Forgiveness

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

By: Gabriela Yareliz

You know what a fun nostalgic watch is for me? Just Shoot Me!

Nina Van Horn is forever an icon. I have been rewatching with my husband in chronological order, and recently, we came across an episode that I really like. Jack Gallo wonders if it’s a bad thing he wants his child bride Allie back after she cheated on him. Maya, his daughter who was a classmate of her father’s wife (which makes her line “Stepmother,” all the more hilarious earlier in the episode), asks him if he can forgive her. Maya remembers how betrayed she felt when her father cheated on her mom and left them. She tells Jack, “I forgave you.” Jack asks her why, and Maya says something along the lines of, “Sometimes you need to forgive people because you want them to be in your life.”

In an over-therapied society, we judge harshly, and sometimes, engage in parent-blaming. It’s commonplace, nowadays. You go to a forum, and you ask a young adult why they are where they are in life, and they blame their parents. A recipe for disaster. A sissy move.

Here is the PSA that your life is your responsibility no matter what your parents did (or didn’t do) or who they were/are. In adulthood, you become who you choose to be.

As you get older, you realize how hard it is to grow in life. Like true soul growth. And if you have compassion, you learn to accept people for who they are. It doesn’t justify them or mean they are right, it just means you don’t hold people to an expectation they can’t meet. You forgive them. You realize it’s not about you, and all about where they are. You forgive yourself. You realize you won’t be the perfect parent or human either.

Because realizing that your parents are just regular, f***ed-up people is an essential part of learning who you really are. Tinx, The Shift

I think we should strive more to see the silver linings. We should strive to remember what our parents did right. How they have supported us. And if they did little that is right, then you have to decide— as Maya Gallo said— if you want them in your life, then, you forgive them. Don’t be one of those people who harbors resentments that taint your relationships every day.

Forgive your parents

My favorite feature

Elena Brower, Softening Time

Forgiveness becomes such a key to life. It’s the next level. It’s the allowance to make mistakes, even the ones that change everything. It’s an acceptance of risk— the risk that comes attached to any kind of love.

“A Culture in Turmoil”

“Charlie Kirk was a human being.

He was a dad and a father.

His wife is now a widow.

His two children, because of how young they are, will not have a personal memory of their dad.

That’s been stolen from them by someone who thought they had the right to kill another human being.

And this is a political assassination.

But more than that, to me, it is an ideological assassination.

A profound cultural statement of, ‘If you believe this, you are not safe.”

We need to reset and establish a cultural foundation of, “You’re allowed to speak your mind.

You are not evil because you disagree with me, and I’m not evil because I disagree with you.’”

Erwin McManus

Overwhelmed with Darkness

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Our hearts are so heavy with grief, we don’t know where to look.

Spiritually, you feel the darkness. I am tired of seeing Christian children killed in worship and going to school. I am tired of seeing law-abiding citizens get killed and criminals turned loose and defended. I am tired of the political violence that has brought us here— where Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood yesterday in front of us. There was the elderly couple in Queens who did a good deed, invited someone into their home, and were murdered. The young woman in North Carolina killed by a man with a collection of mug shots.

When does this end? When does leadership protect its law-abiding citizens instead of protecting those who do harm? And no… this is not about guns. The irony is the party that is anti-gun is terrorizing and killing innocent people with it. And where there is no gun, someone gets stabbed. This is about character. It’s about evil. It’s about the nation’s justification for evil.

Our freedoms are eroding. Darkness lurks at every corner and is given free rein. We do not have the freedom to worship, to live freely, to speak our conscience, to do good. Evil is called good. And good is hated.

As seen yesterday, you can invite someone to debate, and you pay for it with your life.

The person who told me Charlie Kirk was shot yesterday said it with almost a thrill. It was so disturbing, I didn’t think it was real.

Will leadership simply continue to erode our freedoms with more surveillance in the scheme of protecting those who terrorize us with violence? Or will there be accountability?

Isn’t that the whole point of our legal system? To give just consequences to those who harm— no matter the race, gender, political affiliation? How are we equal under the law without justice?

And here we are on September 11. It has been a dark set of weeks, and only getting darker for our country. We remember an attack on our freedoms and way of life. We remember the failed leadership that flourished after this day on 2001 under that President. We remember that with each act of violence, we lose more than people. Our freedoms keep being eroded in the midst of our grief.

