It may not help, but I do enjoy this poem by Caitlin Seida:

Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat

• Hope is not the thing with feathers
• That comes home to roost
• When you need it most.

• Hope is an ugly thing
• With teeth and claws and
• Patchy fur that’s seen some shit.

• It’s what thrives in the discards
• And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,
• Able to find a way to go on
• When nothing else can even find a way in.

• It’s the gritty, nasty little carrier of such
• diseases as
• optimism, persistence,
• Perseverance and joy,
• Transmissible as it drags its tail across
• your path
• and
• bites you in the ass.

• Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird,
• Emily.
• It’s a lowly little sewer rat
• That snorts pesticides like they were
• Lines of coke and still
• Shows up on time to work the next day
• Looking no worse for wear.#

I’m with you on this. My childhood church was christo-fascist, and it was my wide wanderings on the web that showed me a different way was possible.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Business Insider is on the side of the corps here.

American culture is changing. It used to be that family bonds were the tightest, and we had generational housing, but that started going away during the great depression when a lot of family farms shut down and people lost the house they’d been in for generations. We also don’t like to talk about the amount of generational trauma that came from both the world wars, and that was another nail in the coffin of family life. The most recent blow has been the economy, where both parents need to work and don’t have the time to build the bonds with their children that are needed for a tight-knit family unit.

The title literally says it’s a secret. If he’s not the only one saying it, then it’s not a secret, and the title is dishonest.

Rosemary is also a decent option if you want something that looks more like a christmas tree, but tabletop size