Today I want to talk about change.
I remember when my parents told us we were moving to America.
I was eight years old. I was nearing the end of Year 3 at my school. I was friends with every girl in my class, and I loved my life. I loved swim team. I loved birthday parties. I loved my house on the hill with the big tire swing and the dead tree. I loved my puppy, Shelly, and I loved the games I could play with my sisters roaming around the countryside where we lived.
The idea of leaving all of that to go someplace new, someplace foreign, where the people talked in strange, harsh sounding consonants, ate weird food, and called most things different names. A place where you didn't wear a uniform to go to school, and school had girls AND BOYS (GASP!). A place that had snow, and long winters, and strange wildlife that was all either brown or grey instead of the myriad colors I was used to. There were no kookaburras to laugh outside my window in the morning in America. There was no vegemite for toast.
There also was no other option.
I remember the month of preparation as a blur. We sold our house, almost all our furniture. We got rid of dishes I had eaten my first bites of food off of. We gave Shelly away to a family who could care for her. I said tearful goodbyes to my friends and my classmates. I remember getting on the plane and my parents telling us over and over that this wasn't the end, it was a transition. It was an adventure. It was change, and change was hard, but you ended up better afterward, stronger, wiser, and you knew something you couldn't possibly know before; you knew you could survive it.
For months after we moved to the states I would just sit in my room and cry. I went to bed and dreamed I was back in my room in Australia, the sweet smell of gum trees and pine pitch wafting through the window, then I would wake up, and I would realize where I really was, and it all seemed like a terrible joke.
My sister tried to run away. She'd get angry and pack a bag and just take off. She always swore she was going back home. Only once did she get as far as the on ramp for the highway. Then she turned around and came home. We know this, because my mother confessed -years later- that she had followed Alex in backyards and bushes the whole way to make sure she was all right. She watched her daughter wondering when she would have to jump out and stop her, and then the little girl decided on her own to go back, and she had to run to beat her back to the house.
It was a tough time for our family. The career opportunity that had convinced my Dad to pack up his family and take them halfway across the world dried up, and we were left in less than ideal financial circumstances. We had to move to Canada to be closer to my Mum's family while we figured things out, got back on our feet, and came back to America when I was thirteen.
I had a really hard time accepting the election results on Wednesday.
Like a lot of folks, I had assumed that the country was going to be divided, but it couldn't possible go in the direction that it did. I assumed that there couldn't be that many hateful people to vote. I assumed we were safe.
Over the past few days, as the reality of the next four years has settled in, I have thought about this new future and I have felt a kind of groundless, stomach churning fear I hadn't felt since that day, when at eight years of age, I stepped aboard my first plane to leave the place where I'd been born forever, and to trust that the future was a place I could accept, even if I was determined not to like it.
The most important thing I brought with me from Australia to the States was my family. It's corny, but we could use some well intentioned corniness right now, and it's true.
I remember my Dad saying houses weren't homes unless the people you loved were there. I remember my Mother saying we could be scared of this new world, and we could have all the problems in the world adjusting, but we had each other, and we loved each other and that was a lot more than most people had.
To this day, I attribute my ability to adapt, to go with the flow, to change plans on the turn of a dime, to this huge event in my life. I also attribute to it, my desire to survive, my desire to hold onto what really matters when times get hard, my insistence that love is the most courageous act a person can do.
Here we are, America. The world we knew is shattered. We can never go back there.
In this new world, there is much to be feared, there is much we need to prepare for, to learn, and to arm ourselves both with knowledge, but also with kindness, with compassion, and with love.
So I am concentrating on that.
I am concentrating on taking the best care of my family and my tribe in this new place. I am concentrating on accepting that this decision changes everything about this environment, but it does not change who I am, what matters to me, and what I will or will not tolerate.
I can adapt. I can evolve. I can hold fast, batten down the hatches, dig deep, and make due.
I can get through this to that.
I can accept that this decision was made without my permission and that it does not reflect my goals, values, or ideals. It is not easy, but I can accept this.
But know this,
you must accept that i am very very strong and very very clever, and I am resourceful, and I will use all of my power, my mind, and my love to withstand this change. I am determined to get to the other side of this with my loved ones and my dignity. I want to be able to look myself in the face in the mirror and say, "I am proud of you."
I am one of many who will do this.
I am one of millions who will emanate love and healing in the face of this change.
And I am living proof that this approach makes us stronger.
I am living proof that we will survive this, and learn from it to make sure that the next big change doesn't surprise us. In fact I am living proof that the next big change will be on my terms, our terms, the terms of love.
Hold fast.
Dig deep.
Make Due.
Batten down the hatches.
And love love love, in all the tiny and majestic ways that you can, love ferociously, love heroically, love incessantly, and without fear.
Love is how we change for the better.
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