Something amazing happened this week at the Democratic National Convention!  Something joyful, something healing, something transformative!

Like all Conventions, this one had fabulous messaging and fabulous speakers who defined the shared vision of the Party and its direction for the future!  But there was something else going on, and it was palpable!  People were unifying in a way, and to a degree, that I had not seen before.  They laughed, they danced, they shared emotions, they empathized with those who were different from them, they mourned each other’s suffering and losses, and they gave each other hope! One could see and feel and understand the full range of emotion in the room – no matter who you were, where you lived, what your gender or race or identity, what you believed in, or anything else that use to divide us!  The unresolved division and invisibility we had gotten so used to experiencing for so long (particularly in the past decade – but also, of course, throughout the history of our country), did not exist in that room! Instead, there was an acknowledgement of our oneness, our humanity, our shared experiences of injustice, invisibility, grief and loss, as well as our hope and joy for the possibility of a different path! We saw ourselves in each other, and it hit us all on a very emotional level! It was as if we were opening our eyes for the first time, and seeing the world as it could be – as it should be – as well as our very special place within it – and we were overcome with the emotion of that vision and possibility that we, collectively were creating.  Our Founding Fathers envisioned a country of incredible potential and placed great trust in future generations to hold onto that belief and expand what could be possible.  But to truly get there, to become that “more perfect union”, we needed to not only continue to believe in ourselves, but also to see ourselves in each other’s lived experiences, and to have compassion for one another! That has been a long and difficult process!  But this week we got a little closer to that goal!  There was a release of emotion caused by having tapped into our need to be fully free, to be fully healed, to be a part of the healing of others, and to begin the process of transformation into a different kind of future – not built on words, but rather, on our connectedness to one another.  

A few weeks ago, a political process ended, and a movement began!  It was born of “we the people”, and its energy was drawn from an idea that “we are not going back” to the divisiveness and cruelty of the past, but rather, we are going forward together as one people, evolving into a new future!  It is a distinct difference from the controlling movements of the far right that sees our differences as the problem, and sees freedom as something belonging only to a worthy few.  This week, the Democrats (and many Independents and Republicans), the Democratic National Convention and our Democratic nominee for President of the United States, Kamala Harris, took back the word “Freedom” from the far right, and gave it back its original meaning – something that was in the hearts and aspirations of those who first founded our nation, and is in the hearts and aspirations of those of us today:  “We the People”!