To be honest I wish I had more energy today to express my love for women. But I don’t.

It’s not because I don’t love women — I do. I love the women in my life, and all the women I have yet to meet. But I can’t seem to mustard the energy for genuine gratitude; to pretend to be happy-go-lucky when the world is currently abusing its women on a global scale.

I don’t have the capacity to showcase feelings of gratitude when all I feel is grief and the anger that is beneath it.

There’s a lot of horrors going on in our world right now. Events that are so disturbing and confusing I don’t think many people would have predicted they’d ever happen. I didn’t at least.

This presidency in the States is unlike the others, it’s not even similar to the last Trump administration. The current U.S. president been able to instigate changes into legislation at such an unprecedented pace. These decisions defy all democratic and bureaucratic processes that it normally takes.

The administration hired a non-elected official (billionaire) to hold power within the government without consulting the people of the country.

The patriarchy is quite literally destroying itself and harming a lot of people within its own homicidal combustion.

The administration has threatened Canada and ordered over 280 million acres of land of old forest trees to be harvested for timber. It defunded school meal programs for children in need, calling it “weaving out fraudulent programming.” It humiliated President Zelensky in the name of power and greed, referred to the Gaza strip as prime real estate.

Today I do not feel joy for being a woman. I feel grief for being a woman. I don’t feel overwhelmed with love - I feel overwhelmed by grief.

What I’ve learned from the women in my life as of late (and what has really been getting me through the last while) is to not jump to conclusions prematurely. To not to see the worst in what is being presented in the news but rather to slowly gather all the information of events that have been occuring  and to remain within a place where we have not defined the trajectory of where the world is going.

In other words, it is not about making a finite meaning of the situation, but giving the world events enough space before declaring doomsday. We must place ourselves at a proximity (if able/as much as we can) from all that has been going on. As such, we give ourselves sufficient psychological space to stay resourced, regulated, and centred in our sovereignty. Positioning yourself in a stance where you have not yet defined the world as doomed, but rather seeing  the potentiality for world societies to still bloom.

I encourage to not make meaning of the world and where it is heading - instead, allow yourself to see what else is being birthed adjacent and in response to its horrors.

In response to the Trump administration coming into power, there has been immense amount of resistance, grassroots initiatives, and organizing facilitated by some of the most incredible people. Not to mention all of the revolutionary art that is being created as an act of opposition.

I have witnessed so many people choosing to respond with kindness, generosity, and care as opposed to violence. People are using their anger to be kinder - and that is the world I plan to be part of.

Today I may not be sharing an explicit and heartfelt article about my love for women. Though  paradoxically in many ways that’s exactly what this article was driven by: the love that I have for women and the love for all those whom have experienced being othered.

To that effect, I am sharing the grief that I have for all women and for this world. This grief restricted me from posting about how much I love women without acknowledging the pain, anger and the very grief itself, beneath the love.

In reality, love and grief are actually one in the same, as grief and love are inherently and undeniably connected. We can only grieve if we know how to love - and we can only love if we know how to grieve. Right now I feel am immense amount of grief.

I wish I could’ve just written an article about how I love women today, but that felt utterly incomplete and inauthentic with where we are on a global scale —  politically, socially, environmentally, and  economically.

Trump is not a threat isolated to the states but affects politics and geopolitics across the globe. I love women but am burdened by grief with the current state of the world. I hold hope for the world we are yet to know and those participating in the re-constructing of a reality where we prioritize harmony over harm.