among a fraction of my leftiest friends, there appears to be an internalized norm that you cannot celebrate life if you don’t first acknowledge political reality. i’ve seen birth announcements that begin with the state of American politics, family photos captioned with “the world sucks but here’s this,” instagram carousels that begin with “this year has been hard,” so that I need to read on to figure out whether it’s cancer or trump

maybe it’s an expression of grief — fine. but my sense is that the most progressive environments demand an outward expression of despair before personal celebration, either as some sort of act of solidarity or otherwise guilt. this started in the workplace before moving into our personal lives

I wish I could find ways to explain how quietly corrosive that is, both socially, but more so personally. it makes me sad not for the world but for them! but my experience — having been in those environments for years — is that you have to find your own way out