Ordinary people

on witnessing love in action

Jan 25, 2026

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A song I’m loving:

vegetable garden, left. beach, right. 35mm film

To be transparent, all I can really think about the last few days is what is unfolding in Minnesota, in my country. Liam Ramos. Alex Pretti. The dehumanizing lies. The crazy-making feeling of witnessing our leaders attacking our people. The horror and heartbreak soothed by the profoundly moving and radically human displays of solidarity, community, organizing, and resisting. What this does to our hearts, this sifting through beauty and pain, this metabolizing more than any of us can hold alone, this remembrance that we aren’t holding any of it alone. This wave of ordinary people coming together as proof we outnumber them. This. This.

Joanna Macy wrote, “If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.” Everywhere I look, I see people choosing their love for this life and each other over their fear. I see people protecting their neighbors and caring for children. I see people protesting and calling their senators. I see people getting top surgery, people fighting for rivers, people visioning new futures. I see people making art and making meals. I see people grieving and writing poems and architecturing what else could be possible. I see people awakening from freeze. I see people taking risks on behalf of humanity. I see people caring, no matter how wobbly or imperfect. I see people choosing not to look away. I see people bearing witness and being moved by what they know they see. I see people disrupting business as usual. I see people meeting the moment with as much presence as their body will allow. I see people donating and practicing generosity. I see people singing, lighting candles, putting their bodies in the way of harm. I see ordinary people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.

And while none of us know where we are headed, I want to stay oriented toward how many of us are saying No. Not this. Something better is possible. I want to stay tethered to just how many people are resisting the continuation of what has never worked for all. I want to stay stitched to the knowing that despite the systems in place and people in power that want us to believe they are the majority, they are not. We are.

There is risk in caring — in loving this world. And yet I cry as I witness countless people choosing that risk in spite of the consequences of doing so. I cry as I watch ordinary people practice the messy art of fucking caring about each other. I cry as I feel myself stretched between nurturing my child’s small, magnificent world and watching what is happening in our collective. I cry as I feel the vulnerability of unlearning hierarchies, dominance, Othering, and violence. I cry as I feel the fear of the world we’ve known slipping away, right beside the hope of a new world blooming, one I may never see but refuse to not believe in. I cry as I feel the pulse of justice beating in more and more hearts. I cry as I remember we will all make so many mistakes as we find our unique paths to showing up, and in the kind of world I want, mistakes are part of learning — learning is part of growing — growing is what something better requires. I cry as I feel the depth of ache, a mirror of the depth of love I’m seeing. I cry as I notice what a gift it is to feel all of it instead of feeling numb. I cry as I recognize this willingness to feel it all in so many of us. It is no small thing.

May your gentleness not be mistaken for weakness. May your softness not be mistaken for flimsiness. May your compassion not be mistaken for neutrality. May your tender heart burn for what is right.

May the grief, rage, and sorrow be felt so fully, so deeply, so widely, that they alchemize into power for the benefit of all living beings.

May some wise being point you toward beauty and awe when you feel squeezed in despair’s grip, when you forget there is more than just this.

May your wisdom turn into honey to help feed a world that is possible; may you include yourself in that feeding.

May you look toward all who are already building another kind of world and join them.

May the swaying trees remind you to move, to sway, to feel the breeze, to remember you are part of something.

May you let your tenderness grow. May that growth bring you more alive, more here. May being more here give you the courage to act on your longings for all of us.

May all who are vulnerable be protected, held, and nurtured with the love so many have never known how to give or receive.

May the discomfort of witnessing be soothed by the widening of every heart that chooses not to look away.

May you stay devoted to becoming the kind of person a more beautiful and nurturing world is begging for.

Thank you for your grace in this unedited and from-the-heart dispatch. There is so much moving within and around. It feels like medicine to let it move.

Thank you, as always, for being here.