Hope in the darkest of times

Here’s my third-in-a-row blog post about things that make me happy. I think that the commitment I made to write about happiness flipped a switch in my mind because I no longer come across articles about the correlation between childhood abuse and adult illness. They are still out there, but my spare-time Googling is taking me to different, more random places.

However, I can’t resist sharing one last one item in the Ritual Abuse and Illness series. Stress is a risk factor for macular degeneration, which I have. When have I ever not been stressed? Maybe for a little while at the beginning of my life. Being tortured, stuffing the memory of being tortured, and remembering being tortured are all highly stressful.

On the subject of macular degeneration, I have found a resource that is making me very happy indeed. Health Unlocked is a British non-profit that supplies support and resources to people with some 200 different medical conditions. The macular degeneration group has, at present count, 2,762 members. They have been very welcoming and helpful to me, and I have learned things my doctor never thought to tell me. If any of you are dealing with MD, here is the link. https://healthunlocked.com/macularsociety

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I subscribe to Leo Notenboom’s newsletter “Not All News Is Bad (A Daily Antidote to Everything Else)” https://notallnewsisbad.com/about/

A recent post, “99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2020,” made me happy in 99 different ways. Leo’s source is https://futurecrun.ch/99-good-news-2020. Check it out!

Future Crunch (https://futurecrun.ch) is a team of science communicators based in Melbourne, Australia. They curate stories of human progress and support small charities using science and technology to make the world a better place. More than 40,000 people subscribe to their free fortnightly email newsletter.

Picking #94 at random, I found that we won some major battles against oil and gas projects, including the Keystone XL pipeline. This is near to my heart because I used to have a standing physical therapy appointment and, on my way there, I always listened to a First Nations broadcast. Every week it reported on protests against the Keystone XL pipeline by a coalition of many tribes from both Canada and the United States. I was saddened by how badly they were treated but heartened by how resolute they remained week after week. It paid off!

A little Googling taught me that the Supreme Court ruled this summer that the Keystone XL pipeline must abide by the environmental review process and that Biden promised to rescind the permits for the project.

Samples of other stories:

Reforestation has given the UK more forests than existed in the Middle Ages, and they are adding still more;

Sleeping sickness is eliminated in Togo, trachoma is eliminated in Myanmar, and all of Africa is free of polio. Since 2000, 7.6 million malaria deaths and 60 million tuberculosis deaths were averted globally;

The most recent US crime data shows that violent crime in the United States decreased by 0.5% last year, the third consecutive year of declines, and property crime dropped by 4.1%, the 17th consecutive year of declines.

Here is the introduction to “99 Good News Stories From 2020 You Probably Didn’t Hear About.”

“Even during the darkest of times, there’s been hope.

“If we want more people to devote their energy to making progress against large global problems, we should make sure that more people know that it is possible to make progress against such problems.

“There’s been so much loss, grief and heartbreak in 2020 that it feels almost wrong to be compiling our traditional annual list of good news. Things can and do fall apart, and this year it felt like they really did.

Amazing as it may seem however, there were also big wins for conservation, living standards, peace, safety and human rights, clean energy, and yes, even global health. The reason you didn’t hear about them is because good news doesn’t sell advertisements or generate clicks, and that was more true in 2020 than ever before.

“Progress isn’t a straight line and it doesn’t happen by magic. It depends on people who, even during the darkest of times, believe that it’s possible to make the world a better place and who are willing to roll up their sleeves to do the work, even when the cameras aren’t watching. These are their stories, and off the back of a horrible year, we think it’s more important than ever to celebrate them. We hope you agree.”

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Upcoming Holidays

January
1/1 New Year’s Day
1/6 (?) Epiphany/Three Kings’ Day
1/7 St Winebald’s Day
1/13 Satanic New Year
1/17 Feast of Fools/Old Twelfth Night/Satanic and demon revels
1/18 (?) Martin Luther King Jr. Day
1/20 (?) St. Agnes’ Eve
1/28 Full moon

February
2/2 Candlemas/Imbolc/Satanic Revels
2/12 (?) Lincoln’s Birthday
2/14 Valentine’s Day
2/15 (?) Presidents’ Day/Washington’s birthday
2/16 Shrove Tuesday/ Mardi Gras
2/17 Ash Wednesday/beginning of Lent
2/25 Walpurgis Day
2/27 Full Moon

March
3/1 St David’s Day (patron saint of Wales)
3/1 St. Eichstadt’s Day
3/17 St. Patrick’s Day (patron saint of Ireland)
3/21 Spring Equinox
3/24 Feast of the Beast/Bride of Satan
3/28 Full Moon
3/28 Palm Sunday

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups
1/12 Birth of both Rosenberg and Goering, Nazi Leaders in WWII
1/28 Tu Bishvat/Tu B’Shevat (Jewish celebration of spring)
1/30 Hitler named Chancellor of Germany
2/26 Purim (Deliverance of the Jewish people from Haman in Persia)
3/28 – 4/4 Passover/Pesach (Deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt)

(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices, and the equinoxes.)

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I have organized a ZOOM group of survivors whose systems are polyfragmented, or partially so. If you would like to join, contact me through the comments section or write rahome@ra-info.org

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Upcoming Holidays

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