I've been remembering and writing about my youth and the sadness of of being surrounded by mean and angry strangers - my family members. That was the norm with portages to love (from a distance) if only for a moment.

I was raised to think like an elite - but I hated it. I loved working with my hands. I was belittled, battered by logic - the might makes right thing and sent out into the world living in the safety of my mind with a closed heart - angry and rageful searching for truth.

I found truth almost 30 years ago. It broke my heart (opened me to compassion) and my heart remains broken and on the mend. Maybe the election of Trump was in-part a blossoming of the undercurrent of anger, meanness, fear of the other and it has infected everyone, liberals, conservatives etc. I indulged and saw an earlier version of myself. I didn't like it. And in social media I started the change - and yes there are remnants of my old self that still remain.

As a healer (with the help of a close friend and colleague) I began to release grief from the cellular tissues of my physical body. While others look for division and separateness I look for (and find) connection and am beginning to see the illusion of separateness.

I look for reconcilers. When I look through filters of those that bring opposite factions together to create a common bond of compromise there are the bonds of connection and the array of complimentary emotions underneath that support a context for the work in the trenches of compromise.

I have faith that we will find our way out of this mess or literally die trying (yes - I'm writing about the Climate Crisis). What positive things could be said about human beings if we did not begin the work of the reconcilers?