My friends, most of you have heard this term: hurt locker. It means: a place of profound pain and deep discomfort.

And maybe you saw the film by the same name, so you already have a vivid picture of what hurt locker looks like. If you called up the image of actor Jeremy Renner in his blast-resistant suit making his way towards a suicide bomber, you have it about right.

That’s where we are now. Except few of us have the suit. Some of us are bare-assed naked. But the richest among us have bunkers in the mountains in New Zealand or they own islands they can retreat to. We may have thought we had protection from the harm that is befalling us, but we are more vulnerable than most of us ever imagined.

I have the misfortune of not  being one of those who never imagined this. I possess an innate kind of hypervigilance that is always capable of imagining the worst because of how I grew up. I have learned to keep some version of the suit at hand—though not even the best-built anti-explosive armor can protect you from everything.

In two weeks and change, Christo-Fascist Oligarchs have taken over the United States government in a coups in which the enabling voting public handed over everything willingly—even gleefully— to their new captors. I have more to say about the voters, but first —you know me— let me tell you a story.

This is a deeply personal tale. It’s about a different kind of wild than the outdoor adventures I’ve previously shared. This is about danger up close and personal, even within.

When I was around the age of thirty, I was so miserable with my life that I sought out a therapist for help. I was deep in the hurt locker. Some form of grace led me to the man who asked me what-seemed-like-a-thousand questions and — as I was answering — drew circles, squares, and straight, jagged, or torn lines between them — the shapes representing my family members, and the lines representing the individual relationships. At the end of a perplexing hour of this, he showed me his work, then set his clipboard down and looked directly into my eyes. “I think we’re talking about the disease of alcoholism.”

I was stunned. Like a fish in the ocean, I had no concept of the waters I’d always lived in because they had always surrounded me; they were the lens I looked through, the world I constantly navigated. I had no other frame of reference.

The next two things the therapist said made me furious. He told me I played an active part in my own pain, using the words “enabler” and “denial.” And then he said he would only agree to schedule another appointment with me after I had been to a meeting of Adult Children of Alcoholics.

Sidebar: my parents would be horrified that I’m telling you this, but they are both gone now. But if you are reading this, you are not gone…yet. So I hope that sharing this will help you, and I’m going to ask you to stick with me because—if you are just waking up to this new state of the union we live in and suddenly seeing just how toxic things have become for us without our realizing it, I have a couple suggestions.

Back to the therapist appointment: I remember walking to the parking garage after the session, tightly gripping the keys in my hand, feeling enraged. I complained out loud about how little that guy really knew about me as I got in my car and all the way as I drove home. Once there, I grabbed the keys from the ignition, and used them to open the front door. And then—as if that door had opened onto a dystopian view of a beach at low tide: the stink and rot of debris, dead fish, sargassum, and bones exposed—I could suddenly see the truth of what he had said.

I found the nearest meeting and went to hear what others had to say about growing up like I did: how the chaos and confusion and control and subterfuge and lying and bullying and failing to be faithful and accountable by those charged with protecting you affects your ability to see things clearly, overwhelms you with disinformation, forces you into reactive strategies, and ends up with you wearing the emotional version of a Jeremy Renner suit too frequently to think about and a life that can be summed up in two words: hurt locker. I heard from those who shared their stories how we learn as children to deny; and to permit the weird, controlling, outrageous, and sometimes life-threatening behavior… because the big people hold the keys to all the stuff you need to survive.

You have all heard that little parable about the frogs that sit in the pot of water as the temperature is slowly turned up… until they boil to death. That’s the story of growing up like I did. And that’s the story of where we are right now as citizens in this country. Only there are some of us who jumped out of the pot a while ago. And we’ve been trying to warn you and encourage you to join us. Well now, how is that hot bath working for you? Still want to linger?

I hope not. Because we are under siege. There is a full-on coup in process and the time for denial and enabling is over. If we do not engage and get moving, they will take everything that is dear to us and they will suck the life out of our home, the United States of America, the democracy we love. We are already in the hurt locker and the blasts are going off in the Treasury Department, in the State Department, in the Senate Chamber, in the Department of Justice, and in presidential press conferences, and they are aimed at us. They are designed to destroy us. They will hurt us. They will hurt YOU.

I have grown up a lot since the day I first saw reality when I opened that door. I have learned to use valuable keys like the ones that I clung to that day, to keep revealing and sharing the truth. I have grown and I have been given guidance. Today, I am a leader, a creator, and I hope a good example. I also continue to grow as I look for good guidance in the realm of our shared state of pain. I learn from the leaders who speak and write from a position of wisdom and clarity. They have real awareness and good advice. People like Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, Steve Schmidt, Robert Reich, Marc Elias, Rachel Maddow, and more. I look to the founders of Indivisible who know more about what our leaders in the Senate and the House could be (but are not) doing than those we elected to serve us do. I look to the people around me who are engaging with community to protect, minimize harm, create solutions.

So I’m asking you right now if you’re on dry land or if you’re still floating in your own personal pot of warm water hoping it will all be all right. If you think that the suicide bombers that Musk has appointed to seize the government’s payment and information systems, and the crazed criminal idiot they coyly put on the throne are going to do the right thing, then I think we’re talking about the disease of denial. If you think your electeds are going to stop this, I think you might have missed the first two weeks of this coup because you—like the House of Representatives—were somehow inexplicably out on vacay. If you think the courts are going to react quickly and powerfully enough to avert this siege, let me introduce you to the radical right on the Supreme Court who crowned the orange demon king. And our new attorney general.

The thing about the hurt locker is that you don’t even bother to put on the protection and try to disarm the things that can blow up on you so long as you deny that these things exist. You risk harm not only for yourself but for everyone around you when you fail to assess the reality of the moment. The thing that is different here and now is that we have all worked hard and given mightily to elect people who said they would do this for us, and they are not up to the job. They have been on leave (looking at you, House of Representatives) because…

· okay, I cannot think of a single reason to justify them not rushing back to DC to address the crisis, so let’s move on…

· or they are still acting like they’re all “colleagues” (looking at you, Senators)

· or going along to get along and voting to hand all the cabinet-level detonation devices to election deniers, insurrectionists, the architects of Project 2025, DUI-hire Fox news hosts, and billionaire tech oligarchs who openly plot out loud and on video to “delete democracy” and create a dictatorship to enrich themselves. “Yes,” these fools in the Senate say, “let’s be nice and vote to hand our lives, our blood, and our treasure to these terrorists because it would hardly be civil to even suggest that we see the IEDs they have already planted and the detonators in their hands.”

I learned some things in the program, not the least of which is that nothing changes until something changes. Right from the beginning, my sponsors taught me—when I found myself in a violence-prone situation—to keep the swat team on speed dial… and until I could set myself free from the oppression I had conceded to before I woke up and realized what kind of waters I was swimming in. They taught me to keep money hidden safely away where I could get to it in an emergency, my keys under my pillow, and a car in the driveway. They taught me how to diffuse any bombs I could see until I could gather the wisdom, the strength, and the support I needed to find a way to jump out of the hot-water-war-zone and into the beautiful life I was meant to live, the life I deserved, the life I have since created free of disease and domination. I have loved this life and lived it well ever since that day when I clutched my keys and opened the door to change. But maybe it’s because my former life in the hurt locker taught me so well that I have seen this hurt locker coming for ten years. Maybe it’s because those selfless teachers taught me how to take care of myself (and those I cared about) that I have chosen to spend a good part of these past ten years leading, working, informing, creating, supporting, and defending democracy.

