My American Dream - Round 2
Happy birthday, America. Even if things are scary right now.
Last year I shared my vision for the American Dream on July 3rd and you had some feelings you shared back. You were moved. Anxious. Hopeful. I was honored to hear a friend sent it to Dr Martin Seligman, even moreso when he shared it to a list-serv of other Positive Psychology practitioners, and shocked when he subscribed to this Substack (Hi, Dr Seligman).
A lot has happened this past year and I needed to make a few amendments.
What it means to be American is changing, and many of us with it.
I know I’ve been quiet in this space the last few months. If you follow my Instagram or listen to the podcast you know I’ve had some big loses and wins the last few months. I’m intending to return for more regular contributions soon. Thank you to everyone who has reached out with kindness, support, and encouragement - your care honors me and is essential to our humanity surviving trying times.
As a teenager in rural Upstate New York, one of my favorite annual events was singing the National Anthem for the tractor pulls at the county fair. I was honored to climb up into the rickety announcers booth, belt my lungs out, and hear the whistles and cheers start as the last resonance of “freeeeeeee” faded in the squeaky speakers. I have chills thinking about it now. I did it for lots of local sporting events, but there was something different about the tractor pulls. Something iconic to the culture I’m from ~ my grandparents in the stands, maybe. Running into people from church afterwards. The people coming from 3 states away to compete. It felt bigger than me. Like living in a Normal Rockwell painting.
As a sentimental person prone to her feelings, I grew up very proud to be American.
I still am. Which feels like an unpopular, almost dangerous, thing to admit in our current climate.
Perhaps that’s because it feels scary to be American right now.
I have felt, on and off for the past few months, like we have failed our ancestors and our descendants. Before me came wave after wave of immigrants from Europe as recently as from Wales in the 1800s and all the way back to the Dutch colonies in the Hudson River Valley and the Mayflower. People escaping famine, poverty, and religious persecution all struggling to survive and going on to fight in the wars we learned about in high school. Some fighting for the imperfect ideals they believed in on the belief they were protecting the chance for me to do better.
I have. I am a woman with an education who owns property, her own business, and gets to freely speak her mind in run-on sentences.
Friends of mine have already left for Europe and Canada.
More friends are talking about it.
Those whose ancestors came more recently and can get EU and Canadian citizenship.
My family came to join the American experiment earlier than theirs, so there’s nowhere for me to go.
I wouldn’t go anyway. I love it here. I’m American, even if America is a mess.
When you love something you don’t bail when it’s a mess.
You double down. You help clean it up.
You do everything in your power to make it better.
To protect and save it, even from itself.
That’s how love works.
What is in my power are these words - the ones I share with you this week.
Make no mistake from my introduction: my ancestors being here early gives me no greater claim to our ideals than anyone else. If I claimed that I would be a hypocrite - for all the native peoples who were here long before my forbearers and my inability to which flavor of problematic my people were. All I can be responsible for is how I show up now.
Today, in advance of America’s Birthday, I’m writing to share with you
My American Dream.
The one that keeps me showing up, working on wellbeing, and believing in our shared potential to be less problematic than what came before us.
My American Dream
In my American Dream peace and calm are a breath away. Worry is not our default setting and we believe in our own resilience and ability to problem solve. We’re free to dream without the burden of “but, what if…?” stifling possibilities. Dreaming, learning, and growing aren’t only for the young.
Regardless of what you look like, who you love, where & how you were born, what gender you present as, or who you do or do not pray to - you know you belong somewhere.
That you are free to be your authentic self & every citizen of this nation so believes in your right to do so, they embody that ideal to their very core. They may not like you. They may not agree with you. Yet, they respect your right to exist as yourself in the world.
Isn’t that what freedom is?
Being at liberty to be fully yourself?
At the moment in history my grandmothers came to be women they couldn’t get a credit card or own a business without a man’s co-signing. They both struggled at times under the weight of their given circumstances and irreversible choices. I see that struggle reflected in their daughters. Yet, in my mother’s lifetime the laws and restrictions that limited my grandmothers were re-written.
Their limitations were outpaced in 2 generations.
THAT is my American Dream.
That if you want an education you can get one, but we also respect a blue collar job.
That if you love someone you can marry them, but no one can force you to stay.
That if you want a family you can afford to have one. If you don’t, that’s your choice.
You want your own business? Amazing. You don’t have to have been born into wealth to pull off starting one. If you want to work for someone else, you can make a reasonable living and still have hobbies, friends, leisure time, and peace of mind.
In my American Dream I can feel the way I used to feel when I sang the Anthem. The opening of my heart - not just to oxygen for notes, but to a connection to something greater than me that I could be proud of.
An America where women’s rights are human rights and no one could keep me from what was meant for me. Where every American’s rights are equal in regard.
Even if your choices aren’t my choices, you have the right to live as you choose as long as you respect everyone else’s rights.
My American Dream is that wellbeing becomes so fundamental the skills and tools to build it become sacred. Not only for yourself. For everyone. Collective thriving.
This is my dream because it’s what I thought we were doing.
When I sang The National Anthem, I was singing it for us all.
I sang for the American experiment I believed in whole heartedly.
I still do.
I’ve grown to see the real challenges to that dream. Not in a way that disillusions me from it. No. Instead I’ve spent my life studying the elements of how to build it - individually and collectively.
Hitting middle age full of overwhelming challenges I’ve come to understand:
my generation are now the adults in the room.
It’s our duty to build upon and protect what’s come before us. To outpace the mistakes of our forbearers. To make our own new & exciting mistakes.
My American Dream is that we step in and shape the future.
Now.
Why does it matter?
For any dream to become possible starts with a shift in belief. To do the necessary work of change, you must believe that change is possible. I see this every day with client’s struggling to make changes in their lives and then breaking through. It’s the belief that shifts first.
We are living in a time of existential threat. That’s no great revelation to anyone who is paying attention. We are not going to solve these threats to our very way of life if we’re exhausted, burnt out, and miserable. We need the vision of what we’re working for and to attend to wellbeing - ourselves and one another’s - to sustain us through the long, exhausting work to fix it.
Human beings are remarkably resilient.
Look at all our ancestors survived to get us here.
Look at all we have worked through so far.
We must, each of us:
Attend to your mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing first and foremost - to create a foundation of knowing yourself, believing you have worth and something essential to contribute, and have the energy and capacity to keep showing up
Align to your authentic self and values - the world needs who you really are. Not the image of a broken, hurt self; but the radiant shine of your gifts. The Unfuckwithable Place Inside You as reflected in your values. To you, what’s worth fighting for?
Use what you’re good at in service of what you care about - find someone who needs help and help them. However you’re gifted to be able to.
You may think this all sounds overly simplistic. That purpose and passion require grand designs. That may be true, but we all have to start somewhere. And, it’s unlikely you’ll go off and save the whales if you’re exhausted, cynical, and sick. (Besides, last year the whales started saving themselves).
Happy Birthday, America
Probably time we get our sh*t together.