love in action
I’m still trying to metabolize the grief of what’s unfolding here in the United States.
I haven’t had many words, beyond reposting what feels unbearable to witness. And honestly, I let myself take it all in so fully that I made myself sad and angry to the point of feeling physically sick. That’s on me. I’m learning how to stay present with my heart wide open without letting despair take the wheel, how to be informed without being drowned.
I’m also recognizing that taking in the news every five minutes isn’t actually helpful to anyone. Not to my nervous system, not to my family, and not to the world I care so deeply about. For me right now, the work is staying informed and anchored, expanding my capacity to witness without collapsing under the weight of it.
A couple weeks ago, my son and I were downtown grabbing lunch when we noticed a protest nearby. I asked him if he’d feel okay walking over and standing on the edge. He said yes.
As the universe would have it, we ended up standing next to Mike.
Mike was born in the 1930s. He’s in his 90s now, though he looked not a day over 75 because love is good for the soul, and was holding a sign that read: “No Gestapo.” He welcomed us immediately, looked straight at my son, taking in his big brown eyes and brown skin, and said, “You are beautiful.”
Mike told me his wife lost family in the Holocaust. He shook his head gently as he spoke, saying he never imagined he’d see echoes of that time here. He told our son that hate is a disease, that it spreads quickly, and that believing in love is an act of responsibility.
Almost on cue, a man in a truck pulled up and began yelling obscenities, racial slurs, homophobic slurs, pure venom. I instinctively moved to pull my son away.
Before I could get far, Mike raised his voice and began chanting, “We love you.
And then everyone joined in. Including my son.
That moment has stayed with me. Not because it erased the ugliness, it actually infuriated MAGA Joe even more, but because it showed me another way to meet it. Not with silence. Not with cruelty. But with grounded, embodied love that refuses to disappear.
I don’t have any answers right now but I do know this : I want my son to see what it looks like to stand near truth, to choose love without becoming hardened and to understand that tending our nervous systems is not avoidance, it’s actually what allows us to stay in the conversation longer.
I don’t experience this as a Republican versus Democrat issue. That framing feels too small for what’s actually being asked of us. This feels like a moral moment. A human moment. One that asks who we are willing to be when fear is loud and cruelty feels normalized.
What I keep coming back to is Mike, nearly a century of living behind him, still showing up, still choosing love, still reminding a child that hate is a disease and that it spreads unless we interrupt it.
And even in frightening times, there are elders like Mike still teaching us how to be human.
