Tuesday, November 8, 2016

What We All Want

Early voting with my Lovebirds on October 26!
I returned from Blogalicious this past Saturday night in Atlanta, and two weeks before that I returned from W.E.L.L. Summit in New York City. These were repeat conferences for me, the former touching on blogging, and the latter touching on wellness (recaps forthcoming...). Driving home from W.E.L.L. Summit I suddenly got very emotional and started crying thinking of all the wonderful women I met and how, in the midst of so much hatred this election season (THANK GOD it's almost over), we all really want the same thing:

To live our best lives. 

I've been an early adopter to social media (anyone else remember when it was called "The Facebook???") and this blog has always been my "living room" of sorts. I welcome people into it, and they're not obligated to stay. I post my opinions here and on my personal Facebook page and while I see others proudly proclaim how they keep politics and religion off social media, that life is not for me. 

Social media is not the end all, be all, but it's emerged relatively recently in the grand timeline of human history, and wow, has it made an impact! You cannot deny that. I couple what some perceive as "keyboard courage" with my commitment to offline activism, hence the quietness of the blog this year, among other reasons.

I am a proud graduate of Wellesley College who had initial trepidation over voting for Hillary Clinton. I do not align with a political party, but I judge any political office I'm voting for based on how you'd select someone for any job opening: the candidate's qualifications. 

I'm disappointed about certain things with both candidates, but I absolutely cannot stand for hate and bigotry. And the notion that I see running rampant that it's "undemocratic" or "censoring" to unfriend or block someone because of this, boggles my mind. I cleaned up my social media feed of hate and bigotry a few times during this election season, and I'm better for it. As I shared on my personal Facebook account today (if reading on your phone, please click the image to enlarge):




I have no shame standing up what I believe, and I do not keep it to myself. If you do, good - that's your choice. Clearly those full of hate and bigotry haven't had shame doing so either so much so that we now have a candidate whose platform is solely based on that. 

I am thankful for this election season to be over and regardless of who is elected, our real work begins tomorrow:



I spent most of Election Day off social media at Nia's field trip to Plimoth Plantation and will be heading to my alma mater tonight and will watch the returns with the sisterhood.

Be well and safe tonight my friends.