There are people who hate what is good, pure, free and righteous. We cannot let them win.

We must retain our humanity. We must retain our freedom. We were born free. If we lose that, we lose it all.

Today, we remember all who have passed due to violence and attacks. Our hearts are heavy. We also remember that good and freedom are worth fighting for.

We remember. 🙏🏼

Nostalgia Menu

Image via The Daily Dot

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was listening to Andy Frisella remember the 7/11 Big Grab Dorito bags. (Apparently, the 7/11 social media is fire, and it’s a bunch of cars). The store carries Frisella’s 1st Phorm Energy. While they carry new products, they are a treasure chest for nostalgic snacks.

Taco Bell’s Y2K Decades Menu has returned. It also has nostalgic merch. It’s brilliant.

Nostalgia is something everyone loves.

The food maybe was killing us, but it’s not about the foods— it’s about the memories attached to it. The stories.

I remember rolling through that drive thru for a bean burrito. Bless.

I saw the commercial, and the memories came flooding back. If they bring back the chihuahua— that’ll be a whole different story.

A nostalgia menu for me would probably include mac and cheese from a Velveeta box, SPAM with rice, Jell-o fruit cups, Vienna Sausages, McDonalds cheeseburger, a bean burrito, a pan crust pizza from Pizza Hut, and Ritz crackers dipped in Abuelita’s hot chocolate.

Is there a place that brings back memories?What’s on your nostalgia menu?

Erasure

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Candace Owens led an interesting discussion around the attempted erasure of ancestry. Cue the Cracker Barrel controversy. (Truly one of my favorite places to be. I heavily considered planning a wedding party there).

“It’s a spiritual attack on the idea of ancestry. Nothing can be old. Everything must be new. They want everybody to look the same; there will be no personality in anything. They will turn us into AI bots— [this] is actually the explicit goal. You may not realize that. […] Even the way they are making homes. It’s ugly. Everything is ugly. There is a reason for that. They don’t want you to think that structures existed. They want you to think you are just floating through the wind and nothing matters. Your family doesn’t matter; ancestry doesn’t matter. Everything yesterday is gone.” Candace Owens

As I heard her say this, I was reminded of a conversation I had recently along the same themes, except my conversation had to do with government and political erasure of ethnicity, language and family history/culture in colonialism and communism. Owens’ description could fit into a description of communism as well. Modern society mirrors some of communism’s absurdities. Truly.

Differences carry identity, power and strength. They give identity outside of politics. They are a threat to desperate power. They are complicated to navigate. This is why systems seek their erasure. The human default is to always seek what is convenient or easy.

Owens described those who protested the Cracker Barrel logo and aesthetic as those who recognized it has been a year of “some BS.” And no, we are not over the Epstein files situation.

Owens calls this the “Plantation of sameness.”

She continued saying, society’s message is:

“We are getting rid of AP classes; there will be no honors classes; no test scores. We aren’t even gonna track how stupid we are making your kids, anymore.”

I talk about this societal decline with my husband all the time.

It’s easy to make erasure seem virtuous and to keep groups of people down by having them feel like victims. If you are going to win in life, victimhood can’t be your only identity. It’s time minorities understand this, and celebrate their true identities and the strength one finds within that. A positive identity is strength.

This is a unique country that is a mosaic of culture. The future should not be the erasure of the unique identities or the division of those identities. It should be a unity while standing in our differences. Isn’t that the great American experiment? The freedom to remain who you are while coming together under one flag and set of universal moral virtues?

Owens is right, the people said you are not getting rid of the old man sitting next to the barrel. No one was more outraged than Southerners— the warmest people this country has to offer. They made corporate bow down after making them lose millions.

People on all ends are tired of erasure and the demonization of our differences. Cracker Barrel united Americans. We know who we are, and that won’t be erased. You can’t give us some generic Denny’s aesthetic. As one meme said during the controversy— give us hoarding memaw or nothing.

Cracker Barrel embodies American principles— rural grit, family and excess. The threat of its erasure was a reminder that every piece of the mosaic counts, and it makes up this great flag.

All of It

“Fall in love and stay in love.

Explode. Don’t intellectualize. Get passionate about ideas. Cram your head full of images… Stay off the internet and all that crap. Read all the great books.

Read all the great poetry. See all the great films. Fill your life with metaphors. And then, explode.”

Ray Bradbury