The Radical Act of Needing

I haven't written here in some time. Since before the election, to be precise. The results left me with thoughts ping-ponging around my skull like a wayward billiard ball, ricocheting off walls of worry and determination. I've been doing things. Many things. But mostly, I've been learning something that feels both revolutionary and terrifying: how to need.

You see, I was that parent. The kind who survived a toddler's nuclear meltdown at the mall on Christmas Eve, who couldn't remember how to use the bathroom without an audience for decades. I made life-altering decisions while sleep-deprived, navigated school fun fairs during flu season, cheered through soccer games in gale-force winds, and hosted sleepovers where sleep was purely theoretical. I coordinated class parties, chaperoned field trips, and mastered the art of finding lost shoes five minutes before we needed to leave. I wrote graduate school papers between soccer practices and completed research while cooking dinner, all while raising three boys. You think you can break me? Please. I raised teenagers.

I've trained for and run fifteen half marathons, pushing through early morning runs and evening training sessions, learning the steady rhythm of one foot in front of the other. For decades, I've worked as a social worker, bearing witness to both trauma and resilience, showing up day after day for people and communities in crisis. I've built my life around endurance, around pushing through, around being the one who could handle whatever came next.

I knew how to keep going. How to push through. How to be the strong one. I am damn strong. But something different began emerging in the quiet of morning meditation, taking time to understand what I was going through, where I am. Two words arose: I need.

In a time when Supreme Court decisions threaten reproductive rights, when wildfires and hurricanes sweep book bans across states, when federal funding freezes are wielded as political weapons against states, which means people in need, and voting rights face unprecedented restrictions, thousands of essays flood the internet with action items and survival guides. But I'm here to confess something different. I need. Those two words feel like a revolution in my mouth.

As we watched states criminalize gender-affirming care, as we witnessed the erosion of constitutional precedents, I found myself sitting in an unfamiliar quiet. For someone used to action, to doing, to fixing, this stillness felt foreign. I couldn't plan - the future felt too uncertain, too fluid. In that quiet, something unexpected emerged: a recognition that I needed to step away completely.

The protests, the phone banks, the letter-writing campaigns - I couldn't do them anymore. My faith in these traditional forms of advocacy had crumbled. I needed what I can only call an advocacy sabbatical - a complete withdrawal from the endless cycle of react and resist. I needed to find a different way of being in this struggle. So, informed by my mindfulness practice, I keep my mind open - I manifested a seeker’s mind. My friend Sue had spoken often of her faith community, not as an escape from our troubled world, but as a place to find a new kind of strength within it. Her words resonated with something deep inside me.

Making the decision to attend services wasn't just about finding comfort – it was a deliberate step toward something I didn't yet understand. Each week, the familiar rhythm of shared songs and words helps my racing thoughts begin to settle. I find myself exhaling. The people of this community, with their gentle invitations to coffee hours, their welcome as I walk through the doors, their quiet acknowledgment of both struggle and hope, are gradually becoming my people too. Slowly, meaningfully, I'm being invited into community. Slowly, purposefully, I'm accepting.

I think often these days of Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde's words during the protests following George Floyd's murder, when the president used a Bible as a prop after tear-gassing peaceful protesters:

"Let me be clear: the president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo Christian tradition, in one of the churches in my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence. We need moral leadership and he has done everything to divide us."

Her clarity reminds me that faith communities can be places of both solace and resistance, of both healing and truth-telling.

I need experts in my life, but not in the traditional sense of professional distance. As states pass laws restricting classroom discussions of race and history, as we witness the beginning of the dismantling of federal agencies, I need these experts in that beautifully complex space where expertise meets friendship. When I reach out to a legal mind to understand the latest executive orders targeting immigration, civil rights, and looming constitutional crises, I'm seeking both their professional insight and their personal wisdom. I need them to be both mentor and friend, to share not just their knowledge but their perspective as humans navigating the same uncertain waters. I need - and sometimes it feels like a lot to ask.

I need my people in social work – colleagues who've become friends, friends who've become family. I need to know we can drop the professional distance and just be human with each other. I need to hear how they're really doing as they navigate teaching when Black history is being stripped from schools, as evidence-based sources we've relied on for decades are dismissed as "biased." I need those long coffee conversations where we can be vulnerable, where we can admit our fears and doubts as we sort through what's real and what's manufactured outrage. I need the friend who won't let me hide in my work, who insists on connection even when I'm overwhelmed. Sometimes I need to be the one offering wisdom; other times, I need to simply sit and receive theirs.

I need No-Scroll Sundays because my soul can't process the endless parade of both mundane joys and democratic erosion – the contrast between influencer dance videos and footage of climate disasters, between meal prep reels and news of rising fascism. I need voice notes from friends because words on a screen can't capture the warmth of genuine connection, the shared understanding in a sigh or a laugh.

If you're looking for a checklist of resistance, this isn't it. But maybe that's exactly why we need this conversation. Because when someone gives a Hitler salute at a political rally and security doesn't immediately remove them, when antisemitism and transphobia surge in our communities, when "Christian nationalism" becomes a proudly proclaimed platform rather than a whispered threat – we're not just witnessing a failure of event management. We're seeing a failure of our collective need for safety, for dignity, for basic human decency.

So here's my radical suggestion: Text your friends. Not with memes, not with action items, but with your voice, your presence, your humanity. Call them. Send voice notes that bridge the digital divide with real connection. Check in, not because you have solutions, but because we all need genuine connection right now.

I'm a mom. A wife. I'm an American. A leader. And note: I have no king. But I do have needs. And maybe admitting that – in this moment when democracy itself seems to hang by a thread – is its own kind of resistance. I'm on a path of building my own kind of bravery, one that includes caring for myself as much as I care for others.

Because here's what I learned as a parent, as a partner and as a social worker: The strength isn't in never needing help. It's in building a community that holds you when you do. And right now, we all need holding.

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This isn't the essay I thought I'd write. It's not a battle cry or a blueprint. It's just me, acknowledging that in times like these, needing isn't weakness – it's wisdom. And maybe that's exactly the kind of revolution we need right now.

What I’ve Been Reading

The Heart’s Invisible Furies

I’ve been a fan of Boyne’s for a while now. This book doesn’t disappoint. A heartfelt novel about the course of one man’s life in post-war Ireland. If you enjoyed “The World According to Garp” or “Forest Gump” this is for you. Brimming with humor and humaneness.

Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

Disclosure: I had to read this book - it was being considered for an assignment in a course I was teaching. I did not want to like it. I had to get my social work self out of the way to enjoy it. So human and valuable lessons are included. Not a the best book ever, but a good book worth your time.

Loved and Missed

Exquisite. A book I could not put down. Boyt is a British author and this is her first book published in the United States. A tale of love, courage and compassion. Fun fact: she is the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud.

What I’ve Listening To

I’ve been listening to a good deal of vinyl these days. Here are a few in my current rotation:

Jon Batiste “Beethoven Blues"“

Van Halen: Van Halen

You can link to the remastered version on Spotify here - but the vinyl is better

Thelonious Monk: Monk’s Dream

Another album that is much better enjoyed when listening to vinyl.