Gummy Bears and Donald Trump

I had to allow myself to have gummy bears for breakfast in order to forgive myself for the angry thoughts that I have held for so long about Mr. Trump. After all, he’s only human. I’m guessing he was raised up by folks who only valued one thing. How to make money. Maybe he grew up in poverty like my parents did and vowed to never ever have to live like that once he got older. I don’t know his history, nor do I need to in order to deliver my message through this article.

I, myself, grew up with a very racist father. I believe and understand how he became that way. No one is born into this world with the desire to bring harm to anyone. I truly believe this in my heart. It’s the environment that we are exposed to when we are growing up that creates the personality that we begin to morph into. My dad and mom grew up in Appalachia Kentucky in a small town called Beattyville, Kentucky. Just the location of where they grew up kept them in isolation from the evolving world. If you have ever seen the movie The Village, then you can understand the kind of isolation they were in. My dad’s relatives never saw people with a different skin color. People are sometimes afraid of not only what they don’t understand, but who they don’t understand. This may be pure speculation on my part, but that’s beside the point, and frankly I don’t know how he came into it. Maybe my grandpa was that way and he taught my dad to be that way for all I know. The point I am making here is, someone taught my dad that behavior. I am wondering if someone taught Trump his behavior too? Someone definitely taught him how to make money, and that became his craft.

Donald Trump got so good at his craft that he let nothing stop him from being the best at it. What does he have left to prove? Yes, Mr. Trump, you did it. You conquered the world. You’re the president of the United States of America. Now what can you do with all of that power? Can you decide to throw away those old beliefs that are no longer serving you? Can you look gently and slowly in the direction of letting some of those icky thoughts begin to fall away? Can you show us some heart with a sprinkle of generosity and a tiny dash of humanitarian love? Can you begin to do it if someone forgives you for acting in ways that you couldn’t help doing because you had simply never been in the presence of it before? Even Darth Vader needs hugs. I can forgive you. And do you know why? Because of my mom. To honor the person she taught me to be.

Like I said before, they were raised up in redneck central. I say that with love because I am finally at a place in my life where I can own my roots. People have always made fun of southern folks that you can’t understand because they talk so funny. Well, they basically lived so far from other people they developed their own language! It also created a space for many horrible things to take place in the absence of supervision, meaning very few police officers. Yes, things went on like incest and rape. Yes, husbands beat their families senseless. Wives were kept barefoot and pregnant because they had no doctors or birth control, for that matter. The nearest doctors were miles and miles away. They had only horses, no such thing as owning a car back then. Not as poor as they were. But one thing my parents’ families learned from being that broke was to help each other out. The neighbors helped each other out and they traded favors and helped feed each others’ families. Their reality was so poor, in fact, that on the rare occasion that a random stranger happened to walk down the road in front of my Grandma McIntosh’s house, they called from the front porch to invite him in for food. They just knew that person was probably and more than likely, going to be hungry. That is how poor this town was, and still is until this day. I'll post a link to the article about it at the bottom of this article.

In order to honor my mom’s spirit and the values that she taught me, if Donald Trump walked past my trailer where I am living right now, I would invite him in for supper. No questions asked. Anyone who came to my house when we were growing up, the first thing she would do was start cooking. People would say, “Oh now Tilda, you don’t have to do that for me,” but she did. Maybe she had to do without food at one point, and decided from then on that no one would ever go hungry in her presence again. And they didn’t. My mom was the best damn cook you ever met. No measuring, no nothing. Just pure magic. Food made with love. For people she loved. Well, strangers too, but that’s who she was. She loved everyone. She taught me that too. That’s why as scared as I was to write this article, I felt inspired to share my thoughts because the world really needs this kind of thinking right now.

Our beliefs are our choice and at any point, we can choose to begin thinking in new ways. If you can’t forgive him, I honor your path. But as for me, I forgive Donald Trump. He is welcome at my dinner table anytime. Just give me the heads up so I can clean it off first, okay. After all, nobody’s perfect right?