17 Comments
Nov 6Liked by Angela Garbes

Oh how I wish we could sit and talk about all this at length. Thank you for sharing this—resonates on so many levels, it’s insane.

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🤍

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Nov 7Liked by Angela Garbes

I wish more people in interracial relationships were this honest. It's important to find ways to remind them that safety is conditional. It is always conditional. Sigh

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Model humans. That last one made me cry a bit; Under blanket safe / scattered thoughts / heard without judgment. Thanks for sharing this ❤️

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Appreciate your thoughtful and raw honesty, Angela. Sending post-election hugs.

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Thank you for sharing this. I felt the last few paragraphs in my bones. You described the exact feeling I have when talking to my cis white husband about the election. " Fine is only ever conditional for some of us."

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Nov 7Liked by Angela Garbes

Thank you so much for sharing this, and for all of your writing on mothering and justice that lights the way. In my marriage, the racial dynamic is the inverse, and while we speak incessantly about the way different versions of the world that are available to each of us, there never cease to be chasms that cannot be crossed. I regularly think about how shocked my husband was when he learned that I sometimes forget my ID at home. He would never take that risk, that kind of carelessness is a privilege.

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Nov 7Liked by Angela Garbes

I'm also in an interracial marriage in Seattle 🙋🏻‍♀️You could have been listening in to some of my own conversations over the years. Thank you for sharing. I've never felt prepared for these moments of loneliness, when solidarity feels out of reach, our differences a chasm. The unfairness of feeling like you have to hold all the knowledge. And also the tender moments of change and evolution between the both of you.

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Thank you for this. Also in an interracial marriage and all of this resonates so deeply. The conversations, the growth, the pain.

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Just saw this Nov 2024! 🙌🏾

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Nov 8Liked by Angela Garbes

Thank you so much for sharing this. I’m a Filipina married to a white guy and this is something I’ve felt, but haven’t been able to put into words. Please publish your book soon!

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I feel this so hard. ❤️

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So right on about pushing feelings away and getting sober. Perfectly articulated - thank you for expressing it so precisely.

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Those last lines. Oof 🙏

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Oh, thank you so much for writing this. Neither of us pass as white, and neither do our children, but these tensions still exist because i'm not from around here. And while that means I've got one back door out, it mostly means I'm stuck. In the meantime, this piece made me ring like a bell. Thanks.

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Get a concealed carry permit. No need to own a gun. Oregon and Washington have similar laws but not the same. Look up your county sheriffs office online. I took an online course and then went into the office with my application. A woman behind bulletproof glass took my picture and uploaded the application. Then she opened the door to take my digital fingerprints. The permit came in the mail a couple weeks later.

Do take a gun handling course. Get a feel for the weight and the kick so it doesn’t surprise you when you need it. Women are actually very good at marksmanship. Dont let anyone tell you different. Like anyhting if the course instructor gives you the creeps find someone else. I had a customer who was a course instructor that I didnt want to spend two minutes with. Ask your girlfriends who they went with. If your husband doesnt like him or her listen. Intuition is everything. Also if you have children get gun locks.

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This is deeply moving and the writing is crystal clear. Thank you for sharing your experience so clearly and openly. I find it eerily relatable, though I am a white woman married to a white man. I have been a loud and assertive activist since college, and a lot of my thoughts are written out and findable if someone were to go looking.

I share your sense of fear and imminent danger. My spouse has always supported me, and he has been an activist too, but he’s never been as loud or as angry as I have been/am. It’s taken me a long time to understand that his calm isn’t just a failure of his imagination, or my over-sensitivity so much as a result of his in-the-bones security that “they” won’t automatically see him as a problem and do something to ‘mitigate’ the threat.

That has not been my experience. I am terrified for myself and my kids, and for you and your kids and for people of color, or different abilities or brain composition. I know first hand how dangerous the world has always been for women. Given Trump’s cabinet picks, it will clearly get worse.

I’ll ask my husband read this essay, and use it as a starting point in our own conversation about how this election and what it’s revealed about the US. I don’t know if we’ll ever be on the same page, fear wise, but maybe we can understand each other better.

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