Marianne Williamson shook hands with each of the approximately 20 people in attendance at Peterborough Town Library Friday before the recovery forum she participated in with Anena Hansen of Reality Check.

Williamson, an author and spiritual adviser, is making her second run for president, challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination after having previously run in 2020. In her introduction, Hansen cited a quote from Williamson’s book “A Return to Love” – “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

“We’re going to try not to fawn too much, but we’re fans,” Hansen said.

Williamson talked about how, early in her career, she worked in New York City and Los Angeles with people whose lives were in agony due to sickness, addiction and divorce, but once she moved to Michigan, people were in crisis due to a lack of health care, not being able to send their children to college and working hard without getting ahead. When a politician asked her what they could do about mental health, she said, ‘Why don’t you start by not driving people crazy all the time?”

Meanwhile, when she visited her daughter in London, she noticed their citizens had universal health care and free tuition.

“I thought, ‘What is happening here?’” she said.

Once Oprah Winfrey became a fan, Williamson said she had a chance to meet people with yachts and multiple houses and private jets, and thought, “Something is very wrong here.” She said cutting taxes for the wealthy, deregulation, denigration of unions and union-busting have led to “theft” from the bottom classes to the top, leading to a situation where 12 million children are hungry.

“I have to tell you, a lot of them are in New Hampshire,” she said

Williamson added that people have been trained not to expect better, citing the example of being more willing to “fix” the Affordable Care Act instead of instituting universal health care because insurance companies were against it.

“To hell with insurance companies,” she said. “I don’t care.”

If Democrats run on the economy doing well, Williamson said that is not the experience of the 80 percent of Americans who live in economic anxiety, and that the country’s democracy, economy and society were “six inches from the cliff.”

She said the issue is not left versus right, but “It is the powerful versus the powerless.”

When Hansen, who is Reality Check’s employer services trainer, asked about addiction and recovery, Williamson called opioids a “specific horror,” and talked about a man she lived with when she was younger who was a heroin addict. She said he eventually got sober, but later got back on drugs and died.

“I learned a lot during that time about that phenomenon,” she said.

Williamson said that while society can’t look at one factor as a source in alcohol and drug abuse, she called economics a “petri dish” for all kinds of dysfunction, including drug and alcohol use, and that America has become like a family that is dealing with alcoholism.

“We need to accept the fact that the situation has become unbearable,” she said. “The United States of America needs a 12-step (program). We need to look in the mirror and acknowledge our deficits.”

Williamson also said Americans know better today about the effects of drugs and alcohol, and are willing to intervene with people they know because the problem will kill them if it is not fixed.

“We need to realize the same about our democracy,” she said. “If we do not intervene and save our democracy, it could kill our democracy.”

When Hansen asked Williamson what she would do as president, she answered universal health care, including for mental health and in-person addiction treatment if needed, and treating drugs like a health issue and not a criminal issue. In Canada, she said there are stations to test drugs for fentanyl, and “We need to do that pretty much immediately.”

Bringing up what Williamson called the poor treatment by the press of her 2020 campaign, Hansen said she has been seeing a lot of references to “living unapologetically” and asked Williamson what it means to her.

Williamson answered by referring to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responding to a question about the Biden administration’s reaction to her getting in the race by saying, “We’re just not tracking that. If I had a, what’s it called? A little globe here, a crystal ball, then I can tell you, a Magic 8 Ball, whatever. If I could feel her aura. I just don’t have anything to share on that.”

She also cited Sunny Hostin saying on “The View” that Williamson had said people could “will themselves back to health.”

“I never told anyone they could will away their illness,” she said, and that between her and Biden, she’s the one proposing universal health care, so she understands how real disease is.

Responding to a question from the audience, Williamson acknowledged that she took what she called lies personally the last time, but asked how bad that was compared to what women in Afghanistan and Iran are going through.

Hansen asked Williamson what her campaign needed.

“I want to see Marianne give the State of the Union address,” she said.

Referring again to Jean-Pierre’s and Hostin’s remarks, Williamson responded that she wants to win, not just “elevate the conversation.”

“This is not fun. I would not do this just to elevate the conversation,” she said. “They’re not doing that because they think I’m not serious. They do that because they know I’m serious.”

Although the Democratic National Committee has approved a presidential primary calendar putting New Hampshire’s primary after South Carolina and on the same day as Nevada, New Hampshire state law requires being first in the nation, and Williamson said that gives the state and its residents tremendous power. She encouraged attendees to go to her events, tell people what she’s doing, make donations to her campaign and not accept when people say she has no chance.

“The ultimate goal is the power to make these changes,” she said.

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