There’s very little whining or complaining about the true personal costs of war in this corner of the internet. And I applaud all of the brave people on Substack fighting for medical freedom and vaccine safety and those who are lighting up dark corners with the truth.
But there should be more heartfelt storytelling. After all, our world, our families, our lives have been radically changed in the last few decades—especially in the last six years. We’ve lost friends, family, jobs, our health.
These are not small things.
We trudge on because we have to. There isn’t much time for reflection when we’re trying to navigate a travesty. But there are real stories out there—stories of loss and hardship, and those stories deserve to be shared and bared witness to.
People write in various Substack comments, “My father just died from a stoke” or “I haven’t seen my granddaughter in 5 years,” or “I’m alone now since my husband passed away last year.” And I feel as if too many of us have become desensitized, that the assaults are so tragic and so numerous we can’t pause to acknowledge and properly integrate what we hear or see. And since the media doesn’t acknowledge the suffering—- no compassionate 60 Minutes piece showing a person dying alone in the hospital, or a three-minute human interest story on a ten-year old who died at his grade school during gym class—there is no collective mourning.
My aunt dying alone from Covid in a hospital room in a death trap of a hospital in Tennessee should not become de rigueur. Neither should the fact that her husband died three days later from a stroke, just 24 hours after being vaccinated.
We’re all being robbed—sometimes it’s just a coin here or there, and other times it’s a vast fortune—the death of a loved one, the loss of one’s health.
What or who do you miss?
I miss reading a book. There’s too much to learn, and to know about our current predicament. Your life depends on keeping up. Casual reading feels silly—even reckless.
I miss taking the well-being of my family for granted. Health issues have popped up for many of us, both young and old, and I worry about fertility issues, claims of constant fatigue and newly-diagnosed auto immune issues in our vaccinated crew the past few years.
How do you sleep at night when you’re worrying about your children?
I miss friends that have decided my truth is too brash for their taste. Just today, I got an email from an old friend, telling me not to contact her again after I sent her family a Christmas card. I felt the ping of intense sadness for a moment—even disbelief—but I’ve become an expert at pushing those feelings away. “Do not let this kill you,” I tell myself. “Just bare it. This is a casualty of holding truth.”
I miss the luxury of innocence. I look back and see that innocence was just a false reality, but I miss it anyway. I find myself remembering penny candy, bike rides across town, parents who never knew where we were. We never saw a stretch of woods we didn’t claim—building forts, or sneaking smokes, or hanging from trees.
I miss neighbors knocking on the door for a visit. When the neighbors came by uninvited, they were welcomed inside by my parents and treated as very special guests. We craved company back then—communion with others. When I tell my children this, they cannot imagine an unexpected knock at their door.
I haven’t watched television in ten years. It angers me that TV became a place of propaganda rather than learning. Vast pools of potential all around us have dried up—the opportunity to learn and and appreciate the world from a good movie or television show. That’s over.
There have been lots of endings—the ending of eras, of people’s lives, of old routines and pleasures. And I submit that we must mourn these things, individually and collectively. We must acknowledge our losses. They remind us why we continue to fight but they also serve to remind us that we’re human.
You must be about my age. I've been in mourning for what we have lost since 2019. I haven't been able to get over the mourning.