Courage, Conversations and Cuddles

Growing a spine using sanity, evidence and common sense

Halloween does not end anymore.

Oh look, another blue haired zombie. Where is her Pride flag? Her #ceasefire sign? Her BLM button?

Miss Miller’s iPad, above. Every day I remove it from the dining room table and plop it in a basket where I can’t see the propaganda that makes me so mad I could spit. We still have yet to reach the point where I can explain to her exactly what “protect trans youth” means. Living with a hopefully desisting teenager is a long game, a chess match.

With the Israel situation though, there might be an opening. She remains firmly opposed to Hamas and has even reported that the high school newspaper may print an interview with a student who minimizes the Holocaust. When she told me this, I explained, “That makes it far easier to blame the Jews. Makes it way more convienient for the Jews not to hold any victim status.” She readily agreed.

She also let me hug her yesterday. It was sublime. It took all my energy not to fist pump the air afterwards. Act cool, I told myself. And I did.

Below, pictorial receipts from a cuddly little tête-à-tête on the gram the other day. A gal I don’t know liked a post of mine so I ambled over to her account to take a look at her story which pleaded in a not-performative-at-all way for a #ceasefire, guys! I mean stop it, mean old Israel! Palestine is so poor and oppressed! Stop bombing their babies!

I responded with, “You know a ceasefire would annihilate Israel. Is that what you want?” She responded, I responded, she blocked me, I took screenshots and made a collage.

I feel a certain fuzzy satisfaction in having been called “crazy” and an “awful person” by a ‘kindness is everything’ Hamasnik, as my boy Ben Shapiro calls them.

This exchange primed me for the next one, and right in my very own Substack. If you get a chance to mosey over, feel free to join the party, which ended a couple days ago, sadly. This comment, from a fella (or fellista) named Hotgambler (cool!), ever so politely objected to my take and didn’t malign my character at all.

My takeaway? I’m less afraid to speak my mind now, versus how I used to be back when I was a Democrat with TDS, because now I am sane, and there is so much evidence that supports my sanity. It is so clearly insane to take a pro-trans (specifically affirming kids both socially and medically) or a pro-Palestine position that I can remain calm in the midst of an argument. That feels like a win.

Interestingly, I did find myself with a pounding heart filled with stress upon receiving a negative comment just now in the comments section of The Free Press’s latest post about a WW2 veteran. I was explaining as I sometimes do that I was ADAB—assigned Democrat at birth, and that regrettably I aided and abetted my kids to believe that conservatives were racist moronic nerds, and that even though I’ve seen the light, the strain it’s caused in my family sucks royally.

This is what one lady responded:

As one of those you dismissed in your previous incantation as a moronic racist conservative be advised that I am unconvinced of your awakening and also unforgiving.

Ouch. That stung. But who likes being called a nerd? So I get where she may be coming from. Still, it is the only time anyone in my new community has ever responded to my awakening this way. Ninety-nine per cent of the time people are hopeful to hear of transformations like mine and incredibly welcoming and kind. But not everyone can—or should—feel the same way, and even though it pissed me off to be treated with spiteful skepticism, I know my heart. Her job is her heart, and maybe one day it will change. (Also I think she meant incarnation.)

But things are not all bad. Just the other day I was walking through the “gayborhood” in Philly and passed by numerous un-harmed hostage posters.

They weren’t even smeared with baby oil. And that is not a dig at assplay. I mean that sincerely. That, and—I miss classic, regular rainbows. These new rainbows are just—an insult to eyeballs everywhere.

Finally, since it’s the weekend, here is a picture of adorable animals hugging. Because like I say in my tagline, hugs are important.

Miss Miller and me the other day.

🤗