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We’ve socially shifted gears to surround ourselves with like minded people. Daughter is in American Heritage Girls, not Girl Scouts. Private Christian school. Play dates are with friends from Boy Scouts, American Heritage Girls and church, not neighbors.
Instead of isolation, it’s a social shift to create a community that agrees with us. I can’t save everyone else, but I can try to give my kids a community in which they belong.

I believe you're doing things right. I hope more people choose that sort of avenue. Things have reached a point where it's easy for people to have a defeatist attitude. I hope people choose a more active role in their local community, and don't instead develop an isolated survivalist mindset. Everyone needs to accept the reality of our situation, and then find the best outcome they can see happening to get behind.

It's hard for many to admit the depressing truth of the situation we are now in. It's not always an easy, or fast transition from accepting our bleak future to finding something that's worth fighting for in that same future. I know this based on personal experience. I looked for false hope until I couldn't lie to myself any longer, and then I just completely gave up and avoided all news as best as I could. After a few wasted months I realized that I couldn't continue down that path. After that I could find hope and motivation in a future that had been so depressing not long before that it had incapacitated me.

I know a lot of people already envisioned much of what we're now facing long before I ever did. Many just made the transition much better than I did, but some are never even going to make it that far. It's important for people to stop looking for false hope, but still be able to find some hope in a bleak reality. The difference between the two is enormous, and understandably not an easy transition. I know there aren't any perfect solutions to most of the issues we are facing. We just have to work together on finding the best answers we can for now.