I’m not exactly sure how to say this, I know Substack is meant to be a “writers” platform, and we’re meant to be eloquent and all that, but I just don’t think I have that in my right now so please be patient with this post.

I know the fight isn’t over yet, I know innocent people have lost their lives and that’s a cost that can never be recovered, but I’m so grateful to Minneapolis for giving me hope again. The past 10 years I’ve fought this thing, I’ve shown up to every election, I’ve been vocal, I’ve marched, I’ve done what I can do and increasingly have just felt at the end of what I can give and feeling so guilty about that.

I live in TN. Nashville, TN that is literally one of the worst gerrymandered cities in America. We show up but it never matters, we always lose. This past election was particularly gutting as the majority of votes were disabled from winning.

I grew up in MN in a Christian home. But with a strong sense of civic duty and the idea that freedom of religion means freedom to NOT believe as well as to believe something. Moving to the south was a culture shock in more than one way. Particularly I’ve never been able to understand people who need to force their faith on others. It wasn’t how I was raised, to this day I find it confusing and painful.

In the last ten years I’ve had a complicated relationship with the faith of my youth that I won’t get into now. But when I felt like my faith community failed me, I turned to politics. Then I felt like that failed me. Then I turned to appealing to people’s humanity, and up until recently I felt like that was failing me too.

But the way Minneapolis is coming together is giving me hope and helping me not give up. I’m so grateful to their bravery.

if this post goes massively viral I might delete it because my husband is an immigrant and I’m scared about being vocal. But I just wanted to say thank you to any Minnesotans reading this. You have revived my belief that there is goodness worth fighting for!