The kind of tragedy we are all beginning to witness and share… the one I have seen coming for a decade and tried to prepare for and to avoid… I have been sketching out the circles and squares, the connecting lines, constantly showing my work for a long time. I have seen others respond with denial and disinterest. Because I am a storyteller by nature, I have drawn the venn diagram in stories, videos, letters, speeches. I have built alliances and worked with others at this since the day the demon descended the golden escalator to rage at brown people and pledge to take control of our government to hurt them—and us.

But it hasn’t just been me and other like-minded folks showing our work. The folks from Project 2025 published the plans for their war on democracy and proudly displayed it! The performative cruelty, the hate and disrespect, the criminality, and open advocation for deleting democracy and for dictatorship, for enslaving women and denigrating others of any “other” creed, color, or persuasion—this has all been on public display. But—like thirty-year-old me—too many have walked away in anger, shaking heads and vowing not to listen. I feel lucky my willful ignorance that day was not as easy to hold onto as my need to find a way out of the hurt locker.

I’m going to say something I have hesitated to say for some time. If I were your sponsor, the first thing I would tell you to do is to make your home and your neighborhood safe. That’s what they told me, and it was the beginning of the most amazing transformation and the most incredibly exciting, joyous, and fulfilling life I could imagine. So make your home and your neighborhood safe first. It’s time to note who is wearing the red-hat-terrorist attire, going along with the threats and lies that cause fear and choke out freedom. Stop tolerating and/or spending time with liars: there is nothing to keep you captive in chaos and confusion like someone constantly lying to you, gaslighting you, deceiving you, betraying you. I have watched the media (and others) try to interpret this hurt locker. Some of them make their bones from the rage and the anger. Some think the cruelty is funny. Some will minimize it, fail to accurately assess and report it (this is gaslighting, too), and some will just plain lie about it. Get all that out of your safe space.

This goes for the Trump-voters in your life, too, even family members who won’t stop with the red radical crap. See these Magats in your life clearly. They helped put us all in the hurt locker because they didn’t want to get off their asses and inform themselves, or they saw what they wanted in it. They voted for—they actively chose this, checked the box: MAKE AMERICA HATE AGAIN. If they are still defending their vote, then they are not good people; they plant IEDs everywhere. You will not be safe if you keep them around.

They told me I had to change my playgrounds and playmates if I wanted to get out of the hurt locker and have a good life. This same principle applies to our politics. Many of us have worked to elect and even re-elect, to support and amplify, to fundraise for and campaign for those same people in Congress who are currently lying down, keeping quiet, going along to get along, even capitulating and voting for the terrorists and bombers. They betray us. They are violating their oath. They cannot be trusted to the high positions we have awarded to them. They are actively enabling the coup. We can no longer enable them.

This is the part about keeping the swat team on speed dial. We have to provide so much pressure on those Democrats who are failing us that they will stop what they are doing and start doing the right thing for fear of the consequences. WE are the consequences. Indivisible has great, actionable ideas on this. And so do the great thinkers I mentioned above.

The thing is, nothing can help you—just like the therapist said—until you stop doing the things that are keeping you confined in the hurt locker—the denial and the enabling. It’s a long road to freedom. Today, you stop denying and enabling when you find the nearest group of folks who are doing something about the situation so you can all help one another confront the reality we face. Open the door and see the truth. Seeing things as they really are, you will better be able to keep yourself safe, protect yourself, and prepare. And get rid of the people you’ve been keeping around you who are creating and supporting the pain. Together, we have to do this on a national scale to get out of this hurt locker.

I’ll close with these lyrics from Sting’s THEY DANCE ALONE (GUECA SOLO):

One day we’ll dance on their graves
One day we’ll sing our freedom
One day we’ll laugh in our joy
And we’ll dance

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This has been Sandi Ault—Reporting from the WILD. You can also listen to my stories on the companion podcast to this blog—wherever podcasts are found.

If you want more stories from the WILD, look for my WILD Mystery Series in book, audio book, and e-book. You can start with any book in the series and go WILD. Take care.

Sandi Ault – Reporting from the WILD is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.