Author: Sharron Burnett

Why do we remember horrible moments in history or in our lives? Why don’t we just move forward from such times rather than thinking of them over and over again? What is the point of reopening wounds? What do we hope to get out of telling our children about people or events that seemingly have little meaning for them? Why do we relive the painful times of our past?

I know that many people are quite stoic about the horrors of life that come their way. They believe that it does little good to keep talking or worrying about things over which they have no control. For them life happens and they deal with it. Then it is time to move on and never look back. They may have learned from the situation but they see little point in analyzing or even remembering the most difficult times of history. 

I suppose that there is some merit in bravely moving forward while never looking back. I think that people like me do in fact sometimes over analyze and talk about situations to the point of appearing to be obsessed. I have learned that my thinking out loud about the ways we humans have interacted with each other and the world is tedious for some of my fellow travelers. I know that I often over think things and latch on to concerns that I will never be able to fully tackle. I am an observer, thinker and planner by nature. I have the ability to see aspects of the past, present and future as an unbroken thread that connects us all. Much of what is happening today or will happen tomorrow depends on what has happened in the past. 

I become pensive at the beginning of each summer because I never fail to think upon my father’s death in the long ago. It’s been sixty three years since his passing but he feels as much alive today as he did back then. I no longer fret over the might have beens had he lived, but I honor the memory of the man that he was. Somehow his spirit has managed to impact me year after year because my mother kept him alive as she openly and lovingly reminded me and my brothers of the kind of person he was.

I was lucky enough to vividly recall the essence of my father so I know that my mother did not exaggerate his tremendous effect on our family. My aunts and uncles and cousins reiterated their own admiration and even awe for him. Even as he was dead and gone he seemed sometimes alive, most especially at this time of year when I think back to the day of his death which is etched so clearly in my mind. 

I knew on that day of long ago how loved I was. My extended family encircled me and my mother and brothers and never dwindled their devotion to us until the days when they died. Our parish priest demonstrated the kindness of a truly Christian person when he visited us in our grief. So too did so many people of my faith who watched over our little family and continue their vigilance to this very day. My father’s music and books and papers that he had written told me what I needed to know about him. I also learned from him the importance of studying history and analyzing both its goodness and its evil. I remember him passionately discussing such things with my grandfather and with his friends. A cousin told me that he also dialogued with him.  

I was taught by my father and my mother and my teachers to remember and to think. My education into adulthood was influenced by the questions that the adults posed to me. I honored the past efforts of humanity while also understanding that I did not diminish their worth by taking note of the mistakes that they made as well. Just as I was taught to do, I have spent my life analyzing situations, sometimes admittedly obsessively, but always with the intent to do better, to be better. 

One of the last conversations that I had with my father was a difficult one. He had noticed that I was slacking off, not focusing my full attention on learning. He challenged me to focus on the joy of making a concerted effort to improve myself. He urged me to read often and to contemplate the world from differing points of view. His advice to eight year old me was very adult, but I totally understood what he was trying to convey. I knew that I was not fully appreciating the freedom and joy that comes from learning in the ways that he did. I would take his lecture to heart and become curious for the rest of my life. 

I find so much pleasure in evolving through continuous education. I ask many questions and seek answers daily. It is not a tiresome or frightening experience but one that is incredibly gratifying. I look at the past and realize how humans have stared into the universe with wonder from the beginning of time. I know that looking back is fine and even important because we learn from what people have tried before. Nonetheless. ultimately our goal is to remember while moving ever forward.    

In the early days of my career as a teacher paddling students was still legal and I hated the process. I was never spanked by my mother or father and I spared the rod with my two daughters. I believe that children can learn how to be good people without violent punishment. Still, there were a few times when I was tasked with disciplining one of my students by spanking with a wooden paddle. It was the most uncomfortable thing I have ever done and in retrospect I should have refused to do so. Instead I half-heartedly tapped on the backsides of the couple of boys whose infractions had merited strong punishment. Needless to say, my flimsy attempts at corporal punishment were met more with laughter than contrition. 

