2/28/22, Peace Please!!!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’ve had a good week, and that all is well with you.

I’ve been very lucky to have two of my daughters visit me for a few days, which is always a special gift, and a time I cherish. I have a little sign on my desk which says “Cherish Every Moment”, which is good advice.

I don’t know what to say, given the state of the world at this hour. On the frivolous side, today is the beginning of fashion week in Paris, with the ready to wear shows by mostly French designers. Last week it was Fashion week in Milan. And before that, in New York. Two of my daughters worked on fashion shows for the brands they work for. I used to report to you on the fashion shows I went to, mostly Chanel, and sometimes Hermes, but because of the pandemic, I haven’t been to a fashion show in two years, and don’t feel quite ready to start attending them again yet. I want to wait until Covid is a little further behind us, before I go to live shows, attended by spectators and big crowds.

But much as I love fashion, I cant wrap my mind around it just now. After two years of agony over Covid, fear and contagion, masks and vaccines, working remotely, and loved ones lost, and the whole world at a dead stop and on its ear for two years, and just as we are beginning to breathe a little easier and see a light at the end of the Covid tunnel, with a ray of hope…..suddenly our world is rocked again by the war that has erupted between Russia and Ukraine, as we sit glued to our TV’s and hang on every word of the leaders involved, and those who analyze the situation, with the word ‘nuclear’ peppered here and there, and we are terrified all over again. How is it possible that we have to face TWO such life threatening events back to back, over which we, as private citizens, have no control, and our lives are suddenly in other people’s hands?

The images of those fleeing Ukraine (nearly 400,000 people) fearing for their lives, while others are willing to fight to the death against an invading army, in a war that is threatening everything they hold dear, country, family, children, freedom. Sanctions are imposed against the invaders, who in turn retaliate with nuclear threats. How is it possible that while we were just beginning to recover from Covid and a brutally hard pandemic for two years, now terror has landed on our doorstep again wearing a different mask: this time war—-in an era when nuclear attack is a potential reality if the leaders involved lose their heads and don’t back down. I have never been to Russia or Ukraine, but what unimaginable terror to leave your home with only a few possessions, taking your children and pets, grabbing the essentials for survival as you leave—-fearing your home will be bombed, or after it was. it is everyone’s worst nightmare, as the world waits with bated breath to see what comes next.

It’s hard, actually impossible to focus on anything else. We are battle weary from the pandemic, and now some of us must face real battles with bombs and threats and tanks in the street. And what will that mean for the rest of us, if a peaceful resolution isn’t reached?. Our lives are once again on the line, in hands other than our own. It was destiny as to who got sick and who died of Covid—-and now our fate is in human hands.

We need peace, on every front, a time to heal, all around the globe, a time to live and breathe again, a time to put fear behind us, not clutch it with both hands, and hope that we and our loved ones survive.

Please, please, please give us peace. We need it so desperately. May you be strong and safe, and may all the leaders of every country be wise, and do everything necessary to grant us peace.

May God bless you and keep you safe, and all of us, with my most fervent prayers and all my love and hope,

Danielle