Broken

over her. You'd think it would be hard to read someone's face if it were obscured by a medical mask, but it's not. The eyes tell you everything you need to know. The nurses eyes, the doctor's eyes, the an enthusiologists eyes, the technicians. They all told me something was very wrong, maybe even broken. This is the stuff of life, and I'm your host, Julie Douglas. In this episode, we take a hard look at what it is to be broken. My daughter was hypoxic. The umbilical cord had nearly strangled

the life out of her. She had what the neurologist called a significant insult to her brain. And though I wouldn't know it until later she had sustained a serious hearing loss. I was devastated. I felt like I had failed her, like my body had broken her. It was like being inside of a nightmare you couldn't wake from. Yeah. For many nights after she was born, I dreamed she

was in my arms and then gone. I would wake frantic, tearing the pillows and sheets of the bed, looking for her, calling out to her, until I saw her sleeping peacefully in the bassinet. I was awake, and I was broken. Since then, I've come to understand that we are all broken in one way or another, and that most human made things are too. Our ideas are broken, our systems are broken, our governments, and in this way, the personal

is the political. No matter what perspective we're coming from, we can all agree that the United States is broken. But we've been here before. Time. It would seem it's circular guide in our newsroom has been an attempt said, perhaps you know now on the light for President's or to be desimental to your safe is to continue this market. I'm saying that this is an unlawful astamy. You have to disperse your heartest at disperse go home. I'll go

to you a church this march will not content. Well, come on seng Man, Uncle Samy to health again, godham self and it's terrible jam down nd N. Now, so we're start a third highest medal in the country. It doesn't mean anything. I gotta silver Star, Purple Hearts, Army Conversation Medal, eight Air Metal, National Defense and the rest of this garbage. It doesn't mean a face. And that we are living in a time when political fault lines

are fracturing. Society is now very apparent. Inauguration, NDR, you can hear the what do you want to do in the back round? Another thing, all that for all of that exists, all of that opposition. Donald J. Trump is now president at the United States. Can you explain your emotions to me, citizens of America, explain your emotions to There's just no way there's like just snow to build, no way to even comprehend with this means like this very for me, This earl moment is like like within

a cell. It's like in the world the dark and the light are so tight right now at this moment, it's we will face there's so much potential, will get the job done for beauty and for devastated, and this is one moment. It's so much incomprehensible that they can exist right now, so and we are grateful, so good to explore this fracture. Podcast host Holly Fry, producer Noel Brown, and myself packed up our things and headed to d C on the day of President Trump's inauguration to attend

the Women's March. The next day, the sun was just starting to set and the streets were nearly empty. But the closer we got to the White House, the more we saw signs like dump Trump and crowds of people thickening. We turned onto f Street and were met with a wave of smoke. Got away from the don't breath ahead, a crush of people gathered around an overturned newspaper box, It's metal frame warping under the fire it was engulfed in.

Nearby police in full riot gear kept their shields up, and just one block from the smoke a National Guard and hovering helicopters. The streets were again empty. Occasionally couples dressed in ballgowns and tuxedos emerged from their hotels to attend inauguration festivities. This is where we met Dan. He was holding a U. S flag, his young son standing protectively nearby, riding the flag when it neared the ground.

We're here because this is probably the greatest president in our lifetime, where you're celebrated, and because my daughter had the privilege march in the break. Earlier we met Shine, she was selling buttons with sentiments like not my president in the world. The people why you will or might be lace? They have mace gowns them with something that's maceca tie were I Shine and Dan's moods were very different.

W if you're wig because we're gonna return to the constitutional status where people can work to be free, where they can work for merit, where they can work for their future. And I honestly believe we're in the rising tide that will lift all boats if you let it. I don't feel like that they I don't know what everybody's feeling, but I feel like there's a certain move. It's like you get in an uncomfortable situation and you have to your force to either accept that situation or

you can you can't. It's like if you have broken legs, you can't walk, but you eventually realize, Okay, my legs are being repaired right now. I'm in a healing process. We asked Dan about empathy about people who are marginalized, for whom the playing fields aren't leveled. Most of us see individuals as individuals, but we see groups as pushing us back. I will take care of any individual of any nature, any religion, any any sexual orientation as an

individual with truly, with with love. I don't feel that difference. Any one of you guys needed something, I would do it right now. I don't know who you are, I would, I would do what I can to help you. But you also have to understand that nobody has a requirement to be nice to anybody. We want to help people be nice, but you're not entitled to that. You have to make that happen. And I feel there's at least as much racism against as a white person these days

in terms of looking at skin color and reacting. Whereas I'm searching when I see other people for a commonality, I want to I want to find that threat, and as soon as I find that thread, it's all good. And if you talk to anybody who's felt that way about some people, it's all to seek out the other people.

