*** Disclaimer… so I’m just getting this endeavor up and going. Be patient, I’m learning. Check back every week or so to see if I’ve figured it out***
(Here’s the official spiel…) I’ve been a journalist for 30 years. I don’t think I’ll ever lose that identity, but as I was tiptoeing (or being dragged) past my last “0” birthday, I realized it was time to rethink why and how I search for the truth. What does that word even mean anymore… for me? My family? My faith? My career?
I am a deeply spiritual woman and the experiences I’ve been privileged to have professionally as a reporter and blessed to have in my personal life have only deepened my faith. But I still have questions…boy, do I have a lot of questions.
And opinions, don’t forget all the opinions.
And that is the Genesis of this website.
Among the myriad of questions that rolled around my head like a pinball, ricocheting from subject to subject in the middle of another sleepless pandemic night, came in the early hours of the morning of November 4, 2020. How how could 70 million plus Americans want more of what we’d had for the last four years… more hate, more lies, more anger? And 70 plus million other Americans literally think exactly the opposite? And with that kind of divide, how will we ever move forward? And how could one of them be my dear father, whom I love and respect with all my heart, as well as some of my good friends? How could we have so much in common and yet be so far apart? And what could I, as a progressive and modern person of faith possibly do to bridge the divide? And how could I do it and still keep my job as an “objective” journalist at a major network? (the answer to that last one is, I couldn’t)
See… so. many. questions. Aargh!!
The best answer I can ever come up with to any one of those unanswerables is what has guided me through decades of covering tragedy… connecting people through shared experience. While very few people suffer the loss of a loved one through the violent crimes like those I’ve covered for nearly two decades at the CBS News Magazine, 48 Hours, all of us have lost someone. And many of us know what it’s like to have someone ripped from our life in an instant… crime, accident or illness.
Losing my father to an ideology I just couldn’t understand, particularly one that specifically railed against exactly what I had devoted my entire life to, felt like a death and resurrection of some unknown entity every time we engaged in anything beyond a discussion of what was for dinner. This too has become an increasingly shared experience among many family and friends.
The innumerable human experiences are rarely singular or unknowable. While each of us feels them in our own unique way, they only become isolating when we experience them alone. That fact I can personally attest to as “a woman of a certain age” – a phrase I loath. But after 15 years of silently living through fibromyalgia for fear of it impacting people’s perception of my ability to do my job, be a mother or even just be viewed as “healthy”, I decided as I entered the inescapable warm embrace of hot flashes, I wasn’t going this next chapter on my own. Maybe some thought “fibromyalgia is an internet disease” as my longtime GP told me and then prescribed a dozen Advil daily, with an anti-depressant chaser (both of which I firmly rejected), but I was certain medicine must have reams of research on menopause. Ha… silly me. Actually, all it took was to make one casual comment to any “woman of a certain age” about being a little too hot and poof – a fast friendship was formed forever. Unless we started talking politics. or Faith. Or Family.
Wait… so tell me again what this website is about… you kind of lost me.
It’s about Family… Parenting two young(ish) kids and one old(ish) conservative father… living with fibromyalgia, menopause and whatever other ache or pain I woke up with.
It’s about Faith… the morning after the election, I made the decision to go back to school. I am now a candidate for a Masters of Arts in Religious Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, focusing on Inter Religious Studies and Public Theology. Faith may be the one commonality that many progressives have left with people on the right. God knows it’s about the only conversation starter (and yes, ender) I can have with many of my immediate family members. Public theology requires going public with your theology, your ideology, your questions… your comments. Public commentary is a big no-no in network news, so going for this degree, I mean really going for it, meant leaving my position at 48 Hours. It was time.
And…It’s about other people… I’ve asked interesting people I know to occasionally contribute their thoughts, whether I agree with them or not.
It’s about questions, answers, opinions and experiences. It’s about a conversation… and I invite you to join in.
(Except haters… you can keep the crazy talk to yourself)
