When I was 5 our mother dropped myself & 2 brothers at our grandparents and walked away. My family and close friends know what I have told them about the life we had there and they know my grandfather molested me from almost day one, this is the first time they will know the rest of the story. He molested me until I was eleven at which time he raped me to”bring me to my womanhood.” That rape resulted in a pregnancy and by all that is holy I am grateful my grandmother noticed the change in me and I finally broke down and told her what I was threatened to “never tell” anyone. She realized I was pregnant and took me on a Greyhound bus to a woman she knew or someone had told her about. That woman helped me up on her kitchen table gave me I am assuming whiskey and made me drink a lot. To this day I hear myself screaming in pain and can barely tolerate the smell of whiskey, you would think my years of bartending would have bothered me but I think I had pushed the memories so deep it didn’t. I stayed with Greta for 3-4 days could have been longer I don’t really know.
The Me Too movement helped me tell publicly about the molestation and now these attacks on women and the bans forcing children carry an incest or rapist spawn.
I am angry I am full of anxiety, I don’t know what just know I am it.

I haven’t told you this wanting pity I just want you to know that these bans and the stories they invoke hurt not just the young women today but those of us that have lived through these times before and so we fight for those that these bans may affect. Thank you for reading.

I truly do not understand the hate toward those that practice the Muslim religion. Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims consider the Quran in its original Arabic to be the unaltered and final revelation of God.
Evangelicals believe in the necessity of being “born again”, this has been a constant theme of evangelicalism since its beginnings. To evangelicals, the central message of the gospel is justification by faith in Christ and repentance, or turning away, from sin.
For Catholics, the core Christian belief is that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinful humans can be reconciled to God and thereby are offered salvation and the promise of eternal life. Roman Catholics believe in the resurrection of Jesus.
Jewish: The main teachings of Judaism about God are that there is a God and there is only one God. Only God created the universe and only He controls it. Judaism also teaches that God is spiritual and not physical. Jews believe that God is one – a unity: He is one whole, complete being.
**Each one of these religions has murdered and been murdered for their beliefs yet the majority of each faith says to love one another treat your fellow brothers and sisters as you wish to be treated, judge not, yet Muslims are used as a weapon today and as a derogatory slur. My heart and my mind have a hard time wrapping around the ugliness of it all.
Thanks for attending my TED talk.

I walk along the windy streets
fallen leaves sweep across my boots
the suns warmth is getting weaker
I wrap my sweater a bit tighter round me
The transition of the season reflected
in the early dying light and fading flowers
Lost in the sounds of what I hear, wind blowing
pieces of oak leaf crunching beneath each step
destination unknown lost in my thoughts
as I walk along these windy streets
Thoughts of you how you love this time of change
pumpkins orangey hue, shafts of wheat colored stalks
the scent of rich red apples.
I miss you most this time of year when I can’t stop
thinking of my love for you as I walk these windy streets.

As a straight white woman of privilege. I  declare that until the Russian Agent is removed from OUR White House by any means: I am a Muslim, I am Black, I am Brown, I am LGBTQ, I am poor, I am an Immigrant,  I am a Refugee, I am an American

Lawrence Ferlinghetti decades ago wrote and it gives me chills to read it today:
“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti