Celebrating Solstice

Welcome back to Sunshine Strategies Radio!

While I had hoped again to share more information about Finley Cemetery in Christian County, Illinois - I’m still trying to find more information. So, stay tuned for more next week! And if you love research - please let me know. I’m sure I’ll need help as we move forward.

Today’s episode is a bit more introspective, and I hope you enjoy reading it. It dives a bit deeper into why I decided to start Sunshine Strategies, and why my work is so important to me.

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Happy New Year!

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On Solstice day, I decided to spend some time at Lincoln Trail Homestead State Park, west of Decatur, Illinois.

Lizzo went down for a nap, and after some prep work for tomorrow’s service at UUFD - I kissed Tim as he read in the living room, and snuck away to enjoy the fading afternoon light.

I wonder if Abraham Lincoln came back here after that disastrous winter. To watch the sunlight on the river, catch a glimpse of a dancing spiderweb, or chuckle at a feisty squirrel.

It’s a beautiful spot - but one that held many memories, I’m sure mostly negative, for Abraham Lincoln. By all accounts, Abe didn’t have a good relationship with his father, Thomas, and this is where the Lincoln family first spent the winter in Illinois, right here in Macon County. The Big Snow in 1831 almost killed the Lincolns; many people and animals were lost during the long winter nights.

To imagine Mr. Lincoln, sitting near the Sangamon River 194 years ago, wondering if his family would survive the longest night, the harshest winter, to see spring.

Today feels similar to me, and it seems significant that I needed - had to - take time off this past year. Like I needed the time to process my trauma and grief.

Because this past year for me, this time between election and inauguration day, and Abe Lincoln’s 1830 solstice all are periods of preparing and waiting.

Like Lincoln, I’ve fought hard to get to this point. Where he and his family trekked into the wilderness to find a better future for the whole family - I’ve spent the last year trying to figure out how to do what I was born to do, but my experiences and reality have made it impossible.

I’m a politician - period. My purpose is to make communities work for those who live in them. I’m interested in anything related to that goal - from early childhood education to elder care to the ethics of food production.

However, I’m also my family’s first daughter, and first grandchild. I’ve always felt called to care for others, to feel their hurts, and to solve their problems.

There is no place in American politics for that anymore. And I know firsthand.

My entry into politics was joyful. In 2016, we progressives came together first online then in person - with Bernie Sanders and Nina Turner and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

But reality creeps in once you step away from the bubble of supportive friends. No matter how much I agreed with JB Pritzker, or Susanna Mendoza, or even Senator Dick Durbin - it was not going to get me elected in 2018 when I ran for state representative. Rather, even just the letter behind my name lost me credibility in the circles I’d always been welcome in.

Slowly, I lost what little self-identity I had at that point by hiding parts of myself that weren’t welcome in politics. From both parties.

I now know more about myself, and why it was easier for me to get absorbed into that unhealthy system than others.

But I’m still a politician.

Even in the depths of my depression and mental health struggles - I kept working. I kept showing up daily for the staff, kids, and communities that needed me. I didn’t see it at the time, but I absolutely was working myself to death - because I cared too much to stop.

And then came the final straws.

One day at work, I had to share my experience and knowledge with a mom in real crisis. Because my team and I had to determine how best to help her. And while she needed mental health treatment, I knew that sending her to the Emergency Department that day would be more harmful than helpful.

Because of her health, conditions, and financial situation, they would have placed her in a behavioral health unit without any of her coping mechanisms or supports. While there, they would fiddle with her medications, with the goal to “calm” or sedate her immediate symptoms, rather than addressing her actual needs.

She needed real in-patient services - but she couldn’t afford it. Neither could my family.

Together, we created a safety plan - with the fail-safe being if she was a danger to herself or others, we’d take her to the hospital, any time of day.

She and her family are still safe a year later. And I made a lifelong friend.

The last straw was a little boy I’ll call Baby S. Baby S was three, soon to be four. And due to a lot of family trauma, situational issues, and broken systems - our community put him in danger over and over again by accident.

I think that was the day I knew I needed to leave the crisis nursery, but I was too stubborn.

Because to be the advocate that those families needed - I couldn’t do it as an executive director of a local nonprofit service agency. So I did it after hours, on the weekends. Like I always have, I identified the issues, the root causes as I saw them, and developed solutions to improve the system. So much so that I drafted a 21-page informational packet on how to address the child maltreatment crisis in Illinois by creating at least five more crisis nurseries in the state immediately.

And while I sent it privately to` legislators and executive contacts, I haven’t shared it publicly. Mostly because it’s important enough to be produced by a credible organization, which I didn’t have at the time. I didn’t want any of my work to be seen as a power move, nor taken as a product of the boards I worked for or with.

And clearly, this is a hard story for me to tell. It’s very personal, and I wanted to tell it in a way that protected the anonymity of those people involved. Choosing to leave the crisis nursery and start Sunshine Strategies was the hardest, most painful decision I’ve ever made.

And it was the right one.

Now that I’ve launched, and figured out how to explain the business model, it’s finally time to share our actual first project, and where it stands now.

Because it isn’t finished, just resting.

In the next month, there is a meeting about developing a crisis nursery here in Macon County, hosted by Senator Doris Turner. It is my hope in 2025 to continue assisting them and as many others that want to create more safe communities for families and children.

I’m hopeful that like Abe Lincoln’s first solstice in Illinois, I’ll continue to grow brighter as my season changes. May the darkest parts of the night be over.

J