I found myself creating ways to work with my students with reason and example rather than answering their violence with my own. I rarely referred a child to the office lest I be commanded to carry out the ruling of swatting them. I wasn’t a pushover in creating consequences for wayward deeds, but I eschewed corporal punishment whenever possible. It was a great relief to me when the outmoded process was deemed illegal and I no longer had to lift my hand against a child. 

I am mostly a gentle soul although my words sometimes sting, a trait that I always regret. It worries me that our present day society seems so numb to violence that it views threats and hateful jabs as just a normal aspect of our human natures. I am particularly uncomfortable with the use of dangerous and ugly words against each other that have seemingly become so common place. So many of the filters that we once used to spare the feelings of the people around us have been removed making verbal bullying a way of life. Little wonder that so many of our children are depressed and feeling so unsure of themselves. 

I am quite fortunate in being able to say that I have only rarely been on the bad end of verbal violence and have never had to endure physical assaults from anyone. My parents were loving people with each other and with me and my brothers. I remember only one time when my father became so angry about something that my mother said that he made a hole in the wall with his fist. He calmed down immediately and apologized for his infraction but such things were so rare in my experience that I remember that incident to this day. 

My mother was a gentle soul whose heart was focused on kindness. When she became ill with bipolar disorder she would sometimes say horrible things which were so unlike her. I had to learn to ignore the voice of her illness and use her words instead to know that she was in need of help. While the sting of their ugliness hurt for a second, I always new that they did not represent who she was when she was well. 

Only one time did a classmate bully me when I was in high school. I was running for school secretary and as part of my campaign had worked on flyers that I hoped might tempt my fellow students to vote for me. As I handed one of my campaign photos to a boy in my class he became vicious. He asked me why I would think that anyone in their right mind would vote for me because I was ugly and nobody liked me. I was stunned and shook a bit in fright as he tore the flyer into pieces and then stomped on them with disgust. The anger on his face made me fear that he might be about to hit me, but instead he simply walked away shaking his head leaving me to wonder what I might possibly have done to him to instill such fierce dislike. 

I got over the incident quickly. I barely knew this young man and so I realized that he had no real basis for his attacks. Nonetheless like most teens I did wonder just a bit if I was somehow off-putting to the people around. I tried to smile a bit more and think a bit less about myself as my mother had often counseled me to do. She was a firm believer that most insults arose from misunderstandings rather than actual dislike. She assured me that something else had been bothering that boy on that day and that I had just taken the knocks of his inner anger. 

As an educator I witnessed cruelty between immature students but never at the level that it seems to be in the present time. Ugliness appears to have become a kind of disease in which even adults in leadership roles express their thoughts quite egregiously. The use of threats is more and more common. It is difficult to simply ignore the angry language as someone just having a bad day, especially when for some people every single day is a bad day. 

When do we finally rise up together to condemn the physical and emotional violence that grows around us like disease in a petrie dish? How can we just accept brutal imagery as normal? Why are we pretending that vile comments are just part of our freedom to speak whatever comes to mind? Do we not understand that repetition of angry and ugly ideas more often than not leads to roiling anger that ultimately hurts far more than just feelings? What kind of message are we sending to our children when we accept violence as just an aspect of life over which we have no control? Why are we not turning our backs on so called leaders who rant with venomous words? Why aren’t we calling such people to task?

I do not advocate for either physical or emotional violence. We have enough abuse, crimes and wars to endure without also allowing the outright ugliness of bullying to seep into every corner of our existence. We have made taunts and threats normal by not repudiating those who would use them. History has shown us that following the bullies of the world never works out as well as we may have thought. It’s long past time that we let it be known that we will not tolerate such abuse from anyone, most especially those vying to lead us. Violence only begets more violence. it’s time we once again value a world in which those who threaten and divide us are voted out. Together we can do this and we don’t need a paddle or vile words to make it happen. 

I have a cousin who enjoys writing just as I do. She has actually turned her tales into books that have been embraced by a faithful following of readers who enjoy her stories of romance. She deals in fiction. I deal with life as it is for me and the people that I know. Opening my heart for all the world to see is sometimes dangerous because there will always be people who never quite understand why I think and feel the way I do. 

