Welcome to My Humble Corner
Like so many other Americans, I entered into 2025 with a very mixed bag of emotions.
We seem to be sharing in a tense state of uncertainty about how the next four years will play out not only in our country, but the whole world. For myself, I’ve felt a bit suspended in time - like the moment of zero G-force right before the decent of a swing or rollercoaster. All I can say about the lot of it is that we are living through some wild times folks. But we can make it through together if we want to.
I grew up in a small farming town in Massachusetts, but I have been fortunate to travel most of this great nation and have lived in four different states thus far in my life. It is hard to explain the breadth of beauty and diversity that is the fabric of our nation. From the landscapes to the people, to the culture, and everything in between, no two places are the same. Part of our personal identities are tied to the places we come from, and we usually have some kind of feeling about that. As different as we are from one town - one family - to the next, we have some pretty strong things in common.
Through the course of my career, I have held jobs in human services, skilled blue-collar labors, teaching, farming, and everyone’s favorite -sales. Sales didn’t last long at all because it just wasn’t my cup of jam. I loved working hard to make beautiful things and teaching new skills both on and off the farm, but my body gave me a strict time limit for that much strain. Activism, volunteering, and working in human services taught me that my greatest passion is in serving my community. Every job has had its own culture and unique personalities drawn to the industry. Success and accomplishment were measured and celebrated in different ways. Yet, at the end of the day, regardless of rank, we were just a different version of the same person trying to get the job done, get paid, and go home to the rest of our individual lives.
Working in mental health care has really shown me just how much we share in common. Of course, we all know that we all need the basic necessities to survive - food, water, clothing, shelter - but I’m routinely faced with deeper needs than that. No matter the vehicle we choose to use or the masks we choose to wear, under the surface, we are all striving for the same things. We want to be seen, validated, and loved for who we are, particularly by those we care for most. We want to be safe and free from threats of violence. We want to create things and have purpose. We want to live in our own sense of spiritual comfort. We want to enjoy the life we are granted. We want to leave some notion of a legacy in hopes we won’t be forgotten so soon. We want to know that we mattered while we were here. And most of us want our children to have more and inherit a better world than we did. This is the crux of the human condition, and it is the birthplace of hope.
Our American culture is stuck in an individualist mindset. We are bombarded with messages of needing to be able to do it all and maintaining our personal independence. We’ve gotten to the point where the word “community” has become trendy and somehow offensive; however, community is meant to be our default way of living. This is how we were designed to function - as a group. Of course, saying, “everything will be better once we all come together” is easy enough, but that sentiment does little for the cause.
My life mission is to generate unity and community through avenues which suit our modern world and ways of living. It is time to focus on the things we universally want and come to the table to find those common grounds. When we connect with each other, see each other as merely people trying to survive and maybe thrive while reaching for these human needs, and then work together to find better solutions it is a complete game changer. We don’t have to fight the system, an entity far larger than we, or the uncertain trajectory of the future. We simply need to take and own stock in the purpose of unity for our own wellbeing.
The rest will iron itself out as we continue to invest in that purpose - as a community.
Raw thoughts. Real talk. No filter, no fluff.
Drop by anytime—no perfection here, just honest musings and a little chaos.
