I can no longer abide venom or anger on either side politically.  I will not let fear and outrage enter my body when I read the news or social media posts.  I will no longer label anyone as racist, sexist, xenophobic, nationalistic, ignorant, or ill-informed. I will not shame or alienate anyone on social media.  I will look at every human being on the face of the earth as my brother and sister, and I will do what I have done my entire career.  I will embody light and truth.  I will educate and speak my truth from a place of love and light no matter what kind of darkness I encounter in this world.

As Martin Luther King stated, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

No Fear:  I will be a teacher with a microphone and megaphone in our world so that I can reach beyond the walls of my classrooms.  Though I might take you to church in a few lectures, you will know that I respect you and want the best for you.  I don’t want you to live in fear of others, so I will not live in fear of you.

What do I stand for?  I stand for love, deep compassion, empathy, unity, community, wellness, equality, child-like joy, authenticity, freedom, passion, intellectual curiosity, truth, beauty, safety, and healing.

I stand for reverence and deep honor of Mother Earth so that we all might have clean air, water, unpolluted food, and organic, affordable produce.  The Native Americans have much to teach us, and I stand with Standing Rock.

I stand for taking care of all life from the plants we eat to the darling kids in Head Start programs to the college students graduating and entering the work force to the retirees.  I honor the accomplishments and beauty of disabled children as much as the star athletes. I love the kids from the country as much as I love the immigrants who just arrived on our shores and at our airports. I love them all, and I want you to see the light and divinity in everyone.  Though I am more of a Democrat than a Republican, I am mostly an independent lightworker.

I will speak loudly for all the young women who come through my classrooms to show them that sexism, misogyny, and narcissism will not crush them or their dreams.  I speak to show certain males that certain behaviors of our president will not be normalized.  For example, this man at a Pensacola Women’s March needs reeducation.  Don’t turn away from him.  Don’t criticize women for marching.  Ask the women why they marched, and keep this man’s image in your mind because he exists and needs a transformation whether he is a prankster, a rapist, or a future shooter.

I will write letters, march, and do whatever is necessary for all the students I have known who have faced staggering health issues and deserve health care no matter their economic background, sex, or mental illness.

After all, I might not have died on that operating table had I gone into surgery earlier, and I would have gone into surgery earlier if I had health insurance. I overheard a nurse confirm this.  I suffered so that others might have an easier path.  My gay and lesbian friends fought for equality because they know and I know that no loving couple should ever fear their loved ones will be torn from their grasp.

I love all my students, and I speak in praise of all of my students including Christian gay, white males; brilliant, teenage Muslim girls who want to be doctors; kind, respectful, smart children of undocumented workers; Jewish poets; single mothers of all races and nationalities, veterans who are conservative and veterans who are liberal.  I allow every voice to speak and write their truths.  My classroom is a classroom of tolerance and free-speech.  I hang a flag on my wall because my father was a veteran.  I don’t burn flags, but I burn fake news to the ground in this post-truth reality; I know he’d be proud.

Pro-Life and Pro-Innocence:  I will shout into my microphone all the love I have in my heart for the many young men and women I’ve met in my lifetime. I want to protect all of the elementary, junior high, high school, and college students.  I want to protect the six-year-old girl who is molested and doesn’t have the voice to tell her family what happened as much as I want to protect the fourteen-year-old teenager who wore a miniskirt to her first party and was raped by three boys.  Though I care about the boys who raped her, I want them to face appropriate consequences for their actions.  I want to live in a world where men and boys see that violence and destruction of innocence will not be tolerated.

More than that, I want men and boys to honor women and to protect the innocence of life around them.  We have to first acknowledge that there is a problem with misogyny and racism because these attitudes lead to violence.   Men who are protectors are worth their weight in gold.

I pray for the fifteen-year-old girl who was raped by her father while her mother only asked him to pay for their daughter’s counseling. I wish that man had served time for such a grave offense and was not allowed around other teenagers without supervision.  I wish that this young woman knew her true value and brilliance.  I wish that she didn’t feel that she had to drown her trauma in drugs and alcohol, only to be revictimzed by many men.

My personal suffering has become a thread tying me to countless other survivors so that I might show them how to heal a little quicker than I healed. If you have one-fourth the compassion that I have, you too would hold this young woman in your heart whether she chose to get an abortion or to have a child or made both choices at different times.  She is one of the many lives that I serve and honor.

I will shout into my megaphone because I care for the women in their twenties who were raped by exes, beat up by boyfriends, or assaulted by friends of the family.  I want better community services for students I have known who were assaulted by family members and then ended up on the streets.  They deserve a chance at success, and I do my best to make sure they get that chance.  I want better services for all the veterans who have come through my classrooms.  I care about all the young men who were raped by another man when they were only five, seven, or eight.  These are similar stories to the stories of countless students of mine, and I pray for them every day.

I stand at my microphone for the lives of all the many children waiting to be adopted in this country and other countries.  I cry for my fellow human beings as much as I cry for animals in shelters.  I pray for the children enslaved in human trafficking and the children starving to death or injured from the destruction of war and violence.  If we can work together to create a world free from abuse, rape, human trafficking, war, hunger, and violence, we can also start creating amazing communities where single women can go and receive free health care and education during their pregnancies.  When all children are safe and loved, we will be living in a pro-life world.

I will continue to broadcast my message about how important it is to end human trafficking, war, hunger, and all abuse of innocence because we have real work cut out for us.  And in the face of this light and love, if you are still focused on birth and fetuses, I ask you to please adopt children who are here right now, dying for your love.  Sign up to foster children who need you.  Make that financial sacrifice.

If enough of you do this in mass, abortion rates will decrease.  Please realize that most men, even highly conservative ones, will chuckle and admit that if they could get pregnant after a one night stand or night when they drank too much, they would want the abortion pill available over the counter.  Their tone changes when they consider abortion and women’s rights.  This issue is obviously about control over women, and I will shout repeatedly that men would not tolerate this kind of control over their bodies and lives. I will say this on loop this until it begins to sink in to your consciousness.

I will get out my microphone and remind you to put pressure on all work environments to provide free health care and day care, so that abortion rates will go down.  This will be a much better, loving way to address the abortion issue.  I am for the success of women as much as for the success of men.  One does not cancel out the other.  It never has.  As long as women are abused, assaulted, raped, and stalked at alarming rates, we need to focus on their protection.

I live to protect the innocent and to heal the wounded.  That is the meaning of my life.  Stand in my way of working to heal this world, and I will gather a crowd of loving human beings together, and we will counter all hate and darkness with a brilliant light that cannot be denied. God bless the marches!   God bless our right to protest with love.  God bless us all in every country and every place in this world.  I’m here to make the world great in a way that it never has been and that starts with changing the minds of many of my fellow Americans.

I realize this article probably hasn’t reached who it needs to reach, but I am just now getting warmed up.  Give me a chance, and give love a chance.

•  Special thanks to spiritual teachers like Marianne Williamson and Matt Kahn for reminding me to focus on love and what I stand for and not give in to fear.