Liz for sharing this. Both my parents supported Trump, but it's my father, who over the years, has become increasingly difficult to talk to - whether it's a conversation about religion, healthcare or the cost of living. It seems no topic is safe from a political lens, not even the weather. I honestly don't know how to have a true discussion, when my father already has a preconceived notion of who I am and dismisses any argument I make based on that bias. Is it even worth trying to convince someone whose mind is firmly made up? Sometimes I think the only people who will convince him are other white, hetero men, the Trump-Bernie types who are actually now feeling the effects of this administration. I hope you can have a productive conversation with your mother where, maybe, if there's not agreement, there's some understanding on both sides.
I feel the same. My father is 96 years old and still mad at FDR for his New Deal. He is a white hetero man who got some raw deals in life, and therefore hates pretty much everyone. There is NO discussing anything political with him, including the weather (you know, this snowstorm we;re in right now is proof that "global warming" is a lie). I have to call him today, for complicated reasons, but we will talk about nothing substantial. I dread it every time.
I had this same conversation in my head all day yesterday—and your courage to write these inside thoughts out for the rest of us to read is nothing to sneeze at. Thanks for all of this. I’m headed to a clergy prayer vigil in Phoenix today…it seems like such a small thing in comparison to Minnesota—no freezing temps, no one being killed in the streets here (yet). Peanuts, it seems. But little things like these add up, I figure. Courage comes in all shapes and sizes: vigils, writing emails, donating dollars and writing columns counts. Keep writing, Liz. Your words are so big right now.
❤️.
yes, these small things do add up. thank you for what you are doing (and for acknowledging what I am trying to do in my own small way)
I hear you, Liz. Perhaps we all have close family members we're too scared to call. I do. Yes, I hear you. And still, your writing - both raw and thoughtful - is an important contribution.
Last night, a small group of us gathered to sing songs of peace and solidarity. Then we went outside. Singing our version of "This Little Light of Mine," we directed our flashlights and candles into the sky, standing in the cold with the people of Minneapolis who too are standing in the cold and against the unrelenting cold-hearted violence around them. This afternoon, we will join in sacred circle dance. It all seems so small. Yet it gives me a sense that I am not alone. It gives me the fortitude to keep calling my uncaring representative and senators day after day when it feels like such a waste of time - and say yes to the rest of the "to do" list you included.
My long-winded point: Courage is fueled by supportive community. We need each other all the time - and especially in these times. Thank you for your bold and important post. I hear you.
Your gathering last night sounds loving, and just the sort of community I am carving right now (and I am finding some version of if here). And thank you for this: "I hear you"
The journey of a thousand steps has to start somewhere. Throughout the day yesterday, I was barraged with memes from my formerly MAGA family member who finally gets it. It's been a long 9 years, but sometimes we can get there. It takes openheartedness and perseverance and an endless reserve of patience.
I see you. And I see you seeing me; seeing us. Thank you for saying this.
It feels almost unlivable sometimes, trying to metabolize the rage, the helplessness, the deep hopelessness, and still perform the stupid choreography of normal days. I cried for a long time too. The kind of crying that just empties you out. Then I wiped my face, sat down, and played games with my 10 year-old daughter.
She knew. She could tell before I said a word. She’d already absorbed enough, from school, from the careful whispers I use with her older siblings, from the air itself. She told me she thought I was sad because of the government, because the president is working to split people apart. I tried to school my face into something neutral, something safe, but it was too late. Kids always know. So we talked, at her level, with the softest language I could find that didn’t lie. And she cried. And then I cried harder, because what the hell does it mean when children are grieving the state of the world?
Today we’re making soup. We’re doing that very human thing where you chop vegetables and pretend nourishment might also be an answer. We’re trying to be okay. I’m trying to stay present with her instead of dissociating straight into oblivion, which would be easier, honestly.
I can’t talk to my parents about any of this either. My mom calls herself progressive, but treats me like a lunatic when I say I’m afraid of civil war. She’s the kind of progressive who is ride-or-die Democrat, who still half-believes Bernie Sanders will save us all, like that faith hasn’t already failed us. There’s no room there for terror. Or for grief. Or for naming how bad this actually feels.
I don’t know where we go from here. I really don’t. But I know we don’t get anywhere by keeping quiet. We have to keep talking. Keep building solidarity. Keep lighting stubborn fires of hope in each other simply by saying, yes, I feel it too. By refusing to pretend this is normal or acceptable or survivable without each other.
So thank you, for writing this, for posting it, for cracking the silence. I hope you can find a breath today. And I’m sending love and strength to you and your family, from this same shaking ground.
thank you for writing all this...it makes me feel like I'm not in this crazy space of trying to--as you put it--"metabolize" all the suffering and uncertainty and fear alone....and not being alone is something....
Not feeling alone is a big something. And we’re not.
