Weighing Options

September 16, 2026September 16, 2026 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

I’m odd, and I know that. It’s not a bad odd, but I’m not neurotypical. Neither is my son but he seems to be a decent soul. He has self-described limited bandwidth for me, and for most people. I understand that. I think I have wider band-width but maybe I don’t.

He didn’t remember that I used to have him fly. I’d put my feet on his belly and he would hold my hands and I would lift him into the air. It was fun. Then he would stand on my hands and hold onto my feet and he learned to balance without needing to hold onto my feet.

I felt so sad that he didn’t remember that, but I think he was like six or seven when he lost interest in that.

I forget that so much was significant to me as a parent that just didn’t register to him as a child.

I wonder what my mom did that I have no memory of, but that she held close in her heart as a talisman against the darkness sometimes. I don’t know if my mom had a brain like I do though. Mine was formed in violence and neglect, and also in happy and regular times, but the violence overshadowed all of it.

The darkness finally took her. She didn’t see it that way but alcoholism is a dread fucking disease that tells you you don’t have it. It damaged her liver and then it became her escape from the terrible pain that accompanies liver disease. The irony is she said she was looking forward to coming back, which always kind of pissed me off because it’s like ‘so you could neglect some other kids?’

I hope if she did reincarnate – if that’s real – that she has no children. That she’s barren, or if she’s in a male body, that he’s sterile. But that’s not the way the Universe works.

I’m envious of people who seem to have a purpose in their lives or a passion that they were able to follow. I also don’t know what they went through to get there – and I have met people who are very driven and done the things that they set out to do, but they were uncompassionate people who think everyone can do what they did – if you just buck up.

Were that true, honey, I’d have made it. It is not from lack of trying.

15 Minutes

September 16, 2026 / Hermionejh / Leave a comment

I’ve been keeping it together – sort of. i’m doing tasks intermittently which boosts my dopamine or serotonin or whatever, I’m sure, and I fast-walk 3 miles almost daily – even though I was every day for a long time.

I cook good food. I belong to a farm share although most of the people there are semi unfriendly and harried with their own lives so the sense of community I hoped for never materialized. I try though. I am friendly and try to chat with folks. I had a nice interaction during the pick-your-own raspberries I did last week, but I’ve been 15 minutes from leaving the planet all year.

I’ll be consistent with something for a few days and then that goes away and there are tons of demands on my time and I don’t get to what’s most important to me. All of it needs doing.

I’m like Virginia Wolfe who said she needed a room of her own to do her work – and something like 20 pence a day. She left the planet earlier than her natural time – but maybe that was her natural time.

I’ve lost most of my enthusiasm for living. It’s either a simulation, or a Universe run by a shitty capricious ‘god’ who seems to favor child rapists because they always get a slap on the wrist while the mostly women and children they rape are supposed to forgive them or have compassion for them. So who has compassion for those women & children harmed for their lifetimes every 20 seconds? I suppose I could start hanging out on rooftops, but I would rather leave & let the assholes kill each other off & avoid the tech bros ending humanity with their AI monsters. Musk thinks empathy is a disease and no one rebuts his asinine and horrific comments.

My best friends & family are mostly dead from dread diseases & that’s life. Their shit was all left undone. They’re free though. No body – no concerns.

Does it matter if I wait another 15?

Life-Changing Tip

August 2, 2026August 2, 2026 / Hermionejh

“If you had to give one life-changing tip, what would it be?”
WordPress writing prompt, August 2, 2026

Do It NOW. Tomorrow, or some future date, rarely presents the right time. When we ‘get around to it’ more often means the pile or the project remains undone.

I once heard that ‘it’s the start that stops us.’ If that applies, break it down. What can be done in 5 minutes? 10, 15, or 20 minutes?

You’ve got this.

And I know it’s supposed to be just one, but:

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

YOU MATTER.

❤️

Abundant Life

July 14, 2026 / Hermionejh

It’s possible to see the flowers over the weeds, and remember that weeds also serve a purpose.

It’s possible to know that chaos, enmity, greed, and the maleficent use of power are reining supreme, and also know that those of good will are also still here, continuing the work of uplifting humanity.

There is community, understanding, kindness, love, protection and an abundant life – without the need to dominate or control.

We can say no to those who would steal our peace and joy, and then create more peaceful and joyful spaces.

