The other night, Lily asked me about Renée Macklin Good. She asked if something like that could ever happen to me. She asked me not to go to any more protests, and that she wanted me to be safe. I knew what she was really asking—she was asking if I’d still be here.
I’ve been carrying that question long before she ever asked it. Carrying it in my work. Carrying it in my body. Thinking about what my children would one day need to understand—why I stayed, why I didn’t look away, what I believed mattered enough to risk something for.
That fear didn’t come out of nowhere. It grew as activists were arrested and detained. As voices were silenced. As journalists were targeted. As homes were broken into. And now, as people are being killed.
Moments like this ask us to remember—to name what matters while our memory is still ours. Not only what we feared, but what we loved, what we stood for, and why we kept going. When the ground shakes beneath us, may we keep finding the ground that holds us—and one another—together.
@nationmag published a letter I wrote to my daughter.
It is my way of saying to her, to the world—this is why we stay. Thank you to the very best @byreginamahone for all her precision and care. Link in stories and bio.
where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men where are the men (destroying everything)
my full essay on @jezebel , link in bio. 🤍 to @l_tousignant for publishing my rage
Just in the past week or so, I have felt hearts break across the country—mine included. The most cruel possibilities have been presented, filling the air with hopelessness and despair. We are made to feel that not only are we alone in this world, but that nothing can or will change, which allows the darkness to cloud our ability to see each other. To create space for each other. To love.
I get it—in such trying times, love in itself can feel like it’s not enough to take on the chaos in front of us. It feels too soft, perhaps out of reach. But we forget how it’s a part of all of us—a power that we cannot surrender. We forget how it has been at the core of every victory, every transformation.
The other day, something happened where the universe presented me with this reminder. And I couldn’t help but think to myself that this is exactly what we need to build the society we’ve always longed for. What we dream for is here—but it requires us to choose it.
Read more in my essay in @nationmag (link in bio and stories). Thank you @byreginamahone for your support ❤️
It’s not every day that one of your favorite writers—someone whose words have traveled beside you for years, helping you make sense of yourself and the world—opens her home and invites you to gather there.
So yes, of course we did ❤️
As part of our monthly gathering for journalists, storytellers, and truth tellers, 30 people packed into Roxane Gay’s living room to talk about what it means to sustain each other—as people and in our work—during such a painful and destabilizing moment for journalism and the world around us.
Being in that room was a reminder that we already carry so much of what we need within and between us. And sometimes it takes gathering together to see where we can go from here.
Thank you, Roxane, for opening your home. And thank you to every writer, journalist, and truth teller who keeps showing up each month to imagine a new way forward.
This feature in @ms_magazine began over lunch with their editor @roxyszal , where we slipped into talking about something that has become a driving force in both my work and the way I move through the world:
There is real magic that happens when human beings come together.
I think we’ve all felt it at some point in our lives—that moment of sitting across from another person and speaking honestly about what it means to live in this world right now. There is great power in being witnessed, and in witnessing others. In realizing your story, your grief, your questions matter—and that you are not alone in carrying them.
There is healing in that. There is clarity in that. And often, there is great, big, beautiful action too.
History has shown us this. Movements begun in living rooms, around kitchen tables, in churches, in circles, in conversations between people trying to make sense of the world together. We have learned that in order for outer change to happen, inner change must happen first.
Ten years ago, I Will Not Be Quiet began in a small Brooklyn living room with people who were starving for that kind of connection and belonging too. What I didn’t know then was how much of this was part of the human experience—and that when we tap into something so innate, beautiful things can grow from there.
Indeed it started as a response to fear and disconnection but it became something much deeper to me and to others: a practice of gathering, listening, witnessing, and remembering our humanity in a world that constantly tries to pull us away from each other.
Over time, those circles have taken new life, expanding into chapters across the country with people gathering to process grief, organize around issues in their communities, build friendships, and remember their own power.
And I think that’s because, deep down, we know we are meant to gather.
So if you are feeling overwhelmed or alone right now, you can start your own talking circle too. And it’s not hard—just start with people you love.
