Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

A few days ago I finished reading "The Snow Child", a novel set in Alaska and playing with an old fairy tale about a snow child who comes to life, kind of like Pinnochio.  The novel is about loss and healing and reads like a prose poem.  My friend recommended it to me.  The wilderness of Alaska becomes a character in the book, and sadness and joy are intermixed, as well as magical realism.  For anyone who has grieved the loss of someone they loved, it is revealing and soothing.  But it also is working for me right now in grieving for the election results, and to face the fear that this brings to many of us.  I, personally am grieving that I will not live to see a woman U.S. President, and my granddaughters still live in a world where women are not valued equally.  There was a hurdle ready to be jumped over, and the runner crashed and fell.  Someone else, another time, will have to struggle again and it won't be soon.  This lesson is a cautionary tale about reaching too high.  And Michelle Obama's refrain of when they go low we go high, though the morally correct stance, ends with the low winning this time around.  I'm not giving up, and I will become more active politically because of this week, but the idea that a lot of people in this country, unlike any other Westernized nation, don't believe in women in the highest offices, is a body blow, like the ERA not passing.  But we've absorbed the blows before and we will learn from this.