How do I write about our national catastrophe and the ongoing fear we are experiencing due to the unpredictable changes and expectations manipulated by a reckless, vengeful, and cruel president?

After reading Bill Feinstein’s insightful essay [“We are in mourning,” Recorder, March 13] on the complexities of human nature, I felt encouraged to try and find my voice again. Sadness does indeed permeate my mind and body. I do mourn our enormous losses and the suffering so many are being forced to endure at the whim of one heartless man.

Losses haunt my dreams. Last night I dreamt I had lost my camp trunk, a rather trivial artifact from 77 years ago, when I was 8 years old. I awoke bereft, viscerally anxious, frightened as to where I would stow my treasures now.

That trunk represents the happiest times of my life; happiness arising from a sense of belonging to a group, to the pine woods, the camaraderie and the shared values of a girls summer camp. Moreover, it was there that I gained a strong sense of patriotism. We had flag-raising every morning and Taps was played on a bugle that sounded over the lake every evening. Though children and innocent of the whole complicated history of the United States, we celebrated the Fourth of July with fervor and fireworks and sparklers in the starry summer night.

Today those feelings of loyalty, nurtured in almost all Americans one way or another, are being desecrated by harsh actions completely counter to our sense of well-being.

We are living in a nightmare. Perhaps we are undereducated about our own history. Perhaps we too often turn to vacuous entertainment and consumption as an escape from an encroaching reality. Perhaps we are genuinely naive, but we still believed the Constitution would protect us and the law of the land.

Today we do not know whether the Constitution will be upheld, even by the Supreme Court. My trunk, viewed metaphorically, holds my old treasures of security, peace and belonging. It may well be hidden beneath some dark attic eave or in a cobwebby corner of a cellar, but I have no way of knowing.

Dare I even hope that it might be recovered? Is holding onto that possibility despite my daily fears and sadness the only way to preserve my voice and replenish the courage we will all need if democracy is to survive ?

Margot Fleck lives in Northfield.