At the start of a new year, I notice my questions shifting. Photo by Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash They’re less about what I want to accomplish and more about what I’m already part of—sometimes without choosing, and often without fully seeing it. Less about fixing myself alone. More about how we’re living together, and what our ordinary, everyday lives are helping to create. One question keeps returning—even when I try to set it down: What do division, violence, and “safet

I can’t seem to deny it—people’s capacity to change. Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash This time of year invites that sentence out of me almost without asking. Maybe it’s the lights strung up against the darkness. Maybe it’s the way we talk — earnestly, sometimes desperately — about fresh starts and clean slates. Maybe it’s the rituals — gathering, giving, pausing long enough to take stock of what’s been and what might still be possible. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m wildl

“Where are you from?” And then, almost always the follow up: “Where are you really from? Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash My partner gets asked these questions often—especially by white people. Yes, he speaks with an accent. But this isn’t actually about what someone sounds or looks like. It’s about whiteness. And who is assumed to belong here without explanation, and who is not. No matter where my partner was born or raised, in the U.S. he is seen first as a black man .. An

Not long ago, I wrote about white-ing hard —a familiar experience many of us white folks know. It’s when we show up in ways that make the world bend toward what feels comfortable, familiar, and unsurprising to us. Photo by Rapha Wilde on Unsplash When our habits, preferences, and stories become the default, the “normal,” the only way that seems right. That piece was a personal reckoning—a way to name something I saw in myself and others, something quietly shaping so much of

There’s a pattern in our story that’s hard to unsee once you start noticing it. Over and over, we’ve been handed chances to tell the truth—about who we are, what we’ve done, and what we could become. Chances to stop pretending that justice in the U.S. has ever been equally available, when it’s always been unevenly rationed. And yet… again and again, we chose whiteness. Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash I think about this a lot — how many moments in our history were crossroa

I’ve heard people say this all my life — if you want to win, you’ve got to play the game. It’s often said like simple wisdom. Just the way things are. Photo by oo verthing on Unsplash A friend said it to me recently, and this time, I couldn’t just nod and move on. It lingered. It made me angry. So I sat with it. I asked myself: Why does this idea bother me so much? Why do I feel something tighten every time I hear it? And then it came to me — I don’t want to play the game I

I just finished reading a novel. I won’t tell you the title—I don’t want to spoil it. But in the very first pages, every white person dies. Not from a violent act or some grand revenge. They simply couldn’t live in a world where whiteness no longer existed. So when whiteness died, they did too. Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash It might sound strange, but I found the idea hopeful. I like the idea of whiteness not being permanent. I can already hear a response I’ve gotten

It’s November, the beginning of a season of holidays in the U.S. I can already feel that familiar shift — the time when many of us return to living rooms and dinner tables that hold a lot of history. Spaces filled with old memories, old roles, and people who haven’t been part of our daily lives for a bit. Photo by Eli Pluma on Unsplash Maybe you’re preparing to see people you love but don’t see very often. Folks who might not have witnessed the slow, steady ways you’ve been

I know I’m not the only one who feels it—a deep fatigue around whiteness. I notice it in conversations, in the glances that say, “ Are we still talking about this? ” Sometimes I even get tired of hearing myself bring it up. Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash But the truth is, my exhaustion isn’t from talking or writing about whiteness—it’s from living inside it. From feeling how it seeps into nearly everything in the U.S.—our schools, workplaces, politics, media, and faith c