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Pam Conder

Posted by elizabethhilts on
I am a disabled veteran coping with PTSD and bipolar disorder.  I love my country, and wanted to serve and defend her citizens.  My role in the Iraq War was very damaging, and life since has been tough.  I’ve been hospitalized a couple times, and have become overwhelmed whenever I try to return to work, including trying to teach.  My recent achievements are successfully managing a trip to the grocery store, talking to my doctors without help, and even checking my e-mail.

pam-conder
Photo from Great Smoky Mountain National Park, near Gatlinburg, TN

I wish that I could join one of the marches.  My mother-in-law is traveling 3,000 miles to attend the DC Women’s March, and I know others attending satellite protests.  I want to show my solidarity with the principles behind these marches, but I know I can’t handle the crowds.  I protested against the passage of California’s Prop 8 in 2008, and my anxiety was too oppressive for me to appreciate the community around me.
 
I find the topic of this new “president” anxiety-provoking without the crowds.  The way he speaks is triggering. The way he puts down anyone who disagrees with him reminds me of my father, whose certainty about the world led him to disown me after I married my wife.  I know I’m personalizing, but I find it sick that a person similar my father garnered so much support from our country.  That blatant sexism, racism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia can be met with laughter and applause, it’s appalling.  The way this new “president” speaks to his opponents, the press, and even his supporters knots my stomach, and I’m ashamed of this development in my country.  I cannot believe that a man with such low disregard for this country, her principles, and her citizens is assuming the highest office in the land.  I protest.
 
4.  I voice my support for Planned Parenthood.  I don’t need birth control (marrying my wife covers that surprise), but I did try different birth control and hormone treatments to subdue my monthly hemorrhaging before having a hysterectomy at 32.  It disgusts me that extremists want to deny routine healthcare for women, just to attack the spectre of abortion and contraception.  Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I believe such extremists are “pro-birth” and not “pro-life,” otherwise they would also support social programs for those new lives, and be pacifists like me.  All life is sacred, always.

 

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