This was so helpful to read today. Thank you, thank you. I, too, am fully avoiding calling my father. :-)
What if, instead of trying to convince someone of your reality, you approached it with these questions:
1) are there only two different realities (a binary) or is there a possible third reality outside if this binary?
2) what is it like to be you? Truly curious about what it’s like to be in someone’s shoes. Empathy the likes of Thich nhat hanh’s poem about the pirate.
I also wonder why we need everyone to think as we do, believe what we do? If we want true democracy, doesn’t that imply that we can live together accepting that others believe differently?
And perhaps courage is needed in this conversation not because of how the other might react but how you might be called to change a little too. The courage to face one’s own unwillingness to be moved and convinced that one’s own point of view is not the superior one, that another might have some good things to consider also.
I read your Substack because it makes me uncomfortable, I aim to be apolitical (I don’t live in the US), and to see where I might be dogmatic about my beliefs. I don’t always agree with your assertions. But I am aim to see both sides to remember compassion. To remember we are all human. To practice empathy instead of cynicism.
Ultimately what exactly are you afraid will happen when you call your mother? What is the worst thing that could happen? I did not talk with my mother for a few years before she died. I have to live with that. Would it have killed me to call her? Probably not, but I did think so at the time.
You might be surprised.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment, and for continuing to read even when you don't agree with me. That really is the whole point of what I'm trying to do here, and I'm grateful you're part of this conversation.
You raise important questions about third ways and binaries, and in general, I'm very much with you. I've spent my career looking for the complexity beyond binaries. But I think we're living through a particular moment in US history right now where our institutions have crumbled, our government isn't trustworthy, and honestly—I wish there were a middle way, but I don't think our political leaders have created one for us. I'd be delighted to find one.
When I say I need my mother to see my reality, I think I mean something more specific than agreement. I need her to hear that I'm scared and angry. She's my mother, and I want her to be able to hold those emotions with me. I want to share with her why I'm scared, why I don't want my daughter/her granddaughter to go to college in the US, why I'm grieving for my country and for communities I'm not even part of. That involves her not dismissing me or thinking I'm just overreacting. It's less about convincing her of my political views and more about being heard as her daughter.
What I'm ultimately afraid will happen in the conversation with my mom is that she won't understand why I'm politically active, why for me that's not a choice I can make—to be inactive. And I think that would be a real barrier between us.
Thank you for your story about your own mother, and for the reminder of what regret can feel like. I'm holding that.
It’s hard to be misunderstood by a parent, one that it seems you’re otherwise close with (my mother was an abusive narcissistic type and so I never was close to her to begin with). Although I am but really afraid to share my thoughts and opinions with my mother in law, it is challenging in ways that I’d just rather not, and there have been times when she’s been particularly bypassing when all I needed was someone to say “I can see that you are having a hard time” or other empathetic statements.
I think we (myself included) often mistake empathy for agreement or enabling. And when I drop into true compassion, I find that I can still empathize even when I don’t agree. It is a muscle though. I have a friend who obsessively keeps up the news and is very distressed about the going’s on. (We don’t live in the US). I don’t read the news because it is so distressing to me and so it’s an act of radical self-care and I sometimes am not all that empathetic to her, because a part of me is like “why do that to yourself?!” But there have been times when she had feelings and I just held her, let her cry, without need for discussion about what and why.
I wonder if you just told your mom your feelings without the r what’s and why’s if she would be able to hold that? “Mom, I’m feeling sad today, will you give me a hug?” I think I might try this with my mother in law.
It does not matter if your parents agree or not. Perhaps you waste energy trying convince them. What matters is that you organize and devote resources to whatever resistance looks like for you. Recognize the rupture as real. Grieve the American that has been irretrievably lost, and devote whatever you can to next. From your friends, but no longer allies, to the north. 🇨🇦
Meg, thank you for this—and for the solidarity from the north.
I hear you, and I understand the impulse to let go of the convincing and focus the energy on organizing. But I actually think it does matter if my parents agree with me. Not because I need their validation, but because these hard conversations with our closest family members are where the work starts.
A lot of people complain about politics on either side of the aisle and throw their hands up like we can't do anything about it. But I think having these difficult conversations with the people we love IS part of organizing, IS part of resistance. My values come from my mother. We agree on way more than we disagree on. And if I can't have hard conversations with her, what hope is there that the ruptures in our country can be healed?
I'm not trying to convince her to think exactly as I do. But I need her to hear that I'm scared and angry. And I don't think that's wasting energy—that's the most important conversation I could be having right now.
I am grieving the America that's been lost. And part of that grief is about whether I can still talk to my mother about what matters most.
I understand that this is sooo hard. As a mother and a daughter. Maybe it’s both-and?
Love this authentic piece, Liz. I so appreciate your radical honesty here and your encouragement to look at what we can each do.
I started a charity donation today. It feels like a small act, but we can each do something to make this world a more livable place.
