Mindful bonus from Waylon & elephant community, today:

 

I am disgusted.

This man has been elected President of the United States, but he is not my president.

I respect the office and all that it stands for, but I do not respect him. He has not earned that.

There are two upsides to this election though. One is that now everyone can see, even if they haven’t experienced it personally (although watching the results last night might count as an experience) how racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic and downright cowardly most of the people in this country are.

It doesn’t mean they don’t have good inside them, or that they aren’t hard-working, family-loving people, or that they don’t deserve to be heard. They do.

But they are terrified of the direction this country is (was?) moving in: terrified of inclusion and equal rights and forward movement, terrified that they might get left behind, terrified that they themselves might become the minority. Terrified because they’ve seen the way minority groups are treated in this country and they don’t know how to handle becoming one.

But what I also saw was that there are billions of people in this country, and across the world, that are fighting hard, every day, to combat racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and cowardice in their own communities and on a global scale.

These people are the ones who will change our country.

These people are the ones who will save us from the individuals and ideas and government who want to “take us back.”

These people are the ones who inspire me every day to recognize that there is good in this world and regardless of our setbacks—and believe me, last night was a big one—we will overcome and stand taller and stronger together.

These people are my tribe, my allies, my support system, my hope and my access road to change.

I am one of these people and I encourage you to be one as well.

Be disgusted, be sad, be angry and use that as fuel to fight against everything that has gone wrong around us. Fight to keep women and people of color and immigrants and folks in the LGBTQ community and young people and children and poor people and all people safe and cared for. Fight to make sure they have equal rights under the law. Fight to make sure our planet, and the reality of climate change, is given the attention and money it deserves. Fight to make sure the voices of goodness and kindness and sanity are heard on every level.

Use your voice, your strength, your power, your pain, to show this man (who is not my president, and maybe not yours either) and his supporters, that we will not tolerate discrimination, bullying, ineptitude, ignorance or the white lashing of this country. We will not tolerate walls and bans and revenge.

We deserve more.

We are worth more.

And we will continue to fight for more.

For every step to “take this country back,” we will work harder to move this country forward.

Be disgusted, but be determined.

~

Relephant:

After we Grieve, we must Fight.

~

Author: Nicole Cameron

Image: Elephant Journal/Instagram

Editor: Katarina Tavčar