Oh Hi.

This is the year we learn what it’s like to live with fear as a backdrop.

It feels right now like outside the walls of my home, the world is burning down. Since I last wrote, Coronavirus has invaded the planet and shows no signs of relenting. More than a hundred thousand people have died from the virus in the United States alone. Our nation endured a weeks-long lockdown… and while case numbers and deaths and hospitalizations went down, they’ve all gone right back up again now that businesses are reopening, especially in the South and Midwest. Tennessee’s numbers are worse than ever before, making all the sacrifices we made in order to contain the virus seem completely worthless.

With all this going on, it hasn’t taken much to send an already uneasy nation over the edge. In Minneapolis, a black man named George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer, igniting worldwide protests, some of which led to rioting, vandalism, and looting. Our president has only fueled the flames of terror and unrest, insulting and taunting anyone who disagrees with him and refusing to wear a mask, thereby politicizing the one tool we all have to stop the virus in its tracks. As a nation, we are mired in fear and uncertainty over the pandemic, the economy, the police system, our jobs, our finances, our families, our schools. And experts are predicting things will only get worse.

Is it any wonder I haven’t written a blog post in a while?

In the beginning, I honestly thought this crisis might just be what it took to bring our fractured nation together  — We could work as a united front to beat back this thing, we could help and protect each other, we could sacrifice, we could be relentlessly kind when the chips were down. Instead, we’ve been ripped further apart, divided in every possible way… and so much of it is playing out on social media, our window to the world. Democrats are pitted against Republicans. Black Lives Matter versus All Lives Matter. Mask wearers against people refusing to wear masks. Nasty comments are rampant and negativity abounds. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been shocked by some of the things written by acquaintances and people I once respected. I have always enjoyed having a list of Facebook friends of all beliefs and backgrounds and I’ve tried to at least understand where others are coming from when I don’t agree with them — but I’ve hit the ‘unfriend’ button over the last few weeks like never before, because people’s true colors are coming out and some are, indeed, shockingly intolerable and unacceptable.

I have strong opinions just like everyone else out there, but I haven’t shared them much on social media because I’ve felt particularly tender and sad over the last few months and because I’ve been dealing with my own significant-to-me struggles that all of us inevitably are facing during this time. I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with the potential of a big blast of negativity fired my way. But after much thought and reflection, after a whole lot of reading and listening and processing and wondering whether I really needed to insert myself into the conversation, it has become very clear to me that if you’re interested, you really should know exactly where I stand.

Consider this your friendly warning that I’m going to be sharing my honest thoughts and opinions here for a while, not because I think the world needs to hear what I have to say, but because I don’t want even one person out there to mistake my silence as tacit agreement with things going on right now that are, frankly, despicable and wrong.

I want to share more lighthearted things here, too — weekend getaways that allow for social distancing, recipes I’ve tried and loved over the last couple of months, books I’ve read, great TV shows and movies we’ve watched — but I can’t write these kinds of posts without also acknowledging here that things aren’t right in our world, and I’m not going to pretend like they are.

And so I’m officially declaring an end to my writing hiatus. Deep breaths. Let’s do this.