Thank you to @liviafollet and @ms_magazine for telling this story so beautifully. The full article, along with information on how to start your own circle, is linked in bio.
Truth be told, I’ve always disliked Mother’s Day.
Year after year, it has reminded me how little we give mothers. We ask women to bring life into a world with broken systems of care, send them back to work before their bodies and spirits have healed, and see them as less committed when they have to miss work because their child is sick. I know you know this already. I don’t have to explain further.
For a long time, that was all Mother’s Day represented to me: performative gratitude wrapped in overpriced flowers and promotional emails pressuring us to buy this all-in-one frying pan “to show Mom you care.”
But my disdain for Mother’s Day has softened because I no longer feel the need to be honored.
I am very comfortable with who I am and where I am in life, and I know what I am worth, in large part because mothering has, in fact, become my greatest act of resistance.
In a world that can feel so broken, motherhood has called me to rise up and show up with relentless love, presence, and awareness. It asks for a raw vulnerability to look deeply into the stories we’ve been given, even when it pierces us, and still choose another way. It is a lot of don’t-give-a-fucks about the things that don’t matter, and a lot of fucks about the things that do. It is a brutal, nervous-system-wrecking journey, but at every step I am filled with a love that is fierce and soft and full.
If I am to do anything meaningful in this one beautiful life, it is to mother myself; to raise conscious children who know they are worthy exactly as they are; to help build communities rooted in reflection, healing, and growth; to remain connected in a world that tries to keep us apart.
Motherhood has become a mirror, reflecting back to me the most loving, awake, and human version of myself I am capable of being. And that is more than enough.
(A special note: I did have a beautiful Mother’s Day: I woke to a rose left beside me by Lily and V, a “breakfast” they made of Ruffles and french onion dip, sweet gifts from them and their dad, and a picnic at @wavehill where we danced, painted, ate mangoes in the sun, and took pictures together while our gorgeous NYC spring carried on all around us.)
For both of my pregnancies—with Lily and with Violet—I didn’t get the time I needed with them.
Both girls were born 9 weeks early, and spent 5 weeks in the NICU. After Lily was born, I was laid off. After Violet was born, I had to go back to work almost immediately.
I don’t think we fully understand what that does to a human being.
What happens when a woman survives the trauma of premature birth and the NICU… and is then expected to immediately become productive again? To work. To lead. To perform. While her body is still bleeding, her nervous system shattered, her baby still fighting for their life.
Sometimes I still cry when I think about that time.
It’s been years, but as trauma does, it settles deep into the body and stays there. Even now, I wonder how I could have healed, if I had been given the time to remain soft after birth instead of being forced back out into the world aching, bleeding, sleep deprived, terrified, trying to piece myself together from whatever scraps I had left. I was completely unstable after both births, and I now know it’s because I was having a deeply human response to something profoundly inhuman.
Birth is beautiful. And, birth can also break a person open in ways that take years to speak aloud.
Over the years, so many women have told me versions of this same story. And it’s gutting.
Last night at the premiere of Lifelines, executive produced by @dhuckelbridge of @paidleaveforall and Olympic legend @allysonfelix , I listened to story after story from people who needed leave—after childbirth, while caring for sick parents, for loved ones, for themselves.
And it reminded me that this conversation is so much bigger than motherhood. We have to deepen it. We have to widen it. We have to make paid leave impossible to ignore.
I’ll keep telling my story because I know stories create movement. They remind people they are not alone. They turn pain into advocacy, grief into momentum, silence into change.
And if enough of us keep telling the truth about what families are carrying, I believe we can build something better.
Thanks everyone!!! Books will be shipped this week!!
*****
When I first heard @mollycrabapple speak about the Jewish Bund to a small group of friends in @sarahsophief ’s living room, I arrived with almost no knowledge—only curiosity, and a desire to learn. But as soon as Molly spoke, I felt something open.
