Four more years: elections matter!

Being female, mixed background, pro-choice, for GLBT equal rights, convinced that climate change is a danger to the world and worrying about the wars that are still raging, I am glad Barack Obama carried this election. Most people don't vote their interest but their values, which include for me caring, accepting diversity (race, gender, age, migrant groups...), the environment, including energy issues, and social justice, healthcare. So I count myself as part of the democratic coalition which has better visions for our possible futures and did vote my values. I look forward to the President bringing home the troops from Afghanistan so that thee are no more foreign wars to be fought and that we can concentrate on rebuilding what is broken in the USA and be peacemakers and bridge builders in the world. That is my dream and hope for the country: freedom and dignity for all, generous and tolerant, the most diverse nation of the world. Let's all keep reaching.

A visitor

Since a few days I have been thinking of Jean: A Vietnam vet, Navy, special ops, suffering from PTSS, a miner and bicycle racer on national level. When she, a woman of 62, visited me with Aurora her Hybrid wolf, she was stuck in body and soul. Not pathetic, but searching as so many of us. The latest identity, beside being a father, a soldier and trans-gender, came about when her mom died and she discovered that she was Cherokee. She even found the family name in the books. She didn't quite look the part because of a German father. 

How does one integrate a voice from one life segment to the next. Only in the bike racing, she was recognized as an athlete before and after the operation. She always knew she was a woman, born into the wrong kind of body. Where can she find acceptance, a companion, peace of mind and fulfillment? The wish has never come true for her since no group fully accepted her for all she has been. If only our society were less judgmental and more welcoming to all differences... She lived her life the way it was supposed to be. Like so many people do. She was a man, married, had children, cross-dressing  in the weekends. Some of her life was good, some bad times too. She changed, made mistakes, missed a right or left turn on the way. But she kept looking. I am not sure for what, nor for whom. She had a dear friend Dave, good buddies. he just accepted her the way she had become. What she found was who she was, whom she could be if she dared to share her friendship and true soul. When we met, I had to push Aurora, her big wolf of my bed, laughing about the silliness of it. Then again she left, following her road from past to present and future... And then she was no more but a memory and a lesson.