Thank you for your service

Dear President Biden,

I hope your inbox has been flooded with well wishes, congratulations, and thank you’s today and that the flood doesn’t let up any time soon. I know you and Vice President Harris will be tested and challenged in ways we can’t anticipate at this point, but having reasonable, caring, logical, service-oriented people at the helm is already feeling restorative.

So thank you for taking on the myriad daunting tasks before you (and all of us, really) and for stepping into the breach left behind not only by your immediate predecessor, but by his GOP enablers and frankly, by the long-standing corrosion and corruption that allowed a Trumpian figure to access such power in the first place. There will be many things that many of us more liberal Americans feel compelled to push you on, but being able to trust that you and your administration are highly likely to stay committed to operating within the realm of reality, fact, and truth and that you all are highly likely to stay committed to public service is a crazy positive thing right now.

Basically, it’s wonderful to now be able to take in full, deep breaths and let them out in smooth cycles, no longer having those breaths tinged with sigh-qualities or incredibly conscious efforts to unstick my shoulders from my ears. I know we’d have to deal with the major confound of COVID-19, but it would be cool to see if the use of hypertensive medication changes appreciably in the population in the next six months relative to the last six months now that most of us won’t feel the need to brace in a fight/flight/freeze way every time we open a news site.

Before I let you go, I want to thank you for a couple of specific things from your inauguration earlier today. First, I’m really glad you paired your emphasis on unity with the very real need for accountability, truth, and dealing in facts. Personally, I wish you had called out the malign actors in Congress who challenged your election and put them on notice that dealing in such destructive lies won’t be tolerated. Hopefully they got the message and hopefully at least some of them will think better of persisting in their treachery AND will come clean with their supporters. I know this is quite unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future, but this is the very least that we need from them and I think we need to keep pushing for this.

Second, it was absolutely inspired to include Amanda Gorman in the program today. I can’t tell you how moving her poem and her delivery of her poem was for me personally – her invitation to us all to “be the light” was perfect. I also know two little girls here in Seattle who were absolutely transported by her and I know a young woman who usually isn’t very gushy who couldn’t say enough lovely things about everything Amanda Gorman. So thank you for bringing her to US all – so many of US are starved for such affirmations and elevations of Black brilliance.

And finally, while I’ll share more about this in future letters, please know that after 1,437 consecutive days of writing to President Trump it is an absolute joy to be writing to you now and to have that long, long chapter behind me. I will also say more about this in future letters, but as was my practice over that long haul with DJT, I will close with a loving-kindness meditation for you and for all of us to set positive intentions for our journey together.

May we all be safe as we explore this old/new landscape together.
May we be willing to turn over the rocks and peer into the crevices that need to see the light of day.
May we always remember to listen to our poets and seers and to cherish their strength and wisdom.
May we accept that we all have meaningful gifts to offer and may we risk offering them.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson