I’ve been on Substack for just two days, and already, I feel like I can breathe again!
It’s like stepping outside after being locked in a room with no ventilation for years. Just air. A fresh, clean, unpolluted breeze that smells like possibility.
No algorithms squeezing my voice into some tiny little box. No MAGA trolls popping up every five minutes to call me an ape, a monkey, the n-word, the b-word, or the c-word, or threatening to r*pe or blow my brains out.
I never thought I would write. I never thought I would lay myself down and open myself up to be seen. I never considered a life lasting disease. Or even a short one.
I wasn’t writing for you. I was writing for me, for healing.
But I gave a copy to my social worker of my poem, “ A Farewell To Breasts” who gave it to a nurse who gave it to a patient and in the small world of my hospital, it went viral.
Now I can’t stop trying to get through this, this, unexpected, unwanted journey. Fear not, we can find joy!
You made it, you own it
You always own your intellectual property, mailing list, and subscriber payments. With full editorial control and no gatekeepers, you can do the work you most believe in.
America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.
An interesting example was carried out by the OSS during WWII. A famous German viral immunologist recalls as a vetenarian he was on the Russian front when the OSS leaked a report that the allies were going to engage in biological warfare attacking German farming with rinderpest. As he was a specialist in that field he was recalled home to help fight this threat. Just days later his former unit was overrun by the Russians. He credited the CIA (OSS) for saving his life.
I was going to make a comment on the horrible effects that all of this psychological warfare has on children. Quickly; when I was a kid my mother always told me to beware of strangers people can be dangerous etc.. my wife was told if you are lost or need something open your mouth say something. To this day I tend to never ask for help by a stranger or even people I know. I like to live incognito. My wife always says why don’t you say something, or ask for help, or directions??? I swear it goes all the way back to childhood???
Well James, all women think that not asking for directions is a "man's" ego problem! For some, even asking for any kind of help can be a hit to self-esteem. Now me, I will take all the help one has to offer even if I did not ask for it. I get it all the time as my skinning little body with grey hair is struggling with a cart full of groceries, lifting cans of gas or diesel into my pick up or loading heavy horse feed into the pickup. Angels, all of them and that includes women who stop to help a…