The Hope in Remembering

Wow. Things have been heavy, eh? The world is clear­ly on fire. People are clear­ly hurt­ing. It’s us. We’re peo­ple. Of course, writ­ing this from my view of an absolute­ly mono­chro­mat­ic world of grayscale out­side isn’t help­ing my mood or the abil­i­ty to digest what the above-aver­age amount of doom­scrolling I’m doing has giv­en me. Where’s the abil­i­ty to dis­so­ci­ate when you need it? Am I right? In all seri­ous­ness, though, I hope you’re hang­ing on and reach­ing out if you’re not hang­ing on. 

It’s got me think­ing, though, and I’ve had time over the past three days to pre­car­i­ous­ly bal­ance my cat (depend­ing on who has won the pow­er strug­gle of the day, Mabel or Iris) on one knee and my lap­top on the rest of me. And so, wrapped in the sea­son­al depres­sion that is my con­stant com­pan­ion dur­ing the win­ter but cer­tain­ly not the only rea­son to be depressed, I remembered. 

 I remem­bered that in 2025, A Life Worth Celebrating orga­nized and ran a safe, fun, and huge fes­ti­val for folks to come togeth­er for sol­i­dar­i­ty, but also just to be, regard­less of sex­u­al­i­ty, gen­der iden­ti­ty, age, abil­i­ty, and oth­er com­plete­ly arbi­trary lines we draw in the sand to make our­selves feel supe­ri­or to our fel­low humans. 

I remem­bered that All Voices Reading Room is putting on a series of dig­i­tal gath­er­ings called Fireside Chats, a safe space with themes and guid­ed dis­cus­sion by some­one trained in cri­sis response, com­plete with guest speak­ers, gen­tle con­ver­sa­tion around heal­ing and embod­i­ment, com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tion, and a no-pres­sure reflec­tion and dis­cus­sion in an affirm­ing, inclu­sive space. 

I remem­bered that there have been count­less dona­tion dri­ves, open-to-all food and sol­i­dar­i­ty events, qui­et­ly and con­sis­tent­ly, through­out the com­mu­ni­ty, whether direct-to-neigh­bor or through orga­ni­za­tions that are built for com­mu­ni­ty aid. 

I remem­bered that in a peri­od of dis­in­for­ma­tion or even a peri­od where know­ing how your com­mu­ni­ty works, there are folks step­ping up to inform, edu­cate, and most impor­tant­ly, empow­er. Through the “Your Government” tab on WinCity Voices’ page, you can now see at least a basic under­stand­ing of how your local gov­ern­ment works, who is run­ning for what, their rela­tion­ships among them, and (soon) much more. Is there a bet­ter way of demon­strat­ing love than with atten­tion? I remem­bered I know folks so pas­sion­ate about our com­mu­ni­ty they want oth­ers to under­stand it better. 

I remem­bered that for every time there is some­one who is con­fused or needs infor­ma­tion, there is some­one there to offer clar­i­ty. Of course online that comes with a fair share of trolls — “WhY nOt ChEcK tHe DoLlAr GeNeRaL fOr DuCt TaPe, BeCkY?” But it also comes with peo­ple ready and will­ing to just give you their damn duct tape once they’ve used it on their win­dows. I remem­bered to real­ize that com­ing up with mon­ey for duct tape isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly on everyone’s radar, but it’s only 12 crunchy steps to my neighbor’s house to offer mine up. 

I remem­bered that mutu­al aid is in action around me at all times. Literally every aspect of my life, and yours, if you look! Did one mom let her kids have an extend­ed sleep­over dur­ing this snow­poca­lypse because that mom stays at home but first mom works? Did first mom bring what has to be a strong stay-at-home mom friend some gro­ceries in exchange for not being able to leave the house? Have you seen folks offer­ing schools, gov­ern­ment offices, health depart­ments, home­less shel­ters, recov­ery cen­ters, their homes, to keep peo­ple safe and warm, no ques­tions asked? I have. And I remembered. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am an extro­vert trapped in my home (but safe and warm) with a small zoo of ani­mals and a whole lot of heart­break. I have a son whose future and present I wor­ry about. I’m an extro­vert who was already not doing the best, thanks to being built for the sun, yet cursed with the cold. I’m strug­gling. But see­ing peo­ple turn their pain into action means they’re lis­ten­ing to what the com­mu­ni­ty wants. It means they’re step­ping up where they can make a dif­fer­ence — here at home. And it means, self­ish­ly, most impor­tant­ly, in the depths of a phys­i­cal and metaphor­i­cal win­ter, that I find hope in the remembering.