Dear Family and Friends:

An open letter... feel free to share

Dear Family and Friends:

I love you.

Many of you made a decision at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, which has led to us no longer being involved in each other’s lives. In some cases, the distance was initiated by me. In other cases, the distance was mutually decided upon, after we butted heads about your choices or my choices. In many cases, there was no definitive event or time when we stopped communicating. It just happened. I don’t know exactly why, because we haven’t talked about it. I suspect it may have been because you thought I was a whack-job. Selfish. Delusional. Dangerous.

I loved you. It hurt to pull away. Or to be pushed away. Or to be ignored and cut off without ever having a single conversation.

We are now approaching the four-year anniversary of our breakup. I want you to know that I still love you. I hope you still love me. What we shared together, prior to 2020-2021 was real. It was meaningful. It was important to me, and I believe it was important to you - that bond we had.

In some cases, it was a long-standing bond that began before the earliest registry in my memory bank. I literally knew you from birth – mine or yours. In other cases, our connection was instant, and even though we had not been in each other’s lives for long, it seemed like we must have known each other before. Before either of us emerged on this plane in this life.

We’ve been through a lot. Seen a lot. Laughed a lot. Cried a lot. If anyone had told me five years ago that you and I would no longer be in each other’s lives at this point, I would have never believed it. Not for a second.

I need you to know that I am not angry. At least not anymore. I don’t blame you for the decisions you made. You didn’t have the experience I had. You knew about it. Some of you watched it happen. You never acknowledged it, but it didn’t happen to YOU. Or to YOUR child. And you have been told forever, repeatedly, that I was wrong. What I saw and what I experienced didn’t really happen. You’re still being told, “It didn’t really happen. It’s not really happening.” “Here’s the reason why…”

That is really powerful. And it’s been repeated over and over again for years now.

I understand how it feels to be told that what you know is happening… what you see with your own eyes, is not really happening. I have experienced it on a personal level in relationships. I have experienced it in my education when I tried to talk about subjects that were taboo. I experienced it in my career, when I was communicating with pediatricians about our mutual patients. I experienced it with some of you, well before 2020. And I still loved you because the connection I felt was stronger than any negative emotions I experienced when you discounted me. And that remained true throughout 2020.

I have lost more friends over the last six months than at any other time in my life. When I say I “lost” them, I mean they died. I also have more friends who are suffering with extremely serious medical conditions than at any other time in my life. A very small percentage of that is due to the fact that I am 64 - and older than I have been at any other time in my life - and so are my friends and family. Of the friends I have now who are sick, and those who have passed, nearly all of them are, or were younger than I am now.

It's becoming normalized.

I have lived through a time when people around me were not “moving on to the next place” in anywhere near the numbers they are now. I am 64. I have grandchildren who will never know anything different. This is all they have ever really known or will remember.

Many of you have grandchildren, too. Many of you don’t have grandchildren yet. You are looking at your children. What will they remember about what life was like prior to 2020?

How easy will they be to control because this is all they have ever known?

What are you doing to stop that from happening?

I know some of you are not doing well. I know some of you have experienced new onset physical, and in some cases, “mental” (the brain is not separate from the body, therefore “mental” disorders ARE physical) disorders or illness. I see. I hear. I want you to know that I care, and I would do anything possible to help you. I WILL do anything possible to help you, if you ask me to. Please. Ask me to.