This blog was originally posted to my Substack on January 4, 2026. The original post can be viewed here.
I wrote a poem today while I was in the middle of reading the latest update from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American. There was so much important information in the piece, and I’m inspired by Richardson’s excellent work chronicling current events in American politics. I encourage you to go check out the publication.
While there was so much to think about in response to the piece, I found my attention catching on the quotes Richardson included, demonstrating Trump’s glorification of violence.
“I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. And, uh… if you would’ve seen the speed, the violence—you know they say that, ‘the speed, the violence,’ they use that term—it’s uh, just, it was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did.”
A few paragraphs later, another quote:
“Trump called the operation ‘an assault like people have not seen since World War II’ and said it was ‘one of the most stunning effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.’”
Reading that, it was one of those moments that makes my heart sink. Not just the feeling of sadness, but that hollow-chest feeing that makes you think you might be about to puke, or pass out. Everything feels wrong (even though you know this is how it’s been for a long time).
I did with that feeling, what I do with any big feelings I have. I wrote. So, here’s the poem:
american Humanity. January 4, 2026. Yesterday, the president called an act of violence, “amazing,” and “stunning.” I thought I might vomit, when I read the quote. (Or I would have, if I hadn’t heard so much worse, so many times already.) I lie in bed, the whole left side of my body aching. A migraine pressing into my brow bone. I read, a few minutes. Then, I put down my phone. I have to rest. The memories of a hundred posts— a hundred indictments of the actionless reader —scroll across the insides of my eyelids. Why are they telling us we aren’t doing enough? Does it make them feel less helpless? Don’t they understand, we are doing something? (so much, in fact.) We’re grieving. We’re feeling the pain reverberate through our bodies. We’re dreaming of living in a country that isn’t sick with power and cruelty. We’re trying to get better, trying to heal (instead of letting the world break us). We’re feeling what we feel. And telling the world about it too. The government has bled dry of its humanity. There are things I can’t do about that. But I can be human. And that means something.
As I was writing this, a lot of emotions were swirling in me. Disgust at the way Trump continues to glorify violence in his statements. Fear at the increasingly unambiguous corruption and cruelty in the U.S. government. My own shame at being a citizen of a country enacting such violence. My frustration when I see folks trying to use shame to motivate their peers into engaging in activism (or at least, what activism looks like to them).
These past several years (and this year, in particular), what has helped me hold steady as I confronted all these different emotions, is my belief that leaning into our humanity is always right and good.
I don’t discount the very important work that folks are doing to fight violence, corruption, and tyranny in this country. There are amazing folks out there, fighting the good fight, visibly, for the world to see. From independent journalists reporting the news factually in a world of bias and misinformation, and protestors placing their bodies on the line to stand up for the safety of their communities, to folks working within governmental structures to enact change, we have many images of what it means to be doing our best to enact change for good.
But, I think it can be really important to remember that there are so many ways that we can show up in support of social and political change, many of which are not often thought of as “activism.” A number of folks have been writing and creating work exploring the different kinds of activism and social change work people can engage in. Author Deepa Iyer developed the Social Change Ecosystem Map, which is a great framework for exploring the different roles we can take on to support social change work. I encourage you to take a look.
In the past, I’ve seen many folks talk and write about Iyer’s work, and other frameworks for the different roles that exist in social change work, and I’ve found it incredibly validating to reframe my understanding of activism to not only include things like physical protest and political advocacy, but also care work, community building, storytelling, healing work, storytelling, and more.
One of the ways I believe that we can engage with social change work is by refusing to allow the oppressive systems that enact so much harm in our worlds to erode away our humanity. When the government glorifies violence, refusing to participate, or refusing to even look away, and instead feeling the pain and grief of that… that’s revolutionary. When the media is flooded with terrifying stories and gruesome images, there is critical work in protecting our own humanity so that we don’t become numb and desensitized to the violence. We may look away sometimes (there are things the human mind and body aren’t meant to process) but we do not ignore.
Even doing the very personal work of healing from our own trauma is, itself, a political act. When we learn to understand our triggers, how to be embodied, how to build capacity for presence and connection, we are acting in opposition to a government that is running on self-denial, trauma, and disconnection. We are holding space for others to also show up authentically, to be human, to feel emotions, to heal their trauma.
It’s not one of the fastest approaches to social change, and it can’t be the only one, by any means. But, I think it might be the most enduring. A generation of citizens who are self-aware, and communicative, and in touch with their moral compasses is a generation that can wreck havok on archaic systems, and build something new… something better.
My energy (and my screen-staring abilities) are waning, unfortunately, so I’m going to stop here. Thank you for taking the time to read <3
