This newsletter is largely an experiment. An attempt at sharing the experiences of the last couple years with other humans with an eye to the future.
Even when we’re the outsiders calling the lies out, we will inevitably do so while creating new foundations or internal structures to support us. We build new conceptual steps to stand on, as we step off of earlier ones. The ground has been shaky for all of us.
Naturally, perhaps necessarily this process will engender new biases and underlying assumptions that will also need to be questioned. You can’t witness massive amounts of people in the grips of a program or mass transformation without wondering about your own vulnerability. We have to continually make more room for questioning where we may have gotten caught or stuck in those newly formed steps.
That said, I’m someone who operates largely from a more intuitive orientation. I feel something is wrong, and then explore. With the plandemic what I found was my ‘gut’ was right. By April of 2020 I was convinced we were in a globally coordinated psyop. I could not prove that of course, but over the last nearly two years, the puzzle pieces came in to support it. For others, the pieces will need to come in first, and then as the picture is formed, the external evidence will result in a new conclusion. I don’t think one way is better than the other - and they both have their benefits and weaknesses.
And that’s the craziness of the last couple years. While I assumed the (growing) information on Covid, would persuade those who collect data first and then reach new conclusions - in so many instances I was wrong. Yes, many people are waking up and I’m thankful for that. And maybe it’s better than it looks to me from my small perch. I hope so. But I’m beginning to question whether everyone can be reached. Whether those who’ve simply dug in to their positions are now so entrenched as to fully divorce themselves from the new reality that new information demands. And to divorce themselves from those who inhabit that new reality.
I spent times with friends over the weekend. Decades-long friends. We are not on the same page about everything but many of our core values overlap. The Covid psyop highlighted the differences and has definitely challenged us to our very roots. While many friends have either distanced or dropped me, we’ve held on given that long history and its well-formed bonds of affection.
After the weekend, I’m not so sure anymore. They are, in my heart and mind, family. That unique kind of family that isn’t family. And we’ve had our share of ups and downs that come with human connection, particularly where love and care are present. We all just have to be who we are or what would the point be? Friends are a relief because we can be ourselves.
Over the last nine months I’d stopped sending information they didn’t want and wouldn’t look at anyway. I tried through 2020 and for the first four months of 2021 before deciding to put it aside and just maintain the friendship. In other words we’ve navigated the elephant in the room by ignoring it. Admittedly not a great plan.
Yesterday, I listened to my friend tell a story of a recent trip to New York with her son and two of her grandchildren. They went to see The Lion King. Everyone loved it and it was a great day. Another friend present asked if they needed a vaccine passport to get in to the city and she replied, yes they did. What was clear in her reply was how okay she was with it. Maybe because I grew up on Long Island and visited the city regularly, lived there for a couple years and loved it, and am now banned from it, or maybe because we’ve avoided that enormous elephant for the last nine months - or likely the combination - I basically lost it.
More upsetting still was the aloofness that came off of one of my dearest and oldest friends. In response to my eruption of emotion - there were tears and jumbled words as I tried to express how impossible it was to hear her normalize the need for ‘papers’ as if we’d simply glided into Nazi Germany, and what’s the problem it was a really nice day? She, calmly, without any compassion for my position, stated that she thought the vaccinations were good and she appreciated knowing she was with other vaccinated people. In other words, she didn’t care what that meant for us ‘unclean’ citizens, even if one of them was me. An arctic blast could not have been colder.
I told her one day - when the culprits were held accountable - whether that was in a year or five years - she would come to regret her willingness to comply. I believe that. I left abruptly. I don’t know that we’ll continue as friends.
In the aftermath - still fresh - I notice I pivot between two poles of feelings/thoughts. In one I defend her, try to understand her and extend compassion. On that side, I blame myself: I went too far. I said too much. On the other, I blame her and wish I said more.
This morning I woke to seeing there was of course, another way to look at it. I can be neutral. Step back and neither accept nor reject what unfolded and just let it be what it was. Release the who-did-what story. It’s something that happened. I said, what was in me to say. I felt the way I felt. The same for her.
I know my experience is an anecdotal one that is being played out world-wide with many variations. I know that part of the immense sadness that comes with relationships that fall apart has to do with recognizing that the pressure we’ve been under has also been clarifying as to who we are. And we won’t always like what that reveals.
In a surprising way, I feel that more of me has shown up in the last two years. I’m more here, more fully in my potential as a human being. Not because I’m special. Simply because I see humanity under attack and want to defend it. It’s a value that didn’t require expression before because it was a given. (One of my underlying assumptions.) What I am learning is not everyone - even those we thought we knew intimately - feel the same. To my shock, one of my oldest friends does not share that value.
That’s clarifying. Even as I write this, I wish I didn’t see it. And, at the same time, I’m making room for getting some of this wrong. Maybe I’m missing something, overlooking something that would shed more light? I pray that is the case.
I want to end on a positive note. That is really, the underlying intention of this newsletter after all. The future is positive. I believe it. I know humanity wins. I can’t prove it, but just like with my intuition on Covid being about something more than a virus - like the justification for world-wide totalitarian control - I look for evidence to support my gut. And, I see it every day. I see it the continuing efforts of Reimer Fullmich’s legal battle, in doctors with integrity speaking out, in the ongoing protests that don’t get covered, and in the dropping viewership of legacy media. I see it in the burgeoning world of writers on substack.com and in the growing viewership of alternative media.
Many of us are moving forward. While we call out the old world that is dying, we are creating a new one where truth is demanded. Wounded hearts and all. A good thing to remember about broken hearts is while painful, they also have a way of making more room.
So many tears!! Yes so many of us lived this. I felt terrified, knowing that almost everyone was completely fine with the deliberate exclusion. Did we not all learn about Nazis in school and scratch our heads wondering how good people could look the other way? Human nature is what it is.. or not..? In Eisensteins Dust and Bones series he talks about humanity being capable of making kind choices, and not that there are two classes of people - that anyone can, at the right moment, choose kindness and love.
I hope so.
I hope so. 🙏🏻🙏🏻✨
Thank you for sharing this poignant, vulnerable moment, Kathleen. I applaud your authentic, heartfelt response and hope it will linger with the listeners and make them think twice before glibly accepting escalating totalitarianism.
Your article reminded me of this Off-Guardian piece (https://off-guardian.org/2021/12/12/absent-friends/) by Animal Lover. Maybe it will make you feel better reading about others experiencing the same thing.
If your friendship can’t survive without you suppressing your true thoughts and feelings, then perhaps it is a superficial bond that would be better replaced with authentic relationships. If it can survive your honesty, then it will be made all the stronger.