Staying home is the new getting away.

Last August, which feels like a lifetime ago, I was co-teaching a seminar in Portland, Oregon, and Antifa was planning a thing there the same weekend. We kept an eye on it and I checked in with my ex-husband throughout the weekend and didn’t take my kids downtown; they were at an Airbnb about an hour outside of town with family and friends. I thought it surreal though, to have our parking paid for because the upscale hotel we were in didn’t want us on the streets. Most of the downtown closed. We did walk outside and it was eerie. The fancy restaurant in our hotel was the only thing open and if you weren’t paying attention you wouldn’t have noticed that the doors to it entering from the street were locked. After being a stay-behind wife of an overseas private military contractor for nearly a decade, it felt more like something he would experience than me. Because of that experience though, I have an even greater awareness of my surroundings. Not only have I had a strong intuition my entire life but I could also pick out who in the lobby in “plain clothes” was actually private security hired by the hotel.

The week following the seminar my mom and I, with my two sons and some friends of ours explored Portland and Seattle. I don’t believe in coincidences and I am still trying to understand the link between my extensive work travel and the overlap of the cities under turmoil currently. Aside from Florida, Nashville and Hawaii, I’ve frequented Portland, Seattle, California, Chicago and Minneapolis more than anywhere else in the past four years.

Even a year ago the only way I could describe Portland was that if you put all of the major cities around a dining room table, Portland would be the dark, misguided teenager trying to make a statement. I don’t remember what Antifa was there to “protest” but I did do a little search engine digging into their beliefs and ideologies and I put the bad taste that it gave me in my pocket so that I could hold onto it.

Meanwhile, Chicago is a war-zone nearly every weekend and Seattle was being primed for a stunt like nothing ever seen before (Chaz/Chop). And even though I didn’t know what the next year would bring, I’ve known for years that there’s a reason I’m a small-town Wisconsin girl.

Current: I have no desire to go anywhere. Airlines and airports appall me and is there anywhere left that is free? Well, South Dakota so that’s on my radar. But rhetorically speaking?

A year ago I walked the streets of Portland during an Antifa temper tantrum and didn’t fear anything. I didn’t get glared at for not wearing a mask in an airport or even for sneezing or coughing. I did take my kids to the original Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland which now makes me sick to my stomach but, we live, we learn. Earlier that day a homeless woman threw a bottle at my friend and me looking for a fight but we just ignored her and moved on. We shopped, we walked, we ate, we took it in.

And while I long for that being normal, my mindset hasn’t changed. I’m still free. I might not walk the streets of any city during a “peaceful protest” but I attend freedom rallies and if people throw things at me or call me names, I still choose whether or not I’ll engage. I still make my life normal for my kids because if we want normal, we need to ACT normal. We’re just doing it in our town.

I was supposed to sail the Greek islands in May. I was a little annoyed about missing that. People missed far more important trips, but that’s not the point. We lost our freedom to move freely. So in true Braskey-rebellion fashion, I now refuse to travel. It makes me feel better. I don’t need breaks from my life or a vacation. I have built a beautiful life here with my kids but I can’t help but wonder what it will take for the title of my next blog post to be “Travel, Resurrected.”

I’ve been a grassroots natural health practice in Central WI for seven years. I’ve worked with one person at a time, one family at a time, to figure out natural ways to be well and start questioning GMO’s, vaccines, EMF’s and other toxic agendas along the way. This is what keeps me going. The theme right now is uncertainty. Even those of us who don’t want to be affected by a fake pandemic are in survival mode right now watching this unfold. All we can do is be as strong and reasonable as possible.

Travel is dead but hope is alive. I think we’re better off on the other side of this. I think the United States of America will be the first country in history to get this right and I think we are about to get even more uncomfortable but that we needed this somehow. It’s been a test to see how much we are willing to fight for. 

Here’s to making our hometowns stronger and building community at a smaller level. To our own version of normal. To respecting each other. To paying attention. To grounding in our mission, whatever that looks like. To restoring our patriotic spirit. To freely moving again someday.

Here’s to love and truth.