I was drawn in by a history I had never known, and by Molly’s fierce, tender commitment to bringing it back into the light. There is a radical beauty in choosing to recover what has been lost—to honor it, to hold it, to insist that it still matters.
I wanted to support her—not only as a friend, but as someone who believes in the preservation of memory, in the power of story, and in our responsibility to carry forward what has been forgotten.
So, of course, I bought 100 books.
It’s no wonder Here Where We Live Is Our Country became an instant New York Times bestseller or that it’s on its fifth round of printing. It’s vivid, urgent, and deeply human—and I’ve seen how people find themselves in it, how something long buried begins to feel close again.
And it feels especially resonant right now. In a moment when so much history is being flattened and erased, this book reads like a living cultural excavation—bringing buried voices, movements, and ways of being gently, powerfully back into the present.
With the help of a few angels, I’ll be sending these books out into the world—to campuses, book circles, and community spaces across the country. And I’d love to open that up more.
I’m giving away a number of copies (Molly signed them all! 👆🏾)—especially to students, or to anyone who feels called to this but can’t easily access the book.
If you’d like one, leave a comment or send me a message ❤️❤️❤️
After I drop the girls off at school, I walk over to our neighborhood park, a warm coffee cradled in my hands. There are other things to do, of course. But this is for me. I find my bench, and I close my eyes.
Suddenly, I’m met with the beautifully ordinary—the day in ways I hadn’t noticed before: sun on my cheeks, cool wind floating through my hair. Whatever tenderness the weather offers, I am here.
They say to listen to the sounds of nature, but I’ve always followed the music instead. And lately, it’s Billie, Bella, Bettye—my “B” companions. I drift into that other world where melodies feel like breath, where my heartbeat finds rhythm in their songs. Sometimes it’s the heart-piercing sound of a harmonica; sometimes it’s Billie’s voice, like honey—slow, thick, slipping through me. My nervous system is finally calm. And I think about how I needed that.
Every now and then, I open one eye and catch someone watching me. Maybe they’re curious about the closed eyes, or why I’m smiling. I do love those moments. I meet their gaze and smile—I don’t mind being seen like this. And something honest passes between us. A small exchange of warmth, of love. A wish-you-well.
As they walk on, I can’t help but hope they carry it with them too—what it might feel like, just for a moment, to be exactly where you are, to stay a little longer, and let go of it all.
Lily finished her first dance recital at The Filipino School of New York and New Jersey, and I WAS UNWELL 😭 So proud of this sweet girl and all the joy she brings. Thank you to her amazing friends for showing up and cheering her on—it meant so much. Love her to pieces 💗
This text arrived from my astrologist @audreylorea this morning 👆🏾
If you’ve been feeling a shift lately, you’re not imagining it. Something is moving! Scroll through for a glimpse of what came through, or read the full piece on Substack (link in bio + stories).
The other week I sat down with my friend, former Parents editor-in-chief and creator of The Mommune, Grace Bastidas (@brooklynwriter ), and she asked me a question that no one has ever asked me:
How has what you’ve survived shaped the way you parent?
“Well, in the early days of motherhood,” I told her, “I was terrified my daughter would be snatched.”
I’m a survivor of sexual violence and of being taken against my will. For a long time, that history lived just beneath the surface of my motherhood. When my daughter Lily was little, fear followed me everywhere—I needed her close, always within reach, my mind bracing for the worst.
Healing didn’t erase that instinct. But it changed my relationship to it. Through therapy, writing, and learning how to feel safe in my own body, I’ve found ways to move through it, instead of being ruled by it.
Now I still notice every exit. My eyes still move between my daughters when we’re out. But I’m no longer parenting from panic—I’m parenting from awareness, from grounding, from love.
When you’ve survived that kind of harm, surviving becomes part of your architecture. It doesn’t leave you, but you learn how to live inside yourself again.
Thank you Grace for all your love and care, and (!!!) for celebrating my dear friend @leahsoojinkim —her book Mom Unfiltered is out April 30 (see last slide ❤️).
Read the full interview in the link in my bio and Stories.
