In 2020 I left the left when my city burned and I watched the news lie about who did it and what was happening. Since then it’s been a long 4-5 years of awakening. Politically homeless. Left the city I felt was completely lost for the countryside to heal my heart in a cedar house on a river about what I witnessed. 
Since then, like many, we’ve all taken sides. Blue zones, red zones. I spent most of it working on self, staying out of aggression, insanity, while my politics totally changed. My own mother and sister took totally different sides. I left most friends behind. Most people lost sections of friends and family. Ultimately I just choose people who I felt were sane over insane, less woke, less ideology, less aggression. 

We see the country now, all of us, like a map of where it’s good and… where it’s “lost”, whatever lost looks like to us.  
To me one of those places that so many of my friends and colleagues fled from was California. 
To many it was lost. 

But, cut to these wildfires. 
I have had 3 friends check in today and yesterday who have lost everything (literally every single thing they ever owned) in the LA wildfires, literally everything in the fires. They are in complete shock.  Pets are gone, cars, identification, every memory they ever had, decades of life, every keepsake they ever gathered or kept as a moment of their life, everything they saved or built a life for. 

Through a sense of truly sincere, most profound loss a friend (me) knows well enough they can’t really say anything other than sit with them. All they have is the perseverance of spirit and community and the vague awareness to be grateful they are ok, every one of them has smoke and ashes in their clothing and eyes and lungs and hair. They all echoed this same sentiment - that life is bitter and terrible and beautiful and wonderful and they are at least glad to be alive. 

This has reminded me of the goodness of spirit that still exists everywhere on this long and wide spool of land, America, which is in so much turmoil. 

Reminds me of the people in western NC already forgotten where the government has failed the people entirely and the community, including the Amish, surrounds them with food and warmth and whatever comforts they can muster. 

It reminds me of Maui, also failed by who we elect and left it in shambles banking always on the belief we won’t care enough and forget. 

America is in such trouble, but these people, my friends and strangers who show true heroism (running into burning buildings to save horses that aren’t even their or into a burning field for a rabbit or deer. And even the man who saved the flag from burning)… shows me and reminds me deeply, it is still America in its underbelly and pulse and I’m seeing markings of that these last months, in these tragedies. It still has the markings that we stand up and make things right from a ground community level.  

It’s time to heal and come back together as a country and as a people. It’s time to realize half of every state is not lost. It’s time to hold people accountable that are elected and fail the citizenry with such profound arrogance and evil. 

It’s truly time to have compassion and not forget these places of tragedy and help wherever we can with an internal compass that is well tuned. 

America, I love you. I remember you. I stay and fight for you. I believe in you. Half of everyone in every place did not get corrupted or fall asleep and the human spirit can be reached and prevail. 
Help our neighbors. America is one of the only countries (and I have lived in SO MANY countries) where we in the North will care about what is hurting our brethren in Florida, or Hawaii or California. Top to bottom, left to right. We are a huge nation but I didn’t live anywhere else that feels as affected when something so far away happens to our own. We care about every arm and leg  of the land when they are suffering. We care about more than our state. Hang in. Don’t forget. ♾️🫶🏻🙏🏻