Tis the Season of Pinpricks

I get knocked down, but I get up again

You're never gonna keep me down

I get knocked down, but I get up again

You're never gonna keep me down

I get knocked down --

We get it Chumbawumba, we get it. Even as you read this, you're someplace on your way up again and prepping to get knocked down. Again.

Good for you. But that ain't me. I'm trying to get up again and flinching at everything that might possibly could maybe, who knows, knock me down.

Again.

It's been a long November, a month in which I had planned posts on daily affirmations of thankfulness, perhaps a countdown to my daughter's birthday / my mothering day and maybe a post about the minutes I've been missing my parents since all the way back to 1987.

But I got knocked down by a lot of things.

The knowing that so many friends of mine were newly missing loved ones in the season of giving thanks that leads into the season of celebrating family and friends. It's one of the worst feelings I can imagine. And I acutely knew no words can salve that wound. So my brain clenched up. And so did the words.

Then there was the knowing that people desperate enough to leave home and walk thousands of miles in hopes of sanctuary were greeted by tear gas in the name of law and order. Law and order hides behind too many sanctioned injustices. Even in my own family.

The knowing that my daughter looked at a form of racism in the eye, and that I had to handle it as best I could as a parent, while giving her the tools to handle what I couldn't when she's an adult. I mean, she'll face it on her own soon enough. Too soon.

No, Chumbawumba. The knocking down had me really knocked down.

Now I'm looking for pinpricks to pierce the darkness -- maybe we all are, I don't know. So for me, Advent -- the waiting on The Light -- is right on time. So is Hannukah -- light itself being present in a miraculous way.

Even in the darkness, I've got hope -- no matter how tenuous -- in this season of light.

There. Is. Hope.

After all, I got a lot of stories to write about.

hums to self: I get knocked down, but I get up again...

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