Each of us reacts to life differently. Thus if I lean a particular way politically or choose a certain way to do things I run the risk of alienating someone with my honesty about my likes and dislikes. If I had created a character to speak my words or spread my message I suspect that I would win more friends and influence more people. Fiction is a powerful vehicle for touching hearts and minds. The make believe world if composed well creates the possibility of opening honest discussions without the element of judgement. 

I sometimes wonder if I should take a page from my cousin’s playbook and let some beloved character speak my words rather than ascribing them to myself. I run the risk of sounding preachy or like a broken record but a well crafted heroine can be both humanly flawed and beloved at the same time. Somehow we tend to be much more forgiving of an invented person who makes mistakes or has quirks than we are of real people who admit to their foibles and failings. Memoirs can so easily be misunderstood. 

I understand that when I use real people and actual events to express or illustrate my feelings I run the risk of alienating those who overlay their own experiences onto my thoughts. Because I am real, not make believe, they are more likely to experience deeper connections that may or may not include the actual intent of what I have written. In fact I have learned in my years as a blogger that many people think that my honest assessments would best be left unspoken. They feel uncomfortable reading personal details of my life or my thoughts. They are of the mind that some things should never be openly discussed. They believe that there is something quite selfish about airing emotions in public. 

I do not deny that they may be right. I sometimes rewrite sentences or paragraphs lest they make someone who reads them feel uncomfortable. Words on a page are so permanent and they do not have a two way connection that allows me to explain when “that is not what I meant at all.” 

I have lost the following of some of the people who at first enthusiastically encouraged me to write. In the earliest days I was fearful of being honest so I forged lighthearted essays designed to make people feel good. I hid pain in comedy and only exposed the good parts of my journey through life. I did not want to reveal my feet of clay or the wounds on my heart. I was afraid of being misjudged and so I held back my deepest fears and cloaked my beliefs in lighthearted scenarios. I suppose that in some ways I was creating fiction without even realizing it. 

I have always been drawn to biographies but even more charmed by autobiographies in which famous people tell their life stories with transparency. As a child I read about the saints, realizing that even in my youth I preferred to emulate the souls who were the most imperfect. I found them to be more real and likable because I knew that I was certainly never going to be thought of as a saint. The thoughts rolling through my head seemed to insure that I was far from reaching perfection. I literally celebrated when I learned that Mother Teresa was often filled with doubt and anger. Her imperfections made her more dear to me. She was one of us, an imperfect human with all that being so implies. 

I suspect that we each carry different ideas about how we open we should be. I do understand those who feel uncomfortable with total honesty. It can indeed sometimes sound whiny or even like a betrayal. Knowing how much to reveal and how to portray the most difficult situations can be tricky in nonfiction whereas a fictional character can generally carry the same messages with far less impunity.

I read Harry Windsor’s autobiography with an open mind. What I discerned from his tell all story was that he had been traumatized by the death of his beloved mother. His suffering defined so many of his missteps and unfortunate behaviors for much of his youth and early adult years. In telling his story I believe that he was attempting to show us how unlike a fairytale his life as a prince had been. He was imperfect and so were the people around him but many of them insisted on continuing to pretend. I think he realized that all of the pomp and circumstance and stifling of truth that defined royalty had destroyed his mother. His brutally honest telling of his story was in many ways a homage to her that some of us embraced while others viewed him as a traitor. That is the dilemma that almost always happens whenever anyone steps forward to reveal their personal truths. 

I love people and generally accept them as they are. I sometimes forget that not everyone is as generous in their judgements. Nonetheless my goal in writing as I do is to touch hearts. If I manage to do that now and again I am satisfied. I have grown too old to worry about what others may think of me. I no longer want to hide the person that I am nor do I wish to engage in arguments about what I believe. I am very much of the mind that we each have so much value along with so many shortcomings. This is the natural way of life. Perhaps if we were all more willing to quietly talk to each other and support each other’s ways of coping with an often hostile world life would be better for everyone. I will continue to share my wins and my losses while knowing that I will probably be judged. It is my way of attempting to help our wounded world. I don’t want to pretend to be anything other than who I am.

