Looking into the Abyss
by Shelley Pineo-Jensen, Ph.D.
8/13/25
8/13/25
It's Wednesday, August 23 and I am distracted from my mission of preparation for knee surgery by an overwhelming sense of loss and the changes in my life since Mike Jensen died. It has been almost 7 months and yet it seems like a few days.
I've been working and organizing my thinking around belonging – that I still belong to some group or another, that I still matter. And I know, actually, that I do still matter – I have dear friends and loved ones, for example, and I do feel that my social justice activism is still strongly useful here on Facebook and elsewhere. I am planning to attend to demonstrations this week, for example. I will share my new signs in another post.
You know, I took up with Mike Jensen when I was 23 years old and we built a family together with just the two of us, a private little club with own language our own plans, and no one ever able to interfere with us. We decided to have children and we did and it was a great project and we were very proud of our children and I still am. We were good parents; we loved them and they knew it.
So many guitars, so much activism, and then it came lurching and screeching to a sudden end. Half the cart went off the cliff and I'm left with the remaining broken half, standing here, looking at the abyss.
I've been working and organizing my thinking around belonging – that I still belong to some group or another, that I still matter. And I know, actually, that I do still matter – I have dear friends and loved ones, for example, and I do feel that my social justice activism is still strongly useful here on Facebook and elsewhere. I am planning to attend to demonstrations this week, for example. I will share my new signs in another post.
You know, I took up with Mike Jensen when I was 23 years old and we built a family together with just the two of us, a private little club with own language our own plans, and no one ever able to interfere with us. We decided to have children and we did and it was a great project and we were very proud of our children and I still am. We were good parents; we loved them and they knew it.
So many guitars, so much activism, and then it came lurching and screeching to a sudden end. Half the cart went off the cliff and I'm left with the remaining broken half, standing here, looking at the abyss.
