Single Working Womens Week – SWWAN

Yes, it’s almost time to celebrate the single working women in your life, including you if you’re one. But wait a second.

I need to vent for a minute.

Are you celebrating much these days? Consider this stuff:

• the horrifying truths put forth during the January 6th hearings into a sitting president’s attack on democracy.
• unprecedented levels of mass shootings and the refusal of the Supreme Court and our Congress to meaningfully rein in the gun violence.
• the emotional and physical toll of the 2-plus-years-and-still-going pandemic and its associated divisive wars between the masked/unmasked and vaxxed/unvaxxed (WTH, right?).
• the regressive attitudes and Nazi-like persecution in some states of women (single and married) who make the painful choice to seek an abortion for a troubled pregnancy.
• the irony of some African countries inviting oil companies to plunder their natural resources so the native people can make money. Who can blame them for feeling they might as well be rich for a while before the earth dies?
• the looming potential decimation of our planet and of human life – while deniers block meaningful efforts to cope, and instead promote coal mining and oil drilling. Hmmm. To protect those jobs and those industries rather than support work to find alternative energy sources, seems self-defeating since they won’t survive the destruction they’re contributing so much to.  But maybe QAnon thinks they will.

Given the above, I want to spend as much time as I can with the people I love. If you saw the movie “Don’t Look Up!” you’ll remember that was the ending. It’s not a great movie, but the conclusion that all we can do is love one another, is a good one. Since we are all going to die one day, sooner or later – even if we manage to reverse course on climate change – we all face the devastating loss of loved ones dying. So having faith in each other and celebrating our loving relationships now seems like the best thing we can do for ourselves and for each other.

Thank heaven we’re still here, single working women and all! So let’s go ahead and celebrate all the relationships we share – with our neighbors, our friends, our SOs, kids and other relatives if we have them. Plan to have fun together as often as you can – in ways that contribute as little as possible to the existing problems. “Be the change you want to see.” ~Ghandi

Thank you for letting me get that out of my system. Thank goodness Congress is today close to enacting a meaningful piece of legislation that addresses many of these pressing issues and is paid for by a significant tightening of tax loopholes for mega-corporations. It’s a small step forward in the long and hard-fought battle that is costing us all too much.

July 31 to August 6, 2022. Happy Single Working Women’s Week!