I enjoyed being a student and I loved being a teacher, but I have always looked forward to the summer break. I’ve used those months to relax and ready myself for the big push that starts again in early August. I spend my days reading and sometimes being lucky enough to travel. I take classes to hone my skills or simply to learn something that I never before knew. 

Some summers have been difficult like the one right after my father died which is still a blur in my mind. Then there was the summer of nineteen sixty eight when the United States seemed to be on fire with protests over the war in Vietnam and civil rights. A few years later my husband, Mike, spent the summer in the hospital receiving chemotherapy for blastomycosis, a strange fungal disease that he mysteriously picked up somewhere somehow. There was also the summer of gasoline shortages and long lines at service stations when we bravely took a trip to Colorado on a wing and a prayer, hoping that we would not be stranded without fuel. Most recently there was the summer of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd that ignited the indignation of Americans across the nation during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic. 

I suspect that we are headed into a long hot and possibly unstable summer again this year. A presidential election is on the horizon and tempers are seething over a variety of issues. I worry that those same feelings will boil over as the long days inch toward the party conventions. I have witnessed the turmoil in the past and I hope against hope that we will not endure such difficulties again, but the signs are pointing to trouble. 

The divisions among us seem to grow ever wider. In fact I sense that there are purposeful efforts to drive us apart by politicians hungering for power. Much like the people in Russia, China, Israel,  and Palestine, we are presently pawns in a high stakes game of political intrigue that is less about our individual welfare and more about determining who will seize power. There will be brave souls who attempt to exercise their freedom of speech in the United States, but ultimately it will be our individual votes here in America that determine what the direction of our nation will be in the next four years and for many years to follow. 

The effect of the lawmakers we choose will be present long after they leave office. The tone of the country is much like the growth of a child. It takes place over time, not in a single moment. What we are witnessing today came to be from the influence of change over decades. It would be wise for us to consider how we want our country to be in the future because the laws of the moment will affect our children and grandchildren for years to come. 

Each of us has every right to voice our opinions, at least for now. We must nevertheless always be vigilant in protecting those rights lest any person or group attempts to use force or punishment to keep alternate ideas silenced. Fascism takes hold quietly and slowly in the beginning and then grows exponentially until people find themselves locked into a prison of silence and fear. We must eschew anyone who tells us of plans to squelch those with whom they do not agree. Promises to get even or force feed one point of view should be viewed as a grave danger to all of us. 

I love the United States of America warts and all, but this does not mean that I am afraid or unwilling to speak of the things that are wrong, shortsighted, or unjust. Ours has been an incremental progression to a fairer way of living, but at times we revert to old habits which may seem to protect us but actually hurt innocents. Progress in our way of governing should not be viewed as being synonymous with surrendering our rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When we widen of the scope of who gets those things we strengthen, not weaken, the dream of our founding fathers.

 Innovation and enlightenment has been at the heart of the United States at the same time that we built on the backs of slaves and the disenfranchisement of women. It took us awhile to rectify the flaws in our democratic republic and we shed blood in the process. Surely we have advanced far enough to be wary of those who would set our country back to a time when minorities were ruled by a small group of powerful men. Our nation is at its best when we welcome and provide opportunities for everyone. It is strongest when we listen to the many voices and many ideas that flourish in a free society. 

I hope that we use this long hot summer to demonstrate the incredible openness and attentiveness of this nation. It should be a time to value our freedoms and to embrace leaders of integrity and unity in moving our great political experiment forward. I will be watching and hoping that we somehow manage to find what is best about us for surely we are on the brink of disaster if we cannot find a way to heal our wounds and move forward together and without rancor. I fear an unsettling time. I hope that I am wrong. 

I have to admit to enjoying the luxury of being thin for most of my life without any effort on my part. When I was a teen I was actually what most people would have called “skinny.” I hated wearing shorts and bathing suits because I was so lanky and devoid of even a scintilla of cellulite. I ate like everyone else but extra weight never came. I was able to binge on milkshakes and fried chicken and still maintain my Twiggy-like appearance. Clothes hung on me like I was a coat hanger in spite of no effort on my part to maintain my lightweight figure. 