There was a lot of conflict on the day of the inoperation between attendees and protesters, but Seine made a conscious choice where I saw anger, I gave a hug um and just sort of like, we could do this. You know, I'm ready to move forward. I don't have no choice. I can't go back, I can't stand here. I choose to go fullard. Everybody's just gotta be responsive to the situation, move forward and take it for what it is worth and watch it back. So we're there

any commonalities for Dan anything he could agree with? Well, that's hard, hard question answer, Um, what do you like? Okay? I I walked up to a protester who commented on my hat right away. As right after the tear guests went off at the beat up in the Starbucks, where most millennials hang out more than anybody the rest of us. I don't know why they picked Starbucks to damage, but there was dear gas, there was glass, and right afterwards, young man about said don't go in there unless you

want to get tear gassed. And I asked him, I said, what what, What's what's the issue? And he says healthcare. And that's when I come up with I realized. I said, but you know the government doesn't give you healthcare. People get healthcare and he said, well, we wanted for free. And I said, well, good luck with that. He said, well, we're fighting hard for that. Go to work and fight hard. So I don't agree with what the demands that I've been hearing. I haven't heard demands in the post election

cycle that I can agree with, and that's unfortunate. But I'm searching for that. Maybe you could give me a point of view that you think might cross the aisle about anything, anything you've heard today that you think somebody you say you identified. I want to be empathetic with that challenge. I mean, honestly, from what I have heard from people who are quote unquote liberals is that they're actually just seeing this as an opportunity to try to

band together. So he is the president. We do need to move forward, So where do we go from here? Like your legs are broken, now, you know it's a healing process. They're animal, So what you do is inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Your friend who is a reiki from Woodstock, New York, who is you know, very and he's taught me things. He's taught me as an orth beat, as many things that I use in my daily life, breathing for instance, Okay,

wonderful thought we can share that we can grow with that. Um. He's praying for peace, but he's afraid of what Donald Trump would mean as far as that's concerned. And I said, I'm praying for the for peace too, but in the opportunities allow us to live our lives. And I say, what if, just maybe your prayers are answered in a way you didn't expect me. And I think that we have a chance for the future. For Dan, everything up until this part has been broken, and there's a promise

of making his worldview whole. For Shine, she's just beginning to see the fractures. You might think that these two perspectives are like fragments from a broken bowl, never to be returned to the whole again. But it turns out that something can be broken and fixed at the same time, and in the process made stronger. A lump of clay on a spinning wheel changes shape. It rises up as the potter intervenes with her hands, and by degrees the

form of a bowl emerges. It's then fired glazed, refired, and finally the bowl is the illusion of symmetry perfection. The bull falls, hits the ground, cracks open. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of broken pottery, the philosophy of which tells us that a shattered bull isn't broken, but simply scattered. It's true potential only now revealed. The shards are fused together with gold, and the cracks clow like gilded veins. In a Japanese parable, it is said that the bowl

has become more beautiful for having been broken. The true life of the bull began the moment it fell. We know this story, albeit in a different form. We call it the Fall, and in it Adam and Eve live in Paradise, place where everything is perfect and nothing happens. In Rebecca soln It's book Hope in the Dark, she writes that quote, Paradise does not require of us courage, selflessness, creativity, passion.

She notes that quote some imaginative Christian heretics worshiped Eve for having liberated us from Paradise the myth of the fortunate Fall. The heretics recognized that before the fall, we were not yet fully human. In Paradise, Adam and Eve need not wrestle with morality, creation, with society, with mortality. They only realize their own humanity and the struggle and

imperfect world invites. In the early morning hours of July fifteen, two thousand and sixteen, I knew something was wrong, something had broken. I was thirty six weeks pregnant, and I woke up. I wasn't sure exactly what was wrong, but I silently pled to my unborn daughter to hold on to live. I swear, I said that life is beautiful. I swear it's worth it. I woke up later in the operating room, with hands working over her tiny body.

My daughter finally took her first breath. Today, I look at her, and I see a kind of kintsugi at work, the mosaic of people and systems that stitched together her existence. And I see these same forces at work and binding us all together, because life truly begins once we realize it's broken. In Season two of the Stuff of Life, the personal is the political, and we follow the cracks in it all, starting with anger and hate, and then the miracle of empty and compassion and wiring us all

together in this great, big, broken world of ours. Sometimes anger is an entirely appropriate response to mistreatment, and it's our own anger is a signal to our felt that we need to take better care of ourselves. The sup of Life is written and executive produced by me and Julie Douglas and co produced by Noel Brown. Interviews in this episode were conducted by Noel Brown and Holly Fry.

Original music is by Noel Brown. This episode also featured music by Tristan McNeil and Dylan Fagan, and editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer Dylan Fagan and Head of production Jerry Rowland. We'd like to hear from you. We'd like to hear your stories and your thoughts and you can share them with us on our total free calling number that's one eight four four hs W stuff