We can form collectives and our own economies and remove our money, our time, and our labor toward a government that has turned against the people it pretends to serve.

We can still love our neighbor, take care of the sick, and remember the abundance of the natural world and of helping each other.

We are making a choice. We have the power to change direction, to adjust, to create a world in balance and harmony.

We can have each others’ backs.

We do not have to accept lies meant to obscure corruption and abuse.

Will we?

Dear Sister

October 3, 2025 / Hermionejh

I listened to a message you had left that sunny September day in 2023, letting me know you were in the hospital – ‘doing okay,’ although you said you were feeling very weak.

It’s hard to listen to now because you’re gone. It was just three months from your diagnosis to your death. As we talked during those months, you said that it had been a couple of years that things were starting to not feel right. You said you were tired all the time, and you couldn’t get to your doctor, and when you finally did, he minimized what was happening. Unfortunately, you weren’t someone who would demand being adequately treated.

By the time they had ordered tests when you had called me from the hospital, it was already basically too late (although no one could know that in the moment).

But I think you did know. I think that’s why you had me take you home that night. I’m sure you were terrified, and you were trying to run from it. I understand it now in a way that I didn’t before.

I’m so sorry that we never got back to the kind of friendship we had in our twenties. I don’t really know what happened, but maybe it was just time moving on and life shaping us.

I hope you know that I always loved you, and always wished that we could be friends again. I know that you loved me, but I didn’t feel like you liked me very much, and I felt hurt and defensive.

If there’s another place where I’ll see you again, I hope that we’re in our best selves with each other. But I’ll be glad to see you no matter what.

I’m also glad I saved your message – I’ll take the bitter to have the sweet.

We Rise

July 31, 2025 / Hermionejh

We say: We do not condone this. We will not cooperate. We will not willingly give our rights – rights fought, bled, and died for by several generations before us who faced a monstrous moment or moments.

The work was not just about them. It was for the future. It was for their communities, their children, and your children, and all of our children’s children – those who will also be asked to meet whatever moment will be presented to them. Their choice is theirs, but our choice is to resist, to rise.

Those descendants need to know that facing cruelty was, and still is, possible. We all give up our lives in the end, and while we hope it will not come to that, we have to be prepared for that outcome. Physical death only comes once, but oppression is a daily death to our hope and to our spirit – and leaves no road map for those who will come after.

Store, sell, or give away belongings. Write a will, instructions to deal with your belongings, and notes to those you love, and to those not yet born who you would want to know and would love.

Courage is willingness to step into the unknown, even when we’re full of fear. Death comes to us all. Maybe we will survive facing the oppressors, and best them, but we defy their demands for us to capitulate – knowing it might be our last act.

This is our moment and our test as a nation, as a people. Our values are being revealed, and so many beautiful souls are standing up in whatever ways they can.

Be brave, be kind, be persistent, and be loud! Huzzah!

An Arc

June 10, 2025September 16, 2026 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

Life gets more cherished, not because I’m going to lose it, but because I have become aware of how precious the everyday was with others that I cared about.

Last year the daughter of a friend died and the funeral reception was held at a restaurant in Bernardston, Mass, that had a large separate building for such occasions. A woman I have known most of my life was there – indeed, most of the people there I have known as long – but she has always been special to me, even though most of it was periphery when I was young, and she was a decade older. It’s funny how that gulf seems so long when you’re young and you know it’s barely anything once you’re beyond that.

She was, and is, beautiful – inside and out, and she was not just kind, but present, whenever she was around- and I regret that I didn’t spend the time with her that day that one of my contemporaries got to, but I was overwhelmed by the multitude and had to leave. I did, however, sit next to her, and got to rest my head on her shoulder for a few minutes. Time fell away and I was 12 again.

She means so much to me, and I can see the arc of our lives. She was a contemporary of the majority of the people we were involved with, and I was a child, but soon going into my teen years. She seemed so cosmopolitan to me. She had a daughter several years younger than me and I enjoyed every moment she shared time and attention toward me.

She didn’t know my inner world. For all I know she thought I was fine and getting what I needed because I had learned early on that something is better than nothing in several aspects of my life. I wasn’t consciously aware of that back then, but I am now.

She read a story with me and her daughter, but I knew that I got more of the ironic and funny bits than her daughter did, and we got to share that. That moment is emblazoned on my heart and in my mind forever.

It’s painful that I feel the ghost of that girl wandering through my psyche, still holding onto those precious bits like those desperate people who panned for gold in California must have done so long ago. I want her to get what she needs, and I don’t know why the well is so deep.

There are other forces at work, of course, but she deserves a full well. She deserves to breathe quiet and unburdened. I just have to figure out how to give it to her.

But I honor, and am grateful for, those who stepped in fully present – whether on purpose, or by happy accident. I’m sure it is in no small part of why I am still here.

Longing

February 28, 2025March 7, 2025 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I wish I could have you back, Mom. The little one inside of me wasn’t ready to let go, even though I did let go in my teens. It was different then. I was different then, but this part has remained much the same.

I want you back for myself though. I was always your needy one, but I learned to shut down and stop having needs as best I could.

You did show up for the practical things, and I love you for that. School clothes, pencils, erasers, and a pencil case. A notebook, and a ruler.

I hold onto those things because they were your love, and the most that I got, but I wish I had had more of you.

I wasn’t alone, there were others around, but none of them were you. They focused on their children, and told me to go to bed when they put their children to bed, and then to get up, to go to school, to brush my hair and my teeth. and to do the dishes, or sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

Sometimes you were there, and I liked those times the best.

You were so indignant when my best friend’s parents wanted to adopt me because I was there all the time and no one took much notice that I was gone. The commune was dispersed over several towns and houses then, but I lived there, where most of the other children were, and my sisters were, and it was during the school year.

It didn’t bother me that I was on my own a lot because I had my friend, and connection with the other kids there often, but I could stay at my friend’s house whenever I wanted.

I didn’t know that it was unusual that no one knew where I was, and no one was relieved when I came back. Maybe they would have known after a week? I never stayed there that long, but it was my home away from where I lived.

One woman who had a daughter several years younger than me once read me and her daughter a book out on the porch steps on a sunny summer day. She pointed out aspects of the illustrations to us, and laughed at the idea of a cat catching a robber by meowing loudly and waking up the family. The picture showed everyone downstairs when the police got there, and they all had a cup of tea – even the robber.

It’s now that I can voice why that has remained a seminal time and memory for me. I was included, I mattered, and a fun and loving moment was shared with me – on purpose. Her daughter was too young to really appreciate the irony of the tea-drinking robber, but I wasn’t.

My friend’s mom and dad were good and I liked them (more her mom because my friend’s dad intimidated me as he was a tall and stocky man whose presence resembled my violent father). They weren’t my people though, and I never thought of them as surrogate parents.

I knew my mother had abdicated her responsibilities when I was nine, after the divorce from my father, and she had a sort of mental breakdown. I didn’t blame her for that, but she never fully came back to us.

I think I’m mostly experiencing hiraeth – a Welch word that loosely means ‘longing for a home or place one has never known’.

America Is Over

November 7, 2024November 11, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

The vile, horrible, people won. They want women to be breeders. They are rapists, child molesters, monsters.

Good luck.

Here And Now

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

The yard is frosted over this morning, late autumn is tip-toeing over the land. The maple in the side yard is nearly naked – its yellow leaves left a skirt around its base.

Everything is quiet as I breathe in the chilled air. Nothing disturbs the break of day.

It’s good to be here now and to be alive to witness this.

I know many are suffering all through our Country and all through the world. There is no taking a moment to breathe in the quiet morning air. There is work to do.

Mud needs to be dug out – in some places it’s three or four feet deep. They need helping hands, a kind word, food, and rest.

I’m sorry that there are people who believe that officials are holding back funds or national guard workers when those officials are there to assess what’s needed. I wish we weren’t easy prey for mis- and dis-information.

There are good people everywhere but there are also those who delight in causing harm.

Maybe we’ll lose this experiment we’ve been privileged to have the last few hundred years, and maybe a dictatorship with the censorship and grueling conditions of such rulers will cause regret in those who welcomed it and helped usher it in, but it will be too late then. There will be no more speaking out.

History and living examples of authoritarianism are begging us to see what happens under those conditions, but sometimes something set in motion has to play out.

Much like the season turning, leaves falling, and frost deadening the bright summer growth, spring will come again. I just hope it’s not before years of winter.