Once I had my first child I actually went slightly over one hundred pounds and looked better than ever, but I changed nothing to get that way. My body just seemed to be attuned to being slim. It was a state of being that I totally enjoyed as I ate whatever I wanted whenever I desired it. I was able to binge on Tex-Mex meals and pizza whenever I wished and keep my tiny figure. It was simply who I was and how I was born, not something that I worked to maintain. 

Daughter number two added a few more pounds to my overall weight but I was still wearing small sized clothing and with my long waist and height of five six and a half I felt confident in my appearance. I enjoyed my seemingly weightless lifestyle until my fortieth birthday when consuming a bit too much birthday cake and ice cream pushed up the numbers on my bathroom scale and made my clothes feel a bit too tight. After awhile I even had to go up a size in my clothing, but I was still in the low numbers deemed to by society to be attractive. 

As I grew older I literally began to shrink due to my osteoporosis and I remember crying my doctor showed me that I was only five foot four. As my height decreased my girth grew larger. I went up another size and actually began to panic and feel shame. It was then that I began to understand the pressures that our society place on people to maintain the body of a young athlete. I was only able to keep from growing ever wider by religiously counting my calories and keeping track of how much exercise I do each day. It was a brutal process that took so much so joy and freedom out of my life. It was also a time when I grew more and more understanding of those who had never been blessed with the kind of runaway metabolism that I had enjoyed for most of my life. I began to understand that weight or lack of it often has very little to do with a person’s lifestyle and everything to do with how well their body is working for them. 

Our society does a great deal of body shaming. Those who sport a slim physique are often thought to be not just more attractive but more intelligent and reliable than their heavier peers. Some people have to work hard to maintain a healthy weight but many, like I once was, do little or nothing to look like the world thinks we should all be. I learned that my brothers were not so fortunate. They related to me how they were hungry twenty four seven and never were able to satiate that feeling. One of my daughters would later describe the same kind of struggle to get the satisfactory relationship with food that just happened naturally for me. 

I saw my own mother go from a small size to the pluses when she began taking medication for her bipolar disorder. I often suspected that her tendency to stop taking the pills was directly related to her desire to be thin again. In her and my brothers and my daughter I saw people who were not gluttons, but rather those whose bodies were reacting to the normal act of eating in disturbing ways. I knew that they were trying every single day to rectify the tendencies of their systems to pack on pounds that they strove to remove. 

On the other hand I watched my father-in-law keeping pace with the biggest eaters in town and never adding a single pound. He eats more calories at breakfast than most of us consume all day long. Between meals he drinks protein supplements and ends his days with wine, cheese, crackers, a large dinner and dessert. He exercise but no more than most people do just taking care of daily chores. He remains as lightweight as he was when he was twenty five years old. He likes to think that it is because of his lifestyle but I have observed that it is mostly because his body is attuned to properly using the fuel he provides it without leaving fat behind. 

The fact is that we humans glorify images of what we decide is beautiful. For some achieving that state takes little more than being born. For others it is a lifelong battle that is painful and mysteriously difficult. I have witnessed that phenomenon both as a thin woman and one who has to be a bit more careful. In my own life I have realized that we are not all alike in how our brains tell us whether or not we need to eat. 

Doctors now know that there are hormones emanating from the brain that send messages telling us that our bodies are full and we can stop fueling them with food. Such systems operate on a continuum from sending that message too soon, resulting in an unhealthy thinness, or hardly ever sending the good news that the body has sufficient food. Those who are hungry all the time feel the pangs and often end up becoming obese. The proof of such body chemistry has come in the form of injectable drugs that make them feel satisfied when they have eaten enough to keep their bodies functioning. Then they lose weight and feel more comfortable like the rest of us. 

It’s time that we quit poking our fingers and our jokes at those who struggle with their weight. It’s time we understand that some of us are simply fortunate not to experience the always hungry feelings that so often plague the heaviest souls among us. Their bodies simply work differently from ours. They are not somehow inferior. it’s time to quit shaming or preaching the gospel of thinness to them. They are beautiful and there are ways to help them without making them feel ugly and deficient. We can do better.