Our People

There’s a lot I don’t understand about what it means to live someone else’s life—especially when differences include a divergence of hundreds of years of social history—but I’m committed to continue listening and learning. 

One small thing I do know now: When I witness people suffering and protesting, I can’t see them as Other; they feel like members of my own family. 

Asian, Black, Caucasian, Hispanic: My people. 

Agnostic, Atheist, Christian, Hindu, Pagan: My people.

Cis, LGBTQIA+, Straight, Undecided, Undeclared: My people. 

Employed, Fired, Furloughed, Laid Off, Underemployed, Unemployed: My people. 

Apartments, Homelessness, Houses, Incarcerated, Trailers: My people. 

CHIP, Free or Reduced Lunch, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC: My people.

Addiction, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, Autism Spectrum, Cancer, COVID-19, Diabetes, Infertility, Mental Illness, MS, PCOS, PTSD, Unintended Pregnancy (and I could go on, as all of us could, because everyone wrestles with something): My people. 

And for all the other ways of being a human—by choice or by force, in this country or anywhere else in the world—not directly represented within my large, messy, complicated, beautiful family: my people, our people. 

We belong to each other.