and we'll get going. Okay, hi, we're back. We, we left and then we came back. So here we are,

Claire. Everyone missed us, maybe? You know, I have to say, I have been really surprised by the number of

people who were like, I really miss the weekly episodes. We always kind of joke about feeling like

we're in an echo, not an echo chamber,

but that we're just like shouting into the void. And then when we don't hear from folks,

as you're listening weekly, we sort of assume that you have slowly found other podcasts,

which is totally fine. But it feels really good to be back with, we have 25 people in the chat, which is quite a lot.

And we're all having a big week.

So I feel like my main feelings right now are like I'm not surprised, but I am still shocked.

I don't really know what I mean by the difference between that. But it's not like, oh, I can't believe this happened. It's just like, oh, I can't believe this is happening. Well, you know, if people have been living under a rock, we're of course talking about the election. And this is why we needed to process everything was like, you know, this community is something we've relied on for the past 12 years. And so when we don't

have this to fall back on, it feels really unsettling and isolating. And if there's anything I

realized in the past week of my life is how much we need connection, especially in times like this.

And something that I've been reflecting on lately is kind of the

difference of when the election happened in 2016, where it was like such a shock and so, it was such a shock

to everyone because we were like, how, how did that happen? And now I'm not so much asking that

question anymore because I'm like, of course I know how this happened. There's such a division.

There's so much, so much false information floating happened. There's such a division. There's so much

false information floating around. There's so much anger and there's so much fear. There's so much

news that really preys on fear. And so my process as of now, which is only two days after the

election, so things can change, is I don't really care to go to a

place of anger and defeat and sadness because that's that is just not where I'm going to go this

time nor have I felt like that's where I need to go my space has been okay clearly I have a lot to learn and i have a lot to try to understand

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