26/02/2023
My friends! Greetings from the miracle that is San Miguel de Allende Mexico. On every level it is one of the most magical places I have ever been. For all the things we think we know about Mexico - from all the stories we have been told - there are exponentially more inspirational things about this country that are left out.
I wonder about that.
On a separate note, but in an interesting way, related, in terms of "Stories" - and what we are told - and what we believe about what we are told - I am including a post I did to my newly created Substack Account - ostensibly about Marianne Williamson - but really about so much more. It seems to have resonated with people in ways I could not have anticipated.
While the piece does have a political context, it is not, political per se.
It is about access, gender, power (personal and otherwise) and the "stories" that can lift us up - or seek to shame us and keep us small.
All of us.
I am not sure how many of you are familiar with her - or that I have had a kind of long standing - interaction - with her.
We are not friends - but we have been in each others orbit for 30 years. She wrote a book in 1992 called "A Return to Love" that was a huge success. Oprah Winfrey fell in love with it - and her - and it became a major cultural touchstone in self-help.
I actually met Marianne before the book - when she was doing lectures - deep into the AIDS crisis in New York.
When I look back on the milestones that changed my life and set me on the path I am on now - sitting weekly at her empowering lectures is one of them.
I also volunteered at her AIDS support organization Manhattan Center for Living. It is so hard to put into words what life was like at that time.... the hopelessness for gay men, the lack of medication, or research - or concern from our fellow citizens - the cruelty, the loneliness, the isolation.
Gay men were dying. And we had nowhere to go.
There was GMHC, ACT Up, the Manhattan Center for Living, and Marianne Williamson's lectures - where she tried to find a way to move you beyond disease and death. To remind you that you are not your circumstances or your diagnosis.
At the Manhattan Center for Living - they did what they could. They created a community where those who were sick - and those who were afraid of getting sick - could gather. Knowing that the probability was high - the sick would die. And people you met on Monday - might be gone by the next month.
I cut vegetables for the whole foods program, answered phones to schedule free Qigong or meditation classes. For those who had lost their jobs because they were too ill to continue, I offered to teach word processing, so that on the days they did feel good, they could get temporary work in law firms.
I met Marianne at that time - such an enormous burden for her to carry. To kindle inspiration - and comfort - and hope - and “stiffen your spine” political action. There was no blueprint - no path forward. She and everyone at the Manhattan Center for Living made it up as they went along - doing whatever they could to unsettle the "victim" narrative... to make a space for people to feel powerful, and less alone, under the most horrific circumstances.
Those years changed my life.
And then of course the book "A Return to Love", and Oprah, and the spotlight of celebrity, for good and for not - and - finally - the AIDS cocktail… arriving not so much as a miracle - but as the result of a bloody hard fought battle. A war waged by the LGBTQ+ community and it allies against a country whose politicians abandoned them.
Years go by - and Marianne decided to run for President. To say she was not welcomed by the Democratic Party establishment - and all those who want to undermine people's possibilities and vision would be an understatement. It takes a lot to surprise me - but I was surprised in 2020 - in the ways she was - ignored, dismissed, mocked and minimized. Her vision, plans and policies - as well thought out as anyone else’s - left mostly unexplored - lost in a narrative deliberately created to keep her out of the political conversation.
I agreed with some of her policies - and not others.
She made mistakes and misstatements, as we all do. As every President and Presidential candidate has done. She owned them.
But I always supported her right to run and my belief that she had gifts to offer our country.
Her intentions are exactly what she says they are.
And she is considering another one in 2024.
As soon as the possibility went public, the spinning of the narrative web started again with the usual vitriol reserved for women - but others too - the unanointed - who have ideas to share - and ask for a seat at the table - "grifter" "lightweight" - the dismissal - the attempts to make small so they won’t be heard.
For me, what happened in 2020 - and what I can see happening again - the way Marianne was framed - is what my clients experience in their daily lives - the disinherited of all stripes. Framed and contained by stories about themselves, told by other people, that never really fit - or if they did once - they no longer do.
We are constantly navigating "power structures" in our lives... Parents, spouses, children, our neighbors, our community... our country... Stories about us surround us - all of us - but we don't often look critically at who is telling the story and why - and does it lift us up - or limit us? How complicit are we in the stories meant to keep us small - how complicit are we in creating and perpetuating stories handed to us that do the same to others?
Because we share so much here - you and I - it would have felt - disingenuous of me not to share this as well.
If you read it, as you read it, think less about politics and more about, the power of stories - in our lives - and in our country.
Best
Joe Bolduc
AND WHY IT SHOULD MATTER TO YOU
