“Whoa, I didn’t know that’s what I thought…”

This astonishment—whether from a senior leader working on a keynote, a rising senior writing a college essay, or a senior citizen composing their last letters—is my absolute favorite moment as a thought partner. There is nothing better than a startling insight harvested in hindsight.

People always say, know what you want to say before you write. Sure, as a former speechwriter, I loved the clarity of three points that need to be made by the end of the speech. As a former speaker coach, I love the neat precept of tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them. And as a novelist, I love a good outline and thorough character studies.

Yet for me, my most impactful writing comes not from a preordained piece where I do not deviate from a single point, but when I meander around, writing to figure out what I think. I write and explore in the deeps, far below the flotsam that’s skimming the surface of my thoughts. The act of pinning down words tests our thinking and reasoning. The act of writing slows us down so we can explore whatever lurks beneath our intuition. Wisdom lives down there in that first discovery draft, and when we don’t allow ourselves to play, we rob ourselves of discovery. (Editor’s note: Reason Number 100 why ceding writing to AI shortcuts and short-circuits our cognitive and creative powers.)

There is beauty in following an idea down a rabbit hole because you never know where it will lead. There is power in fresher ideas and deeper insights.

I saw this in action when I cranked out a speech for Robbie Bach, the first president I worked for as a speechwriter at Microsoft. With ten other speeches on our docket, I abandoned the discursive explorations I typically took to craft his keynotes with up to fifty interviews around the organization and throughout the industry. As soon as I walked into his office, Robbie lowered his reading glasses, looked up from the script, and asked, “What happened to this speech?”

Translation: this speech is slop.

I told him, “Well, I took the bullet points directly from marketing.”

He set the script down and said, “It’s boring. I don’t want to sound like an audiobook for marketing materials.” Which meant that Robbie wanted to communicate something more than messaging. He wanted to connect through meaning.

Messaging tends to technical; meaning is the technicolor world of surprise: “Oh! I never thought of it that way!”

Messaging is what we want to say; meaning is what we want people to understand.

Messaging springs from our head, but what speaks to the heart? Meaning that is filled with wisdom.

Meaning-Making Through Writing

Meaning-making requires us to write directly into the eye of all that is messy and stormy. It means having the courage to spelunk into all the painful, difficult, complex places we’d rather keep locked up and everyone else locked out.

Guess what? There’s research about writing ourselves into meaning. When we’ve been traumatized without any closure in real life, our brain keeps cycling around the pain. The wound never heals. The incident remains incomplete, which compounds our pain because our brains are wired for completion. We want narratives with beginnings, middles, and endings. If we can’t have “happily ever after,” we at least want the satisfaction of “the end.”

My best friend pointed me to a journaling protocol that gives ourselves a sense of psychological completion and a narrative conclusion even if we will never receive closure. An episode of the podcast, Huberman Labs, explains how a straightforward journaling protocol can rewire your neural circuity over a trauma or other upsetting incident. For three consecutive days, you journal for 15 minutes, freewriting about the incident. You write without censoring yourself. At the end of those three days, you’ve given yourself narrative closure.

Skeptical, I tried the protocol, writing about an estrangement in my life. As painful as it was to relive the rupture, at the end of forty-five minutes over three days, I saw the incident more clearly, both more dispassionately and more compassionately. Even more than that, I was able to link the trauma to a lifelong toxic pattern of me being blamed and shamed by my family of origin.

That is meaning-making through the action of writing into the painful, dangerous unknown.

Today, we have too much messaging and not enough meaning. (Honestly? Perhaps that’s a direct result of our lost ability to have the good and hard conversation that drives to shared meaning and mutual healing.)

So here are a few ways where we can make meaning out of mess.

1. Embrace the mess. Accept that the creative process is messy. Life is messy. Failure is messy. So is success, for that matter. Motivation is messy. All of us are beyond messy! So if we want to understand anything, we have got to get okay with our innate messiness.

2. Perfection is armor. My longtime agent of my children’s books diagnosed one of my first picture book manuscripts: it had become the tragic victim of over-editing. The words were honed to perfection, the plot moved—and it moved well, yet the story somehow lost its essential energy. I had edited the life out of it, and that is death in publishing.

3. Fast Draft for Passion. I used to spend a year creating a meticulous first draft of my novels. All that changed over the pandemic when my son casually announced that he wrote a full novel in 8 days, then challenged me to do the same. Three weeks later, I astonished myself that I could complete a fast draft, not in his 8 days, but still. Even more astonished, I could feel energy pulsating in that messy draft. Its narrative drive felt more real, more authentic, more alive.

