Let's Keep Showing Up

This sign on the door of my campus office is a recent purchase from artist Lisa Congdon. The America Needs Journalists sticker is from Raygun.

No matter where I go, it seems, I end up in conversation with people searching for hope.

Picking up a prescription, roaming the produce section of the grocery, walking across the campus where I teach—no place is off-limits. This is not a complaint, but rather an observation about the current state of our collective mind. If someone recognizes me, or my husband Sherrod Brown, they approach with a singular goal. They want words of reassurance.

This has moved me as a fellow citizen but paralyzed me as a writer. How do I even start a conversation here about hope when so much is coming at us, and so quickly? You don’t need me adding to the many voices listing all the things we should fear right now. My job, as I see it, is to share signs of hope, which are always out there. This time, it took me a bit longer to see what was sparkling right in front of me.

You, I mean. And you and you and you….

Recently, I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment when a woman around my age walked up to me and immediately apologized for interrupting. (If I could wave a magic wand, I would forever free strangers from approaching with that apology. Sherrod and I long ago decided that when we are out in public we belong to the public. We expect to be interrupted.)

“I know it’s not your job,” the woman said, “but I wish you could help me stop feeling so despondent and helpless about our country.”

It was her face that got to me, the map of lines and starbursts revealing a lifetime of smiles and kindness.

“I wonder if it has occurred to you why you worry,” I said.

She began to list the many issues. Thousands of federal employees losing their jobs. The dismantling of USAID. Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest campaign donor, now having unrestricted access to government records. Mass deportations of migrants.

Legitimate worries, all of them.

It was my turn to interrupt.

“What does it say about you that you care this much?”

She looked stunned and fell silent. That’s when it hit me. We’re not talking about why so many of you care this much. We have failed to acknowledge the essential decency required to allow what is happening to our country become our personal problem.

“You are a good person,” I said to her. “That’s why you care.”

My questions for each of you: Why do you care so much? What does all your worry, despair and outrage say about you as a person, and as a citizen?

Perhaps you are concerned for yourself, or for the wellbeing of someone you love. Just as likely, you care about people you’ll never meet because you know they are at greater risk now. You feel a duty to speak out for those who have so few champions in power. If you weren’t a good person, you wouldn’t care.

We need to recognize this in ourselves, and in one another. This helps us build community, and we need that to sustain us. I don’t mean each of us should be joining an activist group. That’s not for everyone. But a community of shared interests can ground us in our values and help us remember to breathe.

Our reasons for gathering are limitless. A love for knitting, books or gardening. Neighborhood schools and block parties. A shared faith practice. A desire to stay in touch with long ago classmates or faraway friends and family members, via Zoom or FaceTime. This matters, these tethers to the better parts of ourselves. To let go of all that is to surrender to forces that want us to feel small and helpless, when we are neither. We are allowed to be happy, still.

I’m not lecturing. I needed this reminder, and it arrived with a friend’s not-so-gentle reprimand.

Granddaughter Ela Constance, the model for Lola. She produced a school project about Lola and the Troll, and dressed as the star.

Last month, I wanted to note here the one-year anniversary of my first children’s book, Lola and the Troll, and thank all of you who have supported that endeavor. Every time I started to write this, though, I’d end up hitting delete, delete, delete. Who was I to mention my own small, happy thing when so much big and horrible was unfolding all around us?

When I shared this with a dear friend over dinner, she responded with a high pitch of annoyance. “All those pep talks you give everyone else,” she said. “You are always telling us to share the joy. ‘Never surrender,’ you say. ‘Take care of yourself if you want to be strong for others.’ Either you mean it, or you don’t.”

I’ve never loved her more.

So much stewing and handwringing, trying to find something original—something important—to say. As if writing about anything but this firehose of an administration would appear to trivialize its impact on large swaths of innocent people.

I’m declaring an end to that. We should all care about our country, and find ways, big or small, to help. But immersing ourselves in the daily mess of life and building community with a small “c” is what will keep us afloat.

I am going to do all I can as an American citizen—and I want to live the rest of life, too. For me, this means showing up, including for my friends who continue to create beauty in these dark times.

Three of them are publishing books soon and I will be at their sides to celebrate. I’ll join Lee Martin at the Cuyahoga County Library’s Orange Branch to talk about his new novel, The Evening Shades. Five days later, poet Maggie Smith and I will return on stage together--this time at Drexel Theatre in Bexley, Ohio--for a sold-out conversation about her new book, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life.

On April 1, Maura Casey is coming out with her first book, SAVING ELLEN: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery. I will write more about Maura soon, as she is one of my closest friends and I know how hard she has worked to produce this beautiful romp of a story.

We are making more time for our grandchildren, too. Two weeks ago, we rode the Hogwarts Express and shopped for wands in Diagon Alley with Milo and Ela. Last weekend, we watched six-year-old Russell play basketball, and with his qualified permission, I yelled his name “not too loudly.” Jackie and Carolyn will be in another play soon, and we will be there with bouquets.

My Denison students are writing their hearts out as week after week, we explore how we can better cover issues of class and race. My colleagues, steadfast in their commitment to the mission of the work, have become a lifeline to so much good that remains. One of my oldest friends has started a support group for women who, like her, are slowly losing their husbands to Alzheimer’s. They meet in the same room where, three decades ago, my friend and I used to gather with other young mothers for a parenting group.

Oh, and I can’t wait to tell you about a recent gift from a friend that brought back memories of my mom. So many photos of her beehive to share. In the meantime, I hope you’ll feel free to share in the comments your own stories about how you’re finding joy and hope right now. These threads are my favorite part of Substack. We are building such a thoughtful community here.

Picture

One more bright thing:

Artist Traeger Di Petro’s painting, Like a Lion, which hangs in our home.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about artist Traeger Di Petro’s painting, Like a Lion. So many readers reached out to me and Di Petro, and requests flooded the New England Contemporary Art Gallery in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, where I purchased his painting. They talked about their daughters and granddaughters, and the women in their lives—and how they wanted them to have a print of that brave little girl.

Traeger usually does not do this, but he and gallery owner Laura Petican were so moved by the response that he agreed to sell a limited number of prints, signed and numbered by him.

Laura arranged everything, including the packing and pick-up of the painting from my house so that they could produce a high-quality print. Also, she and Traeger insisted on donating a percentage of the sales to a charity of my choice.

From Laura’s email announcing the print, which can be purchased at this link:

“As we publicly offer this opportunity to collect a print of ‘Like a Lion,’ we are additionally delighted to share Traeger’s message with the Girl Scouts of Southeastern New England. In cooperation with CEO Dana Borelli-Murray, Traeger and New England Contemporary will be donating a print as a silent auction item for the Cookies and Cocktails annual fundraising event this March, along with a percentage of all future sales of the prints. We hope this will contribute to the Girl Scouts’ summer camp this year and inspire them to roar like lions….”

I had no idea this would happen, and I’m so happy that it did. That’s how it works, I now remember. You start with a good intention and sometimes it takes flight.

Look up, good people. Look up.