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When the News is Horrible, Seek the Healing Power of Nature

Yes, I’m lucky to have this privilege but at least I’m sharing my photos?

Mary DeVries
5 min readNov 7, 2024
birght orange leaves on a tree with bushes and blue sky with clouds in the background
photo by author

My daughter woke me up at 8:00am my time (3:00 am on the US East coast) looking for reassurance. “You follow this stuff much closer than I do, Mom. Tell me it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

I had nothing.

The only reason I was still in bed is I hadn’t fallen asleep until 4:00am. When you’re a political junkie living several times zones away from the action you face hard choices. Stay up to watch in real time or go to bed and wake up to a done deal?

I chose the worst of both worlds. I decided to stay up until midnight when the first polls closed. I’d get the earliest results and then decide. Hopefully they would be encouraging and I’d quickly drop off to happy dreams.

“Oh this is interesting,” said the BBC news anchor, “Miami Dade is coming in much stronger for Trump this time than four years ago.”

“That’s not interesting, it’s disastrous,” I shouted at my TV. Clearly I needed to stay up for a bit to get more optimistic news. For the next four hours I hopped in and out of bed, trying to sleep then getting up to see if things had turned for the better.

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Mary DeVries
Mary DeVries

Written by Mary DeVries

I delight, despair and write about a life lived around the world. Fueled by Yorkshire Gold tea.

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