The same technique of writing hot is extremely helpful for people who aren’t professional writers. When you write fast, there’s no time to second guess yourself into word paralysis. Now I guide people through writing sprints that are no longer than three minutes. From CEOs to seniors in high school, I set the timer for 3 minutes and ask them to write in answer of a question. Every single person is astonished by what pours out of their heart, not necessarily their head. What they write is pure gold: real passion and real principles that you cannot fake onstage or on the page.

For writing that matters, for words that have real stakes—whether winning over an arena of potential customers or an admissions officer—try this. Begin and end by unleashing your beautifully messy heart.

Thank you for reading unbound! This is for the time when you—yes, you—
need to take credit for a job well done.

Can you feel the uprising of ferocity? The attitude of: no more, not on my watch. The conviction of: no more, never again. I will not shrink to make anyone feel more comfortable.

A counterpoint to this furious no is the equal upswell of a furious yes: yes, I will live life on my terms. Yes, I will uplift others. Yes, I will take up space.

Yes, I am good with myself. It feels like ancient history given the pace of news, but remember back when a reporter asked Aileen Gu whether she viewed her medals as “two silvers gained or two golds lost.” The five-time Olympian shot back, “I’m the most decorated freeskier in history; I think that’s an answer in and of itself.” She elaborated: “I’m doing things that quite literally have never been done before, and so I think that is more than good enough, but thank you.”

But thank you.

These are words of unabashed ownership over talent and accomplishments. These are words unadorned with self-deprecating, downcutting “oh, no, I’m not that good!” These words are unapologetic about success.

Such a counterpoint to the way my generation was raised where a statement like this would have been categorized as bragging. (And what better way to silence someone who’s legitimately good than to shame them.) Plus, let’s be clear. Bragging is saying: Only I can do this. Bragging is saying: I am the best. Bragging is “excessive pride.”

This credit-staking is important in a time of credit-taking. (Think: the Republicans who took credit for the federal funding they voted against.) If we are seeing the trickle-down of rudeness from the very top leadership into everyday boorishness in everyday interactions, then I have to believe that we will soon be seeing a widescale movement of credit-taking. (Hello, claiming authorship for a paper when AI wrote it.)

Being unapologetic about our accomplishments is more vital than ever, and credit-staking is a new skill for so many of us to learn.

1. Practice saying, “Thank you.” Receive a compliment? Say thank you. Someone congratulate you? Say thank you. Someone note that you did excellent work? Say thank you! As uncomfortable as it is, practice, practice, practice.

2. Correct deflection. When you pay someone a compliment and they deflect, practice telling them, “Please accept the truth.” And then coach them, “Just say, thank you.” When you hear yourself deflecting, stop. Get a circle of credit-stakers around you with the social contract of stopping deflection when you hear it.

3. Give credit. Our tiny neighborhood is in a ridiculous (and I mean, ridiculous) fight with the state over landscaping and maintenace of public property. Here we are, a year or so into this battle of wills, and trash is strewn everywhere. The grass has turned to weeds, and what’s left is so overgrown, the ticks and bunnies are having a literal hay-day. So one day, while my husband and I were picking up garbage, we saw our neighbor with his tiny lawnmower, patiently mowing the knee-high weeds and the remains of the grass. We posted our public thanks to him in our community Facebook page. Next up, a private thank you with a six-pack of beer.

4. Teach credit-giving. Recently, one of my friend’s children got into a highly selective program. Her mom said, “She did it all on her own.” Oh, goodness, I thought, this is the start of hubris, which is different from a person claiming their accomplishment. The truth is, no one accomplishes greatness all on their own . Aileen Gu has coaches. For my novels, I have editors and copy editors and sensitivity readers and agents and critique partners. So, too, was an entire team behind my friend’s kid success, developing her interview skills, reviewing her written materials, tracking her deadlines. So my reframe: “This kid is a powerhouse, completely unstoppable. She found the program on her own and got the support she needed to succeed.”

5. Be a credit-staker and credit-giver at the same time. This is so hard, but if we don’t take credit for our work these days, chances are someone else may. In the age of layoffs, consider this skill as part of job security. We can be deft doing this, not disgusting. For instance: A few months ago, I learned with great delight that my last novel, With Twice the Love, Dessie Mei, is a finalist for a state literature award. This is so meaningful to me because I’ve worried that this book of my heart hadn’t found its readership. So to have librarians—these guardians of critical thinking and matchmakers of imagination—champion my book to young readers moves me profoundly.

