I started writing open letters around this time last year, urging people to speak out against Covid restrictions, masks, and cancel culture. I felt the media pressure to cower from questioning the narrative was the real danger at that point in time. I had known since April 2020 that Covid wasn’t falling from the sky, and masks didn’t work.
How did I know? Did I run a randomized clinical trial, was I a medical biostatistician like Nik?
Nope. Just a cancer patient, in chemo, choosing to live my life, and testing the waters.
Instinctively, I wasn’t buying the mask theory after about a month. Once I returned to Jefferson’s oncology office and infusion center in Philadelphia in April 2020, I had two eyes. Some people still had to work, and thank God that they did, or I would be dead. The healthcare heroes, the energy workers, the parking lot attendants, the clerical staff, the pharmacist, the receptionist…they were all there, saving my life.
As I sat in the room filled with other “immune-compromised” people, alone, I tested the waters. I couldn’t breathe in my used N95 with a cloth mask on top. So I pulled it down whenever I could.
I didn’t die.
When I walked from my car to the various appointment locations through the city, I didn’t wear the mask. I didn’t die.
Then on May 1, 2020, after a week of intense eye pain and a telehealth misdiagnosis, I drove myself to Virtua ER in Voorhees. It was pretty empty, other than the staff. Strange, right?
The doctor told me I needed to go to Wills Eye Hospital in Philly, because she wasn’t really sure she was correctly diagnosing me either.
I couldn’t use my one eye. There was no way I could drive myself to the city on one eye.
So after a month of drive-by visits with my mom out of media-driven fear of how at-risk I was for death, I quit the quarantine, called her for a ride, and that was it, my mom and I were never separated again.
She drove me to the ER, and we sat in the small waiting area with a few other patients.
A man came in holding his hand over his eye. He was dressed in jeans and construction boots.
He had a piece of metal in his eye. IN HIS EYE🤮! So as other men in power sat behind a screen, making rules on zoom, this man took a shot of metal in the eye, and he wasn’t even silently weeping like me.
I sat up and wiped my tears.
Covid fear was over that day, for me. I would still take some precautions, as I had to continue chemotherapy infusions, but we gradually returned life to normal for our kids.
They returned to a mask-free daycare in July 2020, so that I could return to the office.
We traveled to Williamsburg for 4th of July that year. I never shared pictures, because I didn’t want the judgment.
We told our kids that masks were being required by people who were afraid or wrong, but either way, they shouldn’t be afraid to breathe.
If you reading this, I bet you explained it in a similar way to your children as well. I can also bet that you lost some friends along the way, and maybe those friends could use some advice now, as we begin the final countdown to un-face diapering.
Tell the kids the truth. They need to understand why. Government got it wrong, we trusted the media for too long, I’m sorry. That’s it.
Here is a commentary I shared today on Facebook, from a piece I wrote on February 27, 2021, 1 day after my first school protest. If your friends fell for the muzzle narrative and their children are still afraid, share this advice.
“I am Karen”
I have something to confess.
I am actually a KAREN. I thought you should know.
I’ve made many shameful choices in life. Have you? Be not afraid. We can be forgiven in this life, even in our present climate of cancel culture.
It’s Lent. A very special time to me since I started chemo on Ash Wednesday in 2019. March 6th, to be exact.
I started off this Lenten season much more faithful, and much more peaceful, than in years past.
I spent a lot of years hating the lies I had been told as a kid. The spoken, and the unspoken.
I was a Rush baby. Bash me, cancel me. Like sorry my parent put on talk radio meant to support the development of my heart and my mind.
That’s right, I said it. And I did not apologize for something that was taught to me as a child. I will no longer apologize for words if they are kind truths.
In fact, I must admit, I am quite proud of my Rush roots.
I came of age in the 90s. Technology was fun but not addicting. Our phones didn’t own us. Our friends, not big tech, owned our privacy, our sins, our shame. Sometimes we were exposed, but mostly, our sins vanished from the evidence lab.
There were some pictures. Not like now. They were Polaroids, 2 sets of prints at the camera store, disposables doing boob selfies at a wedding.
I came of age in the 2000s. We had eating disorders, date rapes, abortions, rampant sexual harrassment in our minimum wage jobs, diet pills, access to alcohol, we were cheating on tests with our Internet skills. Our only cheating skills in school that could elude both the veteran and tech-aware teachers. Sorry Mrs. McCaffrey-Wilson, for that stolen research paper! I will have you know, I did have to re-copy the articles about 100 times before it would print, because the computers sucked so bad then.
We were shown grace by our elders. Instead of suspension, Mrs. McCaffrey just wanted to see me work harder on my craft. She forgave me even as she caught me red-handed. Ultimately, I was permitted the grace to preserve my grade, my future.
In the 2000s, you could be bad, and it didn’t haunt you forever like a scarlet letter A profile frame.
The kids after us are totally screwed. Wanna know why they are killing themselves?
Cancel culture is destroying our children’s hope for the future.
Because they literally cannot escape the shame of a past sin.
The burden adults are placing upon children by allowing cancel culture to thrive among us is causing their undeveloped brains to hit the panic button.
Reporters, try turning down the volume. Stop destroying one’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the crime of opposing “right-think”. Enough is enough.
They are not snowflakes.
They are all Britney Spears, Amanda Bynes.
They are all Trayvon Martin, George Floyd.
They are all human, complicated, with souls, with sins and shames.
We are all Tiger Woods.
We crash. We break. We lie, cheat, steal.
But what we don’t do as Americans, is cancel each other.
We give forgiveness, second and third chances.
We must stop assigning blame to each other based upon our immutable qualities.
It’s time to rise up and unify.
Our children are dying. Show them that this country thrives because our rights come from God, and government exists to serve. When it fails to serve us, and exists to serve itself, we no longer consent to arbitrary and capricious restrictions on liberty.
I have been speaking on Covid since March. I have been speaking to Liberate New Jersey since April 19th. Murphy shut down the drive-through tulip farm because people committed the crime of driving in their cars through a field of flowers.
I will not be holding back from renegotiating our social contract any more for fear of being canceled.
In fact, I will be turning up the volume.
But I will speak sweeter. I will not use my past to attack, nor will I allow my own sins to shame me from speaking up and out.
Maybe you could do someone you know from the past the same courtesy.
End cancel culture. It’s causing children to fear so desolately that they are dying of it.
Love thy neighbor. Love deeper. Do the hard things. Sit across a table with someone different from you and listen.
Forgive who you have been denying, now is always the time.
Save our children. Speak up. I am here to listen.“
KARENs, help your dumb friends because on March 7th, it’s game over.
Next, we #unmaskhealthcare. No more sitting alone in chemo, no more allowing doctors to hide behind their willingness to be silenced out of fear. It’s 2019 or bust.
Join our new Group to help return healthcare facilities to being patient-focused, not Covid-19 money-laundering facilities.
Just a thank you for everything that you and Nik have done and shared and endured through this political clown show that we are living through and our kids are suffering through.
Kristen! this is so powerful! I too was a Rush "older baby" since I was introduced by my mom in the mid 90s during my college days. Thank you for sharing and writing this. I posted it to some anti-mask FB groups. I'm so happy to know you are out there as a voice for like minded people like me.