I love art.

I wish I could draw and write every day — and earn a living doing it. And, in that tension, I am also very privileged to do the organizing work I do day to day. I remind myself, we ca…

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Reflections From Nearly 20 Years Ago

I was sitting on the couch, frozen, immobile. I was in school, finishing my bachelor’s. That was my track. I was finally going to finish. But at that moment I was sick.

Morning sickness.

I had been sick for a week, and then I found out I was pregnant.

It took me what felt like so long to get the degree program that fit m…

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Saturday started with some scrolling of the Book of Face. And a friend shared that our current president is removing the “free park” visit from Martin Luther King Jr. Day and instead replacing it with his birthday1.^⁠

What the actual ….?

I was so shocked. I remember when people fought to get Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a holiday. It was the late 1990s, a…

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A small group of friends, we have an encrypted chat to share information to keep our community safe. I was doing my morning scan — open the email, open messages, open social media, open the encrypted chat. My friend shared this article from This Week in Worcester. The report says Trump’s DHS is planning to raid churches over the holidays.

What the actual…

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Hi. It’s me again.

The Michelle who got caught up in life and didn’t have weeks of content plugged in — even though I have so many ideas. (51 unpublished ones, actually.)

So, what happened?

I took a work trip to Chicago, where we knocked on doors to canvas for a Guaranteed Income program. In our post-COVID world, Chicago had two GI programs, but the ARPA f…

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Stories. That’s how we are built — down to our bones and our systems. We have a 7-day week because of Biblical stories. Businesses are closed on Sundays because God said to rest.

As a cradle Catholic, I have a deep appreciation for our rituals and patterns.

Until they don’t work for us.

So, here’s the thing — If our systems are built on stories, then chang…

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The time when my son was in 1^st and 2^nd grade has forced the focus I want to take in this world - learning how to say “No” and choosing what’s really aligned for each of us. I was working full time, keeping the house as well as I could, part-time, and making sure my son got to all the activities that were ripe for his development, part-time.

A day in the…

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It’s the 4th of July

I have fond memories of celebrating the 4^th of July. I love this idea of freedom that our country was founded on. Some of my favorite memories are with family and a glorious fireworks display that created oohs and aahs. But, as I got older, and I learned the more nuanced pieces of our nation’s history, I often wonder, “Who was that f…

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When my son was in elementary school, the dualistic tension of our world really screamed at me. He must have been in either first or second grade. It was in the fall, likely November to December. Left to my own rhythm — with no job, no family obligations — I naturally run on a 6-to-8-week rolling schedule. And, this is even more important when managing …

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I have a scan of social media that I do too many times in a given day. It was one of those moments, and I opened Threads to see post after post by various Black creators talking about a plantation fire in Louisiana. I started writing this post a week before my son’s weeklong graduation festivities. A week of celebrating, and a week when grandparents cam…

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I started watching The Gilded Age. I’m a few episodes into the first season. And by episode two, it was clear that part of the story focuses on the Robber Barons of that era. Do you remember learning about Robber Barons in your history class? They were the industrialists who amassed wealth through exploitative practices. They abused labor, created monop…

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Summer Solstice is here. Midsummer’s night. (Shakespeare reference intended.) I live in the Pacific Northwest, and where we sit on this planet, the sun sets close to 9pm. I grew up in Michigan, so it is close to 9:30pm or 10pm this time of year. The days are long. And, it feels like we can accomplish anything. It’s warmer. Afternoon naps can be the best…

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My friend said to me, “Michelle,” in her authoritative tone, “language is fluid.” I paused. We had been discussing a word, maybe it was regardless vs irregardless, and she simply named how things evolve, and even language evolves like we do.^⁠1 And, that got me thinking about Maya Angelou, who, among many things, said, “When you know better, do better.” The way we say things matters. And, it evolves. When I was in high school, in the 90s, we talked about “transsexual” people, now we say things like “transgender” and “genderfluid”, and we’ve added things into our introductions, like, “What pronouns do you use?” We have evolved to meet the needs of now. We have evolved to be more open, addressing oppression and striving to use language more accurately. We have evolved from interrupting oppression to being actively anti-racist, and that is important, and it matters.

We talked a lot about labels in my senior year sociology class. For instance, what happens when a child is labeled a “bad kid”? Suddenly, you stop looking for other patterns and just chalk up behaviors to the “bad kid.” It becomes, in this instance, a self-perpetuating loop where the kid doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt. Labels frame what is possible - or how we limit ourselves. When we look at a person or a group and label them “lazy” or “criminals”, we limit our hope for what is possible. We fail to see people as individuals with choices and opportunities. And, it’s important to interrupt when people label groups through their biases. So, we interrupt it. I’ve been coached to say things like, “Ouch,” in the moment, as a quick way to stop the bigotry from continuing. Interrupting oppression was taught to me by a local non-profit through our community hotline work. They learned it from other groups and movement spaces. The disruption offered reflection and opened space for crucial conversations. But, it didn’t always point to the next phase - in part because, in this instance, we were on a hotline call.

I presume, dear reader, that you have been taught modern history. In modern history, we learn that women fought for the right to vote and secured it in 1920. But Black people’s and other minorities’ rights weren’t granted until 1965. If you are a white male or white woman, and you cannot see that rights have been tiered, hard fought, and barely granted within my lifetime, you are choosing to bury your head in the sand. This is systemic racism at play. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. It immediately had to be defended and expanded. And, if you fail to acknowledge that, then you are choosing to uphold the systemic racism that brought us here. You, then, are a part of the problem. And, I need you to step into a life of being actively anti-racist.

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I didn’t get enough content built up, though I have several drafts in various stages of progress. For the last week, we’ve been hosting family — during the day in our home, though they had hotels nearby — as we celebrated a major rite of passage: our only child’s high school graduation.

It’s been full. Beautiful, ex…

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In five days, my son will graduate from high school.

As I sit in the mix of pride and grief, I’m reflecting not just on who he’s becoming, but on the world he’s about to enter. A world that still, in 2025, pays women less. A world where caregiving is still dismissed as “women’s work.” A world where sexism is so normalized it often goes unnoticed — unless…

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It’s been a heckuva news cycle—again.

I just came off a staff retreat in Atlanta, where we grounded ourselves in a truth that feels more urgent by the day: we are no longer doing business as usual. We were agitated to consider that part of our work now means (1) defending what remains of our democratic systems, (2) defeating the rise of authoritarianism …

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Levi was nine months old. It was Thanksgiving — or Friendsgiving, in our case. We were laughing, and I noticed Levi observing. Then he did something. He wasn’t quite speaking yet, but our friends laughed. So, he did it again. And then he laughed — that gorgeous, tinkling-bell kind of laugh that lights up a night sky.

That is joy.

And today, I look around.…

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Fascism is a word we’ve been hearing a lot lately—and not without reason. From book bans to anti-trans laws to calls for a national abortion ban, the authoritarian creep is no longer subtle. It’s strategic. It’s coordinated. And i…

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I say it to my son sometimes in jest, but more often than not, it slips o…

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Collaborative leadership is the future. Or rather—it has to be. Looking around, we know that our top-down world isn’t serving us. Forests are burning. People are unhoused. Health care is unaffordable. Egg prices are outrageous. We live in a culture of crisis, and our institutions are struggling to respond. To move toward a human-centered world, we need …

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