Reckoning and Connection in a Time of Collective Alienation and Grief.

I am starting this on the brink of Monday, January 20th—a day that feels heavy with anticipation. Tomorrow, the country gathers for a rite of passage, the inauguration. It’s a ceremony we repeat every four years, but this one feels different. It feels less like a celebration and more like a reckoning—a reckoning with the fractures in who we are and what we’ve become.

This week, I’ve been sitting with the weight of how this system dehumanizes us—how it others us. It strikes me how much we have to fight to feel seen, heard, and connected under these conditions. In many ways, this fight mirrors struggles from childhood, where survival often meant distancing ourselves from pain, from parts of who we are.

Lately, I’ve been trying to slow down. I’ve started writing down my dreams each morning, waking up with the intention of capturing what lingers in that quiet space between sleep and waking. I recite the Serenity Prayer in my head, asking for guidance from something greater than myself. Writing this post feels like an extension of that practice—letting the words flow, speaking from the heart instead of overthinking or holding back.

After my last post, where I shared openly about my eating disorder, I felt vulnerable but not buried in the shame I feared. Naming the shame gave me room to notice what it was pushing away. I’m learning that healing requires these moments of exposure—of saying the thing that feels most tender and finding, in the process, that I can hold it.

So, here too, I want to open up space for something vulnerable: my complicated relationship with this country. It feels raw to call it “my country” because belonging here has never been simple for me. I came to the U.S. at 12, to a mostly white community, where I felt like an outsider. I hated myself for standing out—for not being lighter, for not having blue eyes, for being “other.” I carried shame for my father, who was undocumented, and for all the ways I thought we didn’t belong.

The systemic dehumanization I see today echoes those early wounds. It reminds me how I learned to disconnect from parts of myself that felt threatened—to survive by shrinking. And I can’t help but wonder how many of us are carrying that same strategy, shaped by a world that draws boundaries around who is deserving and who isn’t.

This week, the quiet feels like collective grief—a mourning of the dream of America as something inclusive, something expansive. It’s a reckoning with how narrow the definition of “American” has become. During grad school, I studied how countries define their social contracts—how they decide who deserves care, resources, and dignity. One factor stood out: countries with more homogeneity often have broader social safety nets. But in diverse populations, those boundaries of who is deserving become tighter, more rigid.

That’s what I feel now: the tightening of those boundaries. The people drawing them are shrinking the idea of who counts, who belongs, who gets to call this place home. But I ask you—what does it mean to you to be American? And do the ones defining this title truly embody it?

I spent much of my twenties working for environmental groups, attending marches, and volunteering for farmworker organizations. Back then, I felt connected to something larger, shoulder to shoulder with others striving for justice. But as I started my own family and built my career, I moved away from that activism. Now, I feel called back to it—not necessarily in the same form, but in some way that allows me to share grief, to hold space for connection, and to resonate with the pain of others.

Because that’s what we need, isn’t it? To grieve together, to listen deeply, to let our pain call us into action. I don’t have all the answers, but I believe in the power of naming what hurts and letting that be the starting point for change.

Adrienne Rich’s words have been on my mind this week. She writes:

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

…This isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

Rich reminds us that to reckon with this country, we have to face its ghosts, its truths, and its shadows. It’s not an easy process, but it’s a necessary one.

This is an adolescent country, still stumbling through questions of identity and worth. But I wonder—can we, the people, redefine what it means to belong here? Can we widen the boundaries of who is deserving, of who gets to call this place home?

The answers won’t come from one administration or even one lifetime. But maybe they start here—with us, listening, grieving, and imagining a better way forward.

Thanks for reading Life Gets Lifey! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.