Over the past few weeks, I’ve felt the weight of what’s unfolding here in Chicago. The fear, the tension, the anger, and the deep love that lives underneath it all. As ICE patrols our streets and political leaders frame our city as something to be contained

An Offering Two Years Into the War on Gaza. This is a love letter to the living — to those resisting, tending, and rebuilding everywhere the earth trembles beneath violence. I write out of devotion, not certainty. Out of longing for a world where healing isn’t something we do in private rooms, but something we practice together — through justice, through grief, through care.

Tonight I am sitting in the company of death. Not in fear, but in reverence. Death has become, for me, less a shadow at the edge of life and more a teacher who takes a seat at the table. I imagine her there, quiet but insistent, reminding me with every breath: nothing lasts, nothing is guaranteed, everything is precious.

To queer is to trouble.
To queer is to widen.
To queer is to say: fuck your neat little boxes—
and also to whisper: we deserve more than this smallness.

Grief is a strange teacher.
It arrives without invitation, rearranges the furniture of our lives, and asks us to sit in a room we no longer recognize. At first, it feels like being stripped down to bone—every comfort pulled away, every certainty dissolved.

Someone recently asked me what I thought it meant to be professional. The question wasn’t posed directly—it came wrapped in commentary, in the familiar folds of appearance and assumption. It was about how one shows up, how one dresses, what one reveals or conceals.

Some wounds echo.

Not as thunderclaps, but as soft murmurs—whispers that stir in the chest when connection brushes too close. These echoes don’t always speak in language. Sometimes they arrive as tension in the shoulders, a sudden stillness in the breath, a flicker of doubt in the presence of care. The body remembers what the mind might try to forget.

Lately, I’ve been watching the world thaw. Not in any grand, dramatic way—but in those slow, almost imperceptible shifts that remind me we’re entering a new season. The light lingers a little longer each evening. The birds have returned with songs that sound like memory. The air smells different—like wet earth and something waking up beneath it all.

There are moments when a conversation does not hold. When language frays at the edges. When someone refuses to see what they have done, and instead builds a shrine to their own pain. A monument to misunderstanding. A fortress against change. We have all been there— seeking repair and meeting a wall. Speaking truths that tremble, only to be told our honesty is an attack. Offering care shaped like a boundary, and being mistaken for cruel.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with a tender contradiction—one that many healers, therapists, and care workers quietly carry:
I believe that healing should not be commodified.
And yet, I work within a system that requires me to charge for care.

I write to you today with both tenderness and urgency.

Not to scold, and not to shame—but to invite you into a deeper kind of love. Into a deeper kind of listening. Into a way of showing up for the women in your life that is not performative, not reactive, not temporary—but rooted, devoted, alive.

Somewhere along the way, you learned to put others first. Maybe it was in the way you were raised, the unspoken lessons of love wrapped in sacrifice. Maybe it was the way people praised your selflessness, the way they called you reliable, kind, good.

In the quiet moments, when life feels heavy and uncertain, have you noticed how the presence of others can be a balm for the soul? Like sunlight filtering through a canopy of trees, soft and golden, community offers us a mosaic of warmth and light—a reminder that even when shadows fall, we are never truly alone.

Self-care, as we understand it today, has often been stripped of its radical roots, diluted into fleeting indulgences or marketable trends. But its essence—when we return to the wisdom of those like Audre Lorde and adrienne maree brown—carries the power to transform ourselves and the world around us.

In times of unease, when the world feels fragmented and heavy with uncertainty, hope can seem like a fragile, elusive thing. And yet, it is precisely in these moments that hope becomes most radical—a fierce act of defiance against despair and resignation.

I write to you today about a word—a concept, a way of being—that has captivated my heart: philotimo. Though this Greek term has no direct translation in English, it holds a world of meaning. Philotimo speaks to a deep sense of honor, dignity, and love…

As the year bends toward its close, I find myself reflecting on the ways we gather. In homes warmed by laughter, around tables laden with food, in quiet moments of shared presence—we come together.

I hope this letter reaches you on a day when the sun is shining just a little brighter or the rain is falling in a soothing rhythm. Have you noticed how nature has a way of calling us back to ourselves? Whether it’s the whisper of leaves in the breeze, the steady crash of waves on the shore, or the stillness of a forest, nature holds a mirror to the parts of us we often forget in the chaos of daily life.

I hope this letter finds you with a moment to pause and reflect, a rare gift in the whirlwind of daily life. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the ways art—music, books, paintings, poetry—has a way of bringing us back to ourselves and connecting us with others. Art, in all its forms, seems to have this inexplicable ability to meet us where we are, whether in joy, sorrow, or quiet contemplation.

I hope this letter finds you in a quiet moment, perhaps one where the world has slowed just enough for you to catch your breath. I want to tell you about something that has grounded me, something that feels as old as time itself: walking and hiking. There’s a rhythm to placing one foot in front of the other, a cadence that mirrors the beating of our hearts, the ebb and flow of our breath.