Today's letter is different. Today's letter comes from rocky waves and seas, from a place in my heart that is stormy and terrible.

We're currently witnessing global acts of violence that are atrocities. I cannot turn a blind eye to all of it anymore, and I am ashamed to say that I have been. But now that I've chosen to actively participate and learn, everything I'm learning carries with it the crushing weight of a truth I have always known: people are cruel. Not everyone, not all the time, but there are people who engage in acts of extreme cruelty to others in a way that makes me want to gouge out my own eyes. For a long time I lived far away from this truth and tried to combat it with hope and optimism, being careful with my consumption of bad news, and trying to limit it in an attempt to preserve my own hopefulness.

I'm learning that hope can look different these days. Today, hope is discipline. Hope is a concentrated effort, organizing, and action-taking in my community. It's inviting my friends to the table to pool our ideas together, it's sharing the grief and alchemizing it into something that reminds us and others of our humanity. Of the fact that this life is a little miracle to be cherished, and of our duty to each other to protect that.

Admittedly, this is kind of a scary letter for me to share. I do worry about what people might think, I am afraid of potential backlash. But this issue isn't about me, it's about where we draw the line with how we treat each other, and what we stand up for. How we create the world we want to live in, how we choose to design and shape it through our actions.

So, I hope that if this is something that's stirred you, that you leave a comment or reach out to me directly if you know me personally. The lantern is lit for you, the invitation has been sent. Maybe together, we can turn those embers of hope into a blaze.