This past week has been heavy.

Not “scroll and move on” heavy.
Not “damn, that’s messed up, time to go back to work” heavy.
I mean the kind of heavy that makes your head spin, sits in your chest and makes you wonder what kind of world we’re living in… and what kind of world we’re handing our children.

I need you to hear me:

We are allowed to be upset.
We are allowed to grieve.
We are allowed to feel exhausted by the hate, the cruelty, all the ignorance, and the blatant disregard for human dignity.

But we are not allowed to surrender.

Because if we walk into this next week, and this new year, without hope, then what are we even fighting for?

Evil cannot stand forever.
It never has.
And it never will.

Hate cannot rule for long because hate is self-consuming. Hate eats itself. Hate collapses under the weight of what it is. Hate is like trash that eventually takes itself out to the dump.

And still… I need us to be honest about something.

We should not be surprised by the response we’re seeing from this administration.
This is not random. This is not confusion. And it is not politics as usual.

This is pushback.

Our country made rapid progress in just the last decade on the heels of movements that changed the trajectory of our collective story—
Black Lives Matter.
Me Too.
DEI initiatives.
A Black President.
A Black woman Vice President.
Black congressmen, senators, and judges in numbers many never thought we would see.
White police officers actually being found guilty of murdering Black people and going to prison.

We were seeing justice.

That progress shook a system that was comfortable with the way things were.

It was working for them.

It was never intended to do that for all of us.

And what happens when you shake a system that benefits from silence and inequality?

It pushes back.

So, no, this is not the time for shock.
This is the time for clarity.

If we are witnessing backlash, it means we were moving forward.
If we are witnessing resistance, it means progress was real.
If we are witnessing fear, it means change was happening.

And that means it is not our job to be defeated.
It is our job to lock in.

To protect what we’ve built.
To keep telling the truth.
To keep showing up.
To keep organizing.
To keep educating.
To keep voting locally and nationally.
To keep caring for our mental health so we can last long enough to win.

Because let me remind you:

There are more of us than them.
And we have right on our side.

I just finished reading my first book of the year: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler and in it I found this quote:

In order to rise

From its own ashes

A phoenix

First

Must

Burn.

 

What does this say to us?

What does this say to you?

I’ll tell you what it says to me: What we are witnessing is an all-out push to keep the America that was never built for us.

And we really should not be surprised that the push to hold on to power, by men who have rarely been held accountable, looks like a battle.

The intensity of this moment is not random. It’s the heat that comes when an old order is being challenged. When a country is being pushed to expand who “counts,” who belongs, who is protected, and who holds power, the system doesn’t just quietly loosen its grip. It burns. It flails. It lashes out. It tries to scorch the very people who are demanding the promise be real.

• The “burn” is backlash.It’s the reaction you see when progress threatens privilege.
• The “ashes” are what’s being shed.Old myths, old hierarchies, old “know your place” rules dressed up as tradition.
• The “rise” is what we’re fighting for.A truer America—one that actually lives up to its stated ideals for everyone, not just a few.

We don’t rise by pretending this isn’t hard.
We rise by refusing to let the fire turn us into what we hate.
We rise by staying human, staying connected, staying clear, and staying in the work.

In other words:
The heat is evidence of the shift.
The burning is not proof we’re doomed. It’s proof the old way is being forced to confront itself.

The phoenix doesn’t rise by avoiding the fire.
It rises because it survives it.

America has a promise.
Even if some never truly believed that promise applied to all of us—
it does.
And we will not settle for less.

Take a deep breath.

Feel your feelings.
Grieve what you need to grieve.
Then stand back up.

Because we are not going back.

We are the hope.

And we move forward, together.