I find myself reflective these days. For what it’s worth, I love first before sharing these thoughts with all of you rascals. Sometimes I think I see the world the way I do because I have seen both the absolute best and worst in humanity right in front of my face, not through a screen or storybook. I have lived in terror and have had compassion for and forgiven those who have harmed me.

The older I get the more I believe I cannot stand on a side. Sides require distance. They ask you to look across a line instead of into a face. I want to stand right where I am, on the ground beneath my feet and love the people in front of me.

The woman who is afraid to go to the doctor while miscarrying because she does not have the right papers to be here but she has been here her entire life. The neighbor who is so afraid of losing their way of life that fear has begun to harden into something sharp. The officer carrying out orders while carrying a weight no one sees. The policymaker staring at numbers while knowing each one represents a human story.

I want to stand close enough to see trembling hands. Close enough to hear the pause in someone’s voice before they say what they really mean. Close enough that people are no longer ideas, but bodies and breath and stories of beauty and tragedy.

I still believe I need to converse with those I struggle to understand. I want to sit at tables where I feel stretched and unsettled. I want friendships that don’t mirror me back to myself, but invite me to see wider, deeper, and truer. My friends of different political and religious beliefs make life more thought provoking. They keep me thinking. They keep me human.

If I’m honest, stepping outside of echo chambers doesn’t always feel brave, it often feels exhausting. Sometimes it feels hopeless. When you see the full picture, you also see how fractured it is. When you listen carefully, you hear how much pain is being translated into anger. When you refuse to flatten complexity, you carry more weight.

But I am not without hope. Hope is something I carry, not something I deny. I was an American Dream kid who dared to dream of a better life than what I came from. Raised in the trenches of poverty and abuse right here in my country that I love. Formed in instability. Shaped by survival. Still, gratefully, I have found my way into a life where I get to do work I love, where meaning has not been extinguished by what I’ve seen.

I remember a professor once telling me not to go back into the pit to try to rescue people who were unwilling or unready to walk out of it, no matter how much I cared for them. He wasn’t speaking from cruelty, but from concern. He feared that after fighting so hard to break free from abuse, addiction, and poverty, I could be pulled back in by the very people I was trying to save.

He shared this with me during a season when I was wrestling with the belief that because I had found a way out, I could go back and rescue those I loved, show them a better way, walk them toward healing, carry them if I had to. I wanted freedom for them as badly as I had wanted it for myself.

But the truth is, I wasn’t mentally strong enough to return to that pit.

Breaking generational chains does not come without cost. Survival changes you. Leaving changes you. Carrying both love and distance at the same time can fracture something inside you if you’re not careful. Survivor’s guilt is real. So is the quiet grief of knowing that loving someone does not always mean you can follow them into every dark place.

My history gives me perspective and it gives me responsibility. Not to rescue everyone. Not to fix what I didn’t break. But to remain grounded, awake, and human. To tell the truth without abandoning myself. To love without losing my footing.

Because dreaming of a better life has always been how people survive. Imagining something kinder, safer, more just has always been an act of resistance. When people lose the ability to dream, they don’t become realistic, they become hardened. When hope disappears, hatred is often what moves in to fill the space.

I don’t want that for us. I don’t want fear to be the loudest voice in the room. I don’t want certainty to replace compassion. I don’t want people to become symbols when they are still sacred.

I don’t stand on sides.
I stand in the space between stories. I stand where questions are still allowed. I stand where love is not conditional on agreement.

I believe, quietly, stubbornly, that choosing to remain human in moments like this is not weakness. It is the work.

Love, Steph