Our individual examples guide our children and our community as a ‘collective’.

Natural disasters create chaos.  Our community is fortunate enough to live we’re most pass us by without incident.  For many in the world, they create havoc, turmoil, loss and destruction. They hold power over the lives they impact which can be lasting and all consuming at times.

The mental chatter of this debate is no different than those storms. Like a hurricane, this too shall pass, as they always do.  What impact will it leave?  How will our community react and what will we personally choose to gain from this storm?

Some communities reinvent themselves, some people create a new life and/or rebuild. Some are killed, destroyed or stay stuck in loss.

We are often powerless over what comes, but are we responsible for how we choose to react to what is? Do we love and support or attack and divide? It is sad. Why hate the storm? Move. Rebuild. Accept. Or do all three. Cry.  Greive. Work toward a solution if there is one or move and accept this is no longer a safe place to be.

The storms have come since the beginning of time. This is the world we live in.  Here, we have clean water. Our children have a good food source. We are not forced into slavery or destined to live on trash piles and all because we had the gift of being born in the U.S.

Perhaps we can see the beauty in this.  Perhaps poor is walking 12 miles for a bucket of dirty water. What could be darker than selling your children into slavery so others may eat. The world can be dangerous – unkind – unfair. That is a fact I want my children to be prepared for, and to see how much more they have, regardless of our own struggles here; which are also real but vastly different.

I think Trump and Hillary have revealed much.  Maybe it’s hard to see behind the curtain they have pulled back.  Maybe it’s more pervasive, and all around us, and in our communities.

Maybe all this churns our stomach because it’s revealed how much work there is still ahead of us.  More support for those without money or power.  More equality for all and more preservation for individual rights; do they have to be mutually exclusive?

How can we raise children that want to ‘help thy neighbor’ and avoid a dictatorship that says you must share what you have without a choice to do so?  These ideas seem in conflict, but are they?

There is work within me as I note my own internal judgments during this election process.  How I relate, identify, or become enraged by the candidate(s) and actions based on my own experiences.

This election has brought up unhealed parts of my own thinking and internal reactions to my own internal political debate.

This has played out more like a reality show than a professional debate deciding our future fate.  Who’s responsible for this?  Is it the networks who condition is to tune into reality shows, People magazine and relish in the latest break up?  Are we responsible for buying these things?  Did the leaders fail is by choosing debasement rather than setting a leadership example my children could look up to?

The curtain has been pulled back and aren’t we really just seeing now what has been going on for a very long time?  Does this same conflict not exist within each of us? The kind person, fallible, making enlightened choices and some really dumb ones too?

Maybe I should put on a clown suit and laugh in the mirror at my own folly!