The risk of caring

and what I want to tell you

Jan 11, 2026

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A song I’m loving:

I want to tell you I haven’t slept much the last nine nights, and this won’t be the most cohesive or impressive thing I’ll ever write, and sitting down to write feels like drinking water after being parched, and hydration is important in all its forms.

I want to tell you I’m writing this from a coffee shop, my first time away from my daughter in a week after a scary trip to the ER last Friday night, and pneumonia, and a relentless fever, and ceaseless coughing, and little sleep, and checking and checking and checking, and sobs, and fear down to the marrow, and shock at how quickly everything else quiets when the task is making sure the people you love most are okay, and the wildness of the sediment inside me that has been stirred this last week while trying to love her back to health, and the reality that nothing but love really matters.

I want to tell you witnessing the news this past week while loving my child has felt like a fever dream, like a slow drip of despair that has no choice but to be cancelled out by the act of loving what is right in front of me, like terror as I read the endless justifications for murder, for kidnapping, for separation, for bombing, for greed, for hoarding, for power, for control, for violence, for harm, for dehumanization, and the ridicule of those who try to name what else could be possible.

I want to tell you what a gift it is to witness endless acts of care right beside the breathless ache of it all — what a gift it is to see people caring everywhere, no matter how imperfectly — what a gift it is to watch us stumble through our attempts to bring more compassion to this trembling world — what a gift it is to remember we can re-center care again and again, even when we fumble or forget how, even when it feels like a kernel in the face of a universe, even when the results of that care aren’t always obvious in the moment.

I want to tell you how vulnerable it is to care — how I felt the vulnerability of caring when I watched my child trying to breathe, when the fear that wobbled in my chest mirrored the amount of love I don’t always know how to fully be with, when the desire for her to be okay echoed the desire for every human to be okay.

I want to tell you there is risk in caring: caring can lead to disappointment, betrayal, misattunement, rupture, hurt. Caring can lead to confronting the places in you that aren’t sure how to care as well as you wish you could, as well as the places in others that have protection in front of their own care. Caring can bring you right up close to loss. Caring can amplify grief, highlight the truth. But only because caring happens when our hearts are open, and it’s in that opening we feel all of life more acutely… which is often the very place our care can widen from.

I want to tell you the protectors in me don’t always remember this… of course they don’t.

I want to tell you I’d rather practice caring imperfectly than not try.

I want to tell you caring imperfectly is the only option for us.

I want to tell you I watched Renee Nicole Good caring for her neighbors, and being able to see care where others see danger reminds me my heart is still intact.

I want to tell you trusting the risks of caring are worth an intact heart.

I want to tell you a reminder I’m telling myself: that in the face of a dying world is not nothingness on the other side, but instead is the birth of something completely new, something we’ve perhaps been longing for all along, something that asks us to trust in death not being an ending but marking a beginning.

I want to tell you I don’t always remember this.

I want to tell you shame annihilates seeing clearly, and tending to our own shame is perhaps the very salve our clarity is asking for.

I want to tell you how exhausting it is to tend to shame in a world that prescribes it.

I want to tell you this dissonance is not your fault.

I want to tell you your efforts matter, and your practices matter, and your noticing matters, and your witnessing matters, and your attention matters, and your longing matters, and your willingness to try matters, and your attempting matters, and your questioning matters, and your dreaming matters, and your loving matters.

I want to tell you I’m letting there be room for rage and anger, for the seething, burning sensation that arises upon witnessing corruption and Othering, for the disgust that reminds me what is wrong, for the hardening my heart leans toward when I’m afraid of my own rage, for the softening that comes when I allow it to tell me something important.

I want to tell you this is a practice, not an arrival; this is a practice, not an identity.

I want to tell you when we got home from the hospital at 2:15am last Friday, while the wolf moon was at its fullest, my daughter looked up and said, “I’m so glad we have a moon.”

I want to tell you I’m afraid, too.

I want to tell you there are anchors everywhere, and we can turn toward them when the jumble of it all feels like too much — when we aren’t sure what to do — when we feel like we might burst with sorrow.

I want to tell you how astonished I am every time I remember the goodness and beauty and sweetness of this world haven’t been snuffed out by the hatred. That beauty is sturdy and steady. That kindness is plentiful. That aliveness is bursting forth even now. That there are roots just about to shoot through the concrete that looks lifeless. That we can catch our breath again after losing it. That it is okay to be terrified. That is is okay to forget hope until some small act of healing reminds you it, too, is still here, still available. That there are people everywhere, holding up what you need to set down for a moment. That you are probably holding more than you know. That the heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe. My heart is breaking open and open and open. The whole world seeps in.

Thank you, as always, for being here.