We can take credit (“finalist for a state literature award”) while giving credit (“librarians—these guardians of critical thinking and matchmakers of imagination”).

This is a beautiful cycle of claiming ourselves while spotlighting others for their part in any bit of our success. This is the essential give-and-stake energy we need to bring to all the work we have ahead of us to right our world. We stake our claim, yet share the stage.

Tell me, what credit do you need to take today? And what credit will you give today?

Thank you for reading unbound! This one is for the time when you need to channel
the ancient anger that is rising in you.

Flow state in creativity is a precious resource. It is the vital momentum that leads to breakthrough and insight. The energizing drive that leads a project to fulfillment. As a writer, when I’m in flow, I cancel every possible appoin…

Read more

Thanks for reading unbound! This one is for the time when you are just barely holding on.
Grab a coffee. Or some chocolate. And read.

Our proximity to evil is one degree of separation from us.

Readers, I have worked with men in the Epstein Files. I have been in the same room as some of those men. So have you—if not them, specifically, then their brethren. We all know women who have been raped, some by boyfriends. Others by husbands. A few by family.

If you want to be shocked by our proximity to evil, take a gander at what women are posting about “Alpine Divorces.” Stories upon stories of husbands and boyfriends abandoning their partners out in the wilderness, in the middle of the sea, in the boondocks of foreign countries. (Two out of three have happened to me, by the way.)

And then: the Pelicot mass raping, orchestrated by her husband (husband!), perpetrated by some 90 men in her community, even a nurse.

No wonder—and thank goodness—an ancient power is stirring in women. A glorious ferocity of spirit is rising.

Do you feel it? I do. So does my friend, Laura Lowery. She’s written an entire book about Ferocity. Read her Substack.

I’m talking about a not-on-my-watch clarifying fury. An if-it’s-broke-I’ll-fix-it energizing anger. A never-again rage.

As a writer, I know all too well that momentum is a gift. Breakthroughs, even finishing a novel, is possible if you ride the tidal wave of momentum. And as a woman with ADHD, I also know all too well how quickly momentum can fizzle.

So how do we harness the momentum of our collective rage? How do we channel this wild and precious resource of primal anger?

With anger in one hand and joy in the other, we take these actions:

1. Correct the narrative. Lies told enough times become a kind of fact. So we need to be on high alert for the insidious ways that language shapes perspective, and framing shapes opinion.

At a recent speechwriters conference, I told the audience that we must hold the red pen. This is work for all of us, starting with our everyday conversations. Men’s locker room talk is not innocent talk. It primes condescension, objectification, and rape culture. “Boys will be boys” is a permission slip to belittle and harm women, girls, people of color. We need to get comfortable with calling it out. One of my favorite leaders, Phil Spencer, former CEO of Xbox, overheard someone making a sexist joke. He looked up from his phone, responded flatly, “That’s not funny,” then returned without further comment to his game.

We need to pay special attention to the news media. @jayjaylegal’s post demonstrates how: “Dear Mainstream Media, Young women are women from ages 18-29. Girls are ages 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.” So true. Our job is to call out wrong language every time the media gets it wrong. Every. Single. Time.

Hilary Knight, five-time Olympic medalist and the most decorated hockey player in America, demonstrated how to correct framing. After the presidential locker room joke belittling the women’s hockey team, Knight said, “(This is) a great teaching point to…shine a light on how women should be championed for their amazing feats. And now, I have to…sit in front of you and explain someone else’s behavior. It’s not my responsibility.” Reframe and place the responsibility back on the perpetrator.

2. Change our vision, change the world. What @grapeylyle posted on Threads just about ripped out my heart: “We hit the cosmic lottery, a blue planet, freak-level consciousness, the ability to make art and antibiotics and love, and instead of building a paradise, we spent millennia rerunning the same script. Tribe, conquest, hoarding, humiliation. The greatest minds on earth dragged into court by men who could not stand being outshone.” Painfully, grievously true.

So what is paradise for ourselves? What is our biggest vision for our world? Mary Ann Burrows wrote on Threads, “What if, for the rest of your life, you’re meant to live gently but truthfully—to tend beauty, tell stories, witness others, create meaning, and show what it looks like to age with integrity, curiosity, and courage? What if your purpose isn’t a role to perform or a title to earn, but simply a way of being: embodied, honest, attentive, and deeply human?” Sign me up for that vision of life!

