New Normal

When I became a widow, a fellow widow introduced me to a term I’d never heard before: New Normal.

She said that after your spouse dies, you don’t go back to normal. You learn to live with the pain and go back to a new normal that includes the pain. I have expanded this understanding to include: if you had a bad relationship, you learn to live with happiness. I have learned to live with pain, but this is not about my relationship. This is about the United States of America and our President Elect.

Yesterday, Joe Biden was elected President with Kamala Harris as his Vice-President.

People are happy. People are breathing better. But we can’t allow this country to “go back to normal”. We must strive for a “new normal”.

Normal means police brutality.

Normal means a continuation of systemic racism.

Normal means health care is tied to work.

Normal means there are marginalized people.

Normal means women don’t have the same rights over their bodies as men.

Normal means some couples are not as free to marry as others.

Normal means some people are not as free to be themselves as others.

The list goes on.

We must fight to push past normal and find a new normal.

New normal means:

Abolish for profit prisons. Why the fuck are people making money off people in prisons?

Defund the police/change their role in our society. Get them more training. Get them to care about the people and protect them, not kill them.

Universal health care that covers ALL issues from dental, and eye care to mental health to plastic surgeries. Whether you want your tenth boob job or are getting reconstructive surgery, it should be covered. Why? Because if we start limiting some medical procedures, it opens the door for other procedures to be limited. I might expand on this another day, but there are other things to discuss.

Allow all people to be free to marry who they want. As long as it’s consenting adults, why does it matter?

Tax the rich. Don’t allow them to have offshore accounts and other ways of hiding money.

Abolish the electoral college. One person one vote.

Make voting an opt out, not an opt in.

Make mail in voting the norm. It allows people time to look up the policies on the ballot and allows them to look up the people on the ballot as well.

Make public education a PRIORITY.

Take big money out of politics. Stop gerrymandering. And for fucks sake, prosecute politicians that suppress voters.

This is not the end of the list. There are probably a lot more things that need to be said and changed, but this is where things start. We need a better country. We can make a better country. We need our politicians to understand that WE are in charge and WE want better. Hold them accountable. Always.