Reflections of the year so far

My year started in turmoil. The unexpected death of my father’s wife – they married when he was 80 years old – and my father going blind at 92 years of age. The many responsibilities that come with being the enduring power of attorney, trying to get him housed and cared for.

And then his death, five weeks after his wife’s.

The two of them left behind a mess of bad paperwork, an almost uninhabitable home, and unreconciled valuables to be sorted. Still. 

A huge goanna attacking our chickens, and the stress of this. A sick chicken. Her death. I howled in grief. 

My mother and my daughter moving. My partner choosing to move jobs after 11 years. And the stress of that.

A post menopausal body that was responding to stress by going far off the usual script. It was as if I were living in an alien body.

And a world of liars, cheats and evil men doing truly heinous crimes. Amplified. The greed and arrogance of the elite no longer hidden. Lived out loud. No boundaries. No rules of law. Just flagrant, unchecked power. And the cruelty. 

There was no choice other than to pause. To slow things down. Life was bending my knees to seek the ground.

I have watched as my anger has stirred, the vicious snake that has lived in the pit of my belly all my life. Always needing to be checked. My anger can serve, or destroy. Like all anger. 

I witnessed my fathers flatout refusal to engage in technology, his stubbornness, his capture by the propaganda of the old analogue fourth estate. 

Not me. Not me. I whisper. 

But it takes work. That same technology he refused seeks to turn all of us into hateful, angry people, fed lie after lie. Funnelled into a singular worldview. By design.

I watch as my anger festers. I must seize the reins.

It raises a legitimate question, for I do not want to become a festering mass of anger as I age.

How do you stay current with the affairs of the world, and not disintegrate into the monster that is ready to rule our lives? How to bear witness to truth and not fall into such grief that living becomes difficult?

How to embrace our humanity and desire all humans to be embraced as humans, and not get lost in the rage against those who desire to crush whole segments of humanity.

I do not have the answers. Yet I am begging the questions. 

Which is the best place to begin.

Published July 14th 2026. Photo taken July 14th 2026