Here’s the thing: when we change our personal world, we impact the bigger world. We show people another way—and that, right there, breaks the system.

Case in point: Alysa Liu. She quit figure skating at sixteen, reengaged at eighteen on her terms. She rejected the system. Instead, she ate what she wanted to eat, wore what she wanted to wear, trained how her body thrived to train, collaborated on choreography, and won the gold and our hearts. More than that, she reframed the system itself: “Singers perform all the time but they don’t get scored, you know? I can’t bring myself to see other skaters as competition. We’re just all independent artists.” She broke the system for herself, and through her modeling, I hope we see a rippling of joy through all sports.

3. Activate hope. Hope is the mulch of resilience. So let’s do everything to reject cynicism and reside in hope.

Let’s steep ourselves in the best of humanity. The matriarch of sci fi, Ursula Le Guin wrote, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kinds. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Hold onto the truth that there is goodness in people.

As @leo_queen_82 explained: “A Black mother’s love is not soft. It is not passive. It is a force capable of dismantling empires. Beulah Mae Donald looked terror in the face—and served it an eviction notice.” (And if you don’t know who Mrs. Donald is, you need to. Look her up.) Hold onto Beulah Mae Donald’s example of love as a force of good.

Kara Swisher recently posted a quote from Arundhati Roy: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Hold onto this belief: she is on her way.

Hold onto beauty. Hold onto truth. Hold onto love and the possibility that love can upend evil.

Hold onto ferocious rage and furious joy.

Hold on.

Thanks for reading unbound. This is for the time when you need to remind
yourself of your own agency.

Readers, the photos of Bunny Hat Boy—we all know that picture of five-year-old Liam—broke me. For two weeks, I’ve been in such depression that words have failed me.

Adding to my despair, I read my friend’s memoir, DUMB GIRL, of how she became an activist for gun violence prevention after a childhood filled with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

To say DUMB GIRL was a tough (yet profound) read would be an understatement.

And then on top of all that came the latest tranche of the Epstein files. Files that depict an unimaginable, industrial-scale echo of my friend’s story of abuse. Abuse that was denied. Abuse that could have and should have been prevented for years. Decades.

To look away from this ugliness is to deny evil. To stay silent is to allow that evil to thrive. To accept is to legitimize that evil.

I say no to that.

With so many people demanding that we move on from “ancient history” and are actively minimizing these abhorrent crimes, I say no.

I say it is my duty to listen to the accounts of these trafficked girls. To hold the stories of these abused young women. To shoulder their pain.

I say it is my moral obligation to spotlight this moral rot in so many prominent men who are captains of industry and leaders of nations.

I say it is my responsibility to be a woman who refuses to look away from the utterly reprehensible, their despicable depravity.

Yet all this rot put my pen into paralysis.

So we begin: a sentence and a story.

The Sentence
One of my Bible Study friends and I are reading Scot McKnight’s Revelation for the Rest of Us. His tenet: the Bible is filled with examples of dissidents from Moses to Abraham. A dissident, according to McKnight, is “a person of hope, someone who imagines a better, future world, and then begins to embody that world.”

What a sentence. What a call. We need to be dissidents who bring moral clarity in a time of moral rot. To be dissidents who embody what we want in the world.

That rings deep and true in me. Some of my earliest memories are of my parents leaving our home in the wee early morning to join in protests, marching and chanting for Taiwan’s democracy. In the days running up to the protests, I could hear them talk soberly about the possible retaliation, probable repercussions. Would they be allowed to visit their beloved home country ever again? Yet a dissident hope ran through them. So still my parents marched. Still they protested. Still they waved their posters.

A Story.
In his book, McKnight told the story about the poet Malcolm Guite who was photocopying some of his work when the copier quit working. The repairperson complained: “Your poetry is jamming my machine!”

That’s the work of the dissident: to jam the machinery of evil. And you know what jams the machine? Micro-rebellions. And joy.

Jamming the Authoritarian Machine

Authoritarians need economic crisis to oil the machine. Community support jams that machine. So does diverting our dollars to small, local businesses. My husband and I are sequestering some of our tithing budget specifically for community care: dinners, groceries, necessities for neighbors in need. Supporting up-and-coming artists and displaced journalists. In these small ways, we are jamming the industrial machine.

