“NB: Jon, for the last four years, I’ve gone to your site when I feel extra frustrated by politics and wait for you to tell me the silver lining. In some ways, it is satisfying to see you as fed up like others. But mostly, it’s sad.” 

Thanks, NB, for that lovely note. And here’s to the next four years of silver linings.

I’ve never been good at moping or feeling sorry for myself. I’m on the mend.

A therapist told me once that I was fearless about life and determined to live it well, no matter what. That was after a crippling breakdown.

I’m not boasting, but just today, an old friend said I was great at rebuilding my life. So I need to rebuild my spirit. In one sense, my spirit has a self-charging battery.

You can definitely knock me down, but you will have to kill me to keep me there. Even disappointing elections and Donald Trump railings are not strong enough to do it.

I remember Jim Morrison singing that it is good to expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has little or no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks.

You are free. I am free. Again and again and again.

Everything is a gift, including mental illness. Including Donald Trump and his lock-em-up rallies.

You get to recover every day; many people are not so lucky when they get sick.

And I am not so foolish as to let politicians or ideologies define my life, left or right.

As tempting as it is, I won’t be seceding from my farm or my life or my country, although it was a compelling dream. I love my country, it has been good to me, and I will be good to it and not speak poorly of it, even when it confounds and disappoints me.

I will have to get to a better place with the Trump people and Trumpism and the idea of the power they hold and the harm they have done. This will take a while and demand some skill.

Speaking of silver linings, what good news for jumbo flag makers and those big pickup trucks and lavish boats.

Instead of fleeing my country or migrating to a new one, I joined the Poor People’s Campaign, a sweeping call for a “Moral Revolution.”

I am excited about it. That is better than seceding.

I owe Donald Trump a lot. He awakened me to the need for a moral life, inspired me to do good rather than fight about it or fret about it. He kept me honest and committed.

My best and most meaningful days have come after darkness and disappointment. That is always when I could learn and grow.

Hardly any of us have simple and straightforward lives, mostly myths created by producers and story-tellers.

A good life is hard, challenging; it asks a lot of us. Grace comes from how we deal with disappointment; everybody does well on good news.

I was touched by NB’s message. In 2016, I decided I could help myself and others by being the writer people like NB wanted to read when they felt frustrated or frightened by the turmoil of the outside world. I took on that role with relish, and I think I did well with it.

I am committed to doing research, being thoughtful, and offer perspective.

This role deepened in the years after 2016 when I saw how frightened and concerned people were.

Every day I get messages like NB’s, thanking me for calming and reminding myself and others of the silver linings that are almost always there if you are open to them.

And I should pause to thank all of you good people out there who did the same for me.

I plan on continuing to publish a site people will come to when they feel confused, frightened, or despairing about what is happening to our country. Or when they like to look at photos of dogs. That’s part of my mission also.

It’s a good role for me, and I want and mean to keep it. I will continue to dig out the silver linings and also acknowledge the hard truths.

I am no good as a pollyanna. I try very hard to be honest, not provocative.

In a sense, I might be more necessary and valuable than before.  I wasn’t certain what my role would be if everything went well on Tuesday. I am certain now.

I will do the work and work hard to earn it.

After my freakout this morning, I took Zinnia and walked up to my hill down the road.

Okay, I thought, what is important about my life? The first thing that came to me was that 71 million Americans voted for someone other than Donald Trump. That is a lot of people, more than have ever voted for any presidential candidate.

If I can’t find people to read my work in so great a number, share some of my values, or challenge me thoughtfully and civilly, or give meaning to my work observations, then there is something wrong with me.

I have too many blessings in my life. Maria. The Farm, My Blog, My pictures. Zinnia, Bud, Fate, Fanny, Lulu, Minnie, and Flow are good friends.

I continue to believe that we live at the dawn of a moral revolution. Some senators and legislators, and congresspeople were defeated. But the women’s revolution was not defeated.

MeToo was not defeated.

Black Lives Matter was not defeated. Those remarkable Black women mayors were not defeated. The Portland Moms were not defeated.

Those millions of young people who saved the country from four more years of Donald Trump were not defeated. I have too much to live for and too rich a life to flee America. And I’m not going anywhere until I get on that E-bike and ride around the beautiful country I live in.

I love the small things in my life. Gaye reminded me of this beautiful letter, a poem that she wrote to me from California just before I sat down to write this.

“Jon, today’s blog is so right on because you captured my tension and sadness. I cannot understand how he got even 10 votes. 

But– I have sunflowers on my balcony and a cheesecake in the frig. I have a Zoom memoir class at three. My grandmothers came by steerage for $12 in 1904 and 1906. My husband has become a terrific shopper. My daughter sends me paper towels and socks.

Sweet days for you and Maria and the animals. I had a Boston (Terrier) when I was little. My father got him in a bar during WW II after 16 hours working in a shipyard. A sailor was going to the Pacific and had to leave his dog. My dad dropped the little guy on my bed at four in the morning. Tuffy was a terrific friend for many years.

Thanks for today. Peace and good music — Gayle.”

I have a Winston Churchill quote I carry around in my iPhone for the times I get low: “Success is no final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

I am no saint, and self-righteousness makes me ill, but there is this. For the past four years, I have been working closely with the neediest and most vulnerable among us: the refugee children who fled murder, war, and genocide to grow up in cold, filthy, and dangerous refugee camps and finally got to America, something that would not be possible for them today.

They desperately need support, from food to school supplies to warm shoes in the winter (the ones I first met were wearing clogs in snowstorms).

I will never secede from them. I will never run away from Ruth and Georgianna and Peggie and Stan and the other residents of the Mansion. They depend on me for baby dolls, books, puzzles and games, sweaters and socks, soap and shampoo, delicious and healthy meals, stuffed animals to love and sleep with. Warm jackets, waterproof shoes so they can walk outside.

My life in America is filled with riches, the foremost of them being Maria, the human that has brought light, love, and meaning into my loveless and troubled life.

Together we have worked hard to build the kind of life we always wanted and fought too hard to have.

I see the election as the beginning of a moral revolution, the re-building of a country to be more moral, kind, and gentle. We were all, in our own way, on that march. So why not stay there.

Why not form our own kind of internal nation, our own community of support and caring. They would never think to stop us, except to jeer. Maybe,  it is not on their radar.

Like RBG said, one step at a time. Peace and good music to you all.

“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” – Emma Donahue.