I started blogging four years ago, in the wake of an election that resulted in these past four years.

For a year before that—between my father dying, losing my corporate job, the unravelling of an important relationship—I met with women to partner with, hoping to build a feminist hub with a like-minded lady much like I did with BUST some decades ago. I  wanted a partner so desperately, and it was exciting to meet brilliant women and to know my generation of women were as inspired as we had been in the nineties to speak to relevance today. 2015 was exhausting for me, disappointing and ultimately, devastating. When I came out of my haze, the election was upon us, and well, we know how that turned out.

I had so much anger, real anger, the kind I hadn’t confronted since my twenties. So much pain, too.

It was my global  village of friends who, as ever, were at my side. My friend Guy introduced me to Hank who built this site for me. My Mother with her dollops of Shula-ism were ever present. My neighbors in my building, my friends up the street, across the country, in France and Australia, all of them were always a few characters away, ever at the ready to lend an ear. Before 2015, I rarely reached out for actual help, scarred from that Boy Who Cried Wolf tale I suppose. After though? After awakened the part of me that has always been here, carefully enveloped.

The blog, really, was the outreach for help. The public place to express. The opportunity to reach women again, to have a conversation in a digital stratosphere. Some of it tinged with pain, all of it celebrating hope.

Today, I hope you are with people you love, whether in person or through a keyboard, knowing what I know: you are not alone.