I think everything matters now....small acts of resistance and remembering to find some joy
I hear you. I’ve had this conversation so many times with my mother who lives in rural Minnesota (who has also voted for him the last three times but looks me straight in the face and says “I didn’t vote for him, I voted for the party”) I predicted this exact scenario and she laughed in my face more than once. Now that it’s all coming to fruition I’m waiting for my phone to ring, I’m waiting for that apology and guess what? It’s been three weeks. Part of me still wishes …. but truly I know it’s never coming.
Thank you for sharing this. I can feel the hurt in your words, and I’m so sorry you’re carrying this. The combination of being dismissed, proven right, and then met with silence is its own particular kind of painful.
I completely understand the impulse to want that call, that apology, that moment of “you were right and I was wrong.” I get stuck there too—in being right, in wanting vindication, in feeling like maybe if they just acknowledged it, something could shift.
But here’s what I keep learning (often the hard way): being right and being effective are two different things. Waiting for someone to admit we were correct keeps us stuck.
I’m not saying you should call and pretend everything is fine. And none of this is fair to you. You shouldn’t have to be the bigger person. Sometimes the apology we’re waiting for simply isn’t coming—not because we don’t deserve it, but because the other person isn’t capable of giving it.
I texted my mom today so this really hits home. Thank you for writing it.
Hope it went well. My conversation with my mom did. It was hard, I’m exhausted by it, but it went well.
You wrote the other day, Liz, about faith as trust. That comes up here for me. We put our trust in particular news/information sources, and our relative level of faith in their processes and paradigms subsequently defines, or at least colors our view.
Extrapolating a bit from your wonderful piece: What does it say when we can no longer trust the people in our relational networks to have faith that we are equally good-willed and logically minded? Is this not a big part of the rupture, the breaking of our society that is so personally hurtful? When I think of families with Right and Left divides that I minister to, it seems that the tolerance for a willingness to trust the fabric of the relational web itself is thinning, or in many cases already snapped. And this destroys faith in families as emotional safety nets. Seems like the degrading of the value of family as a “basic unit of society” is more acceptable than the survival of families as social foundations if ideology is a prerequisite for maintaining a thriving one. But, I dunno. I just live here and try.
Thanks for this & best of hope for your phone call.
This is such an important extension of that trust piece, and you've named something I've been feeling but hadn't fully articulated: the grief isn't just about losing trust in institutions or information sources. It's about losing the presumption of good faith in the people closest to us. That's a fundamentally different kind of loss.
What strikes me about your ministry work with these divided families is that you're witnessing firsthand how ideology has become a litmus test for relational belonging. When we can no longer hold the tension of "this person I love sees the world completely differently, AND I can still trust their fundamental goodwill"—that's when the fabric snaps, as you put it so perfectly.
I think what makes this particularly painful is that it reverses something we thought we understood about family as a given, as unconditional. The idea that shared blood or history could be overridden by political difference feels like a category error...like we're being asked to choose between loves that shouldn't be in competition. And yet here we are.
Your observation about the "degrading of the value of family" being more acceptable than ideological flexibility is so sharp. It suggests we've elevated political certainty above relational covenant. That's worth grieving, because it represents a profound reordering of what we consider sacred.
Thank you for doing this work, and for this reflection. It's helping me think more carefully about what we've lost.
Has Mom responded? Hi, Liz’s mom. My mom voted for him the first time. Then we stopped talking fully, we started armoring up and rolling our eyes at one another — increasing the distance that geography already created. Early on in the pandemic, when she was alone and all our holidays were virtual, she realized none of his promises were real, that he was another big talker, small-hearted man who took advantage of her trust. I never EVER said I told you so — why start our way back to one another with that energy. She’s heartbroken about all this now, but I don’t tell her all my plans. Like, I’ll be outside with whistles and cameras when it comes to my suburb. I told her I have masks in my car so they can’t facial ID me and have started carrying goggles. She said “that’s smart.” I know you love your daughter. When she cries, your entire body reacts. Well, she’s crying now . She’s opening this wound, not to shame you, but to make her way back to you. Please please meet her there — in the truth.
my mom called my a couple hours after I posted...I sort of thought she might. We had a difficult but good conversation.
The hardest courage isn’t marching. It’s the quiet, shaking kind that happens before a phone call you’re not sure will end with love. Fear doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you understand the stakes.
this is a lovely way to put it, thank you.
Thanks Courtney for naming your own courage faulltine and inviting us to find our own. In these times, with so much info pouring down on us, I feel as if I'm standing under Niagara Falls with a tin cup, or a goose being forcefed for fois gras. I grew up in Minneapolis and am sickened that it's become ground zero for our own fascist takeover. The unsurprisingly, the demons who fueled the actions on Jan 6 are joining the ranks of ICE.
https://philarchive.org/archive/TAYPIB according to this report
submitted to the PhilArchives.org, (not Phila) which is housed by the
Centre for Digital Philosophy - Western University. London, ON, CANADA. No author attribution but info is carefully sourced.