"It's a great day for the democratic party!" That's what my Dad wrote in my card on my 18th birthday (along with a normal-ish message) in 2001. 

Our family has been proud democrats for generations. I was raised on a constant rhetoric of helping the less fortunate, of how lucky we were to be the ones helping, and not those who needed help. Paying taxes was part of our responsibility. Women's bodies belonged to the women themselves. Racism was bad.

I was the most loyal of soldiers. I took unpaid time off to volunteer for President Obama's first campaign, worked for Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, knocked doors and ran from dogs.

At our wedding, we hired only vendors who were LGBTQ friendly, and I started talking about how Black lives matter after a summer interning at the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, not when it hit the news.

I would say that other people followed sports teams, and I was a loyal fan of the democrats.

And here I sit in 2026, politically homeless. 

I am a traitor to the left, and to the right.

The left wants nothing to do with me, because I am a proud Jew. I believe that the Jews are not less than any other people, any less deserving of a state of our own. I am a Zionist, having referred to myself as "the last secular Zionist" since 2009, when I made aliyah. I lived in Israel, had my babies there, built a full life in the glorious bubble known as Tel Aviv.

I wish for a Jewish conspiracy like they imagine, because then we could probably at least agree on something. These days, the old "two Jews, three opinions" feels quaint, as it feels like every thoughtful person I know carries at least three opinions on their tired shoulders.

The right wants nothing to do with me, because I am deeply ashamed of the current Israeli government, because I deplore the innocent lives being taken in the West Bank, by people who also claim Zionism as theirs. My family protested Bibi's government for many months, every single week. I was out three days before giving birth, and not long after.

People who have never rushed their babies to a bomb shelter accuse me of not being enough, as if they know the fear of a baby at the breast as rockets fall. The Rashid Khalidi on my bookshelf is heresy, the Herzl and Gordis and Golda Meir count for nothing. So I speak Hebrew to my children. So what?

I started writing this weeks ago, and then stopped, without any idea how to end it. The truth is that there is no end. Since I started, the democratic party of Maine nominated Graham Platner for the senate, despite his Nazi tattoo. The bad news is endless, and the good news, hard to come by.

I feel gutted, torn, abandoned. So does everyone I know.