First Cut Is The Hardest Cut; So Not True

I wrote this post on July 29th, and put it in drafts as I have put over a thousand other posts. Today, this horrible Sunday, I decided that it deserves to be a blog post.

I began Courting Destiny in August, 2004. For three or four years it was the technorati ranked #1 baby boomer blog, and was in the top one percent of all 60 million blogs then.

I have no idea how I did it. I remember thinking that I was very good at PR, and should have realized that I excelled at this decades before. Being me I wouldn’t have believed it in earlier decades.

Yes I’m reviving my blog while I write a book that’s more about searching than anything else. Searching for birth parents (not every day or every month or even every year. It wasn’t high on my priority list.)

After I found my birth father, very accidentally, I realized that my whole life has been a search for one thing or another. I don’t think that’s a bad way to live.

Even the blog’s name Courting Destiny is about searching for the impossible.

I was searching for the name of the problems that had plagued me all my life. Help would have been incredible, also.

My life was fuller than most people’s despite these problems. I continually challenged myself, and didn’t think “poor me, let me wait until later in life to achieve or even live.”

So thankful that my independent streak won over fear. Do have to say that fear played a huge part in my life. Sometimes it still does. But fear of not living was my first and biggest fear.

After Charlottesville, I read a blog post by a popular local blogger. It talked about how nothing was ever solved by peaceful protest. Mother Teresa herself had said that she wouldn’t go to an anti-war protest but a pro-peace rally.

Stupid me. I thought protests were for something, and I wrote this blog post in response to the blogger’s post.

I lost some friends over that post. I think they thought I was attacking a wonderful blogger. I wasn’t, but was trying to explain why I believe in protesting. I know they thought I was attacking their religion–Christian.

Never. I was trying to explain how a Jew would automatically be, would be sickened by a president talking about “fine neo-Nazis.” But they didn’t want to listen.

I blamed myself for being “nasty,” when I wasn’t. I’m not into the whole “nasty woman” thing. I would rather act than label; rather explain than stay silent. Apparently the only good Jews, to some people here, are the ones who remain silent. How could I?

Charlottesville, and the reaction to my blog post changed me. Charlottesville made me realize that I had been living in a glass dome. One where I thought people didn’t hate others because of their beliefs whether they be political, social, or religious.

Charlottesville was a seminal event in my life. Sadly it was as life-changing as 9/11 was. Yes, it was.

The realization that I’m really a minority group member–how could that not affect my thinking?

For the past two years, I have reflected more and more about what it means to be Jewish, and why it is incredibly important that we who are Jewish speak out.

But I seemed to have lost any ability to write something more than a Facebook post or comment on another one.

I’m in a constant state of minor depression because for the first time in my life I understand why my parents insisted on living in Jewish semi-gilded ghettos.

My maternal grandmother, Bubbe Ceila, was my favorite person. I talk about how she taught me to fight for freedom–everyone’s freedom because if one person or group isn’t free in America, none of us are.

There is something I don’t talk about. When Bubbe Ceila lived in Belarus, she was separated from her family. Drunken Cossak soldiers found her. I don’t know what they did to her. Somehow a family of “friendly Christians” found and saved her. They couldn’t get word to her family for a week. Bubbe Ceila was eleven then.

I carry her legacy in my heart always. It is a wonderful legacy that’s better than money, diamonds, anything material. It’s a legacy of caring and acting.

She taught me that all people are worthy. It’s because of Bubbe Ceila that after high school and my first college, I sought out people from very different backgrounds than mine.

I don’t care what a person believes as long as they’re willing to listen to me, too.

I have been told that I hate Christians.

That’s far far from the truth.

Even if I wanted to I couldn’t hate a whole group of people simply because they worship differently than my family. Then I would be my own enemy and that’s too complicated a concept for a simple mind like mine to grasp.

Differences are good. Differences are what makes the United States a unique country that I love very much. Though right now I’m more than a bit angry at the president. I was brought up to dislike and distrust liars and our president lies every time he opens his damn mouth.

I can’t go into the events of this weekend, August 3rd and 4th. My heart is broken, and I’m too angry.