Authoritarians need social divisions to oil the machine. Neighborism builds relationship and teaches us to care for each other in small ways. You know what? Tiny actions of loving our neighbor jam the machine. So my hubby and I have recommitted to our weekly garbage pick-up around our neighborhood. We—profound introverts—engage strangers at stores and restaurants in small talk that reinforces how much common ground we have with each other. We bought our neighborhood grouch of a convenience store clerk a lottery ticket—and she beamed! For the first time in ten years that we’ve interacted with her, she beamed! And she was / is beautiful. We have trained our rejected service dog (can you say, rambunctious?) to do one small act of service: she now picks up our elderly neighbor’s newspaper and delivers it direct to the doorstep. Even our doggy is jamming the machine.

Wars and conflict oil the authoritarian machine. So peaceful protests, I can continue to do. Writing and calling Congress demanding that we do not go into needless wars—that may not stop the war machine, but it’ll jam it. I’m jamming it with my words!

Creating an “other”—a national enemy—is the hatred that keeps the authoritarian machine humming. Finding common ground, I will do. In fact, one of my friends and I reframed all our rabbit holes of reading this and that as fodder for future us to use in conversation, bridging us to someone else. Sharing a good laugh is the fastest way of seeing the humanity in one another. I may not be a political cartoonist, and I may not be a late-night host, but I can make people laugh. And then I’ll cackle inside myself, knowing I’m jamming the machine.

You know what really jams up that authoritarian machine? Survival. Stories of people like my friend whose memoir reclaimed her life with such irrepressible joy. Stories of people who are exercising their voices, declaring the truth at great cost to themselves. So, yes, I will uplift survivors. You bet I will sister you with my sorrow, and I will crone you with my ability to feel, remember, retell.

I am grateful that my heart has the capacity to be filled with rage—that my beautiful, powerful clarifying anger of menopause can and will see through moral rot with moral clarity.

Even enraged—especially enraged—our hearts are also cracked open for joy. Our effervescence, our light, our humor, the best of our humanity—all that fire will melt the forever winter of this administration’s discontent.

We will be spring. We will be sun.

And we will rain and storm with joy. And that is how we will collectively run this machine into the ground.

How are you jamming the machine with your personal micro-rebellion of joy?

Thanks for reading unbound! This one is for today when you ask yourself:
does my voice even matter? Spoiler alert: it does.

Every headline points to the urgency of this moment. As former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, wrote, “All must use their voices and their influence in this fight, because no other fight is as crucial at this point in the history of America and the world.”

In storytelling terms, for America, this might be its pivotal moment. The consequential belly of the whale turning point that is a moment of transformation. Good or bad, the conclusion remains unclear. But as Historian Heather Cox Richardson noted, “(T)he agents’ mission increasingly looks as if it is to frighten opponents of the administration into submission. But instead of submission, they appear to be sparking deeper and deeper opposition.”

For many of us—I’d argue, for we the people—this moment is our Call to Adventure.

Think of your favorite stories. Every single hero experiences a call: something is wrong with the world. Something terrible that must be put to right. All heroes resist the call. Every single one. It is a dangerous task filled with obstacles, this call.

Maybe you are resisting this call to speak up with clarity. Maybe you are resisting this call to show up at protests because you’re weary or scared. Maybe you simply feel like your voice won’t make any difference at all.

I get it. I am weary and scared, too. I spent the last five weeks wondering whether any of my work—novels and speechwriting—has had any lasting impact at all.

But as Robert Reich also wrote, “You may feel helpless—a powerless observer of this hurricane of violence and stupidity. Please do not succumb to helpless, despair, or fear. You are needed. Desperately.” He lays out clear actions we can take beyond protesting and calling Congress and writing checks. It’s definitely worth a read.

According to my last post on Soften and Strengthen, I’d categorize Robert Reich’s recommendations as Strengthening actions. Actions to clarify for which you and we stand. Actions for speaking up. Actions for using every bit of your influence.

So I want to talk about the yin exercises that are needed in tandem to those yang actions: the ways we can Soften our hearts. The joyful actions that will sustain us through this unbearably hard season.

Joy pushes directly against despair. Joy is the antidote to hopelessness. Joy reminds us that there is still beauty in the world. Joy reminds us that there is purpose to Strengthening: to safeguard and celebrate the collective us.

Joy is a prelude to love. Joy is an ode to our humanity.

We need to be powerful in our joy.

Here are some ideas:

Embrace your inner fangirl/fanboy: Along with writing tough letter after letter, I’ve made it a habit to write love letters to leaders who are doing good, hard work in the world. Government, corporate, non-profit: they get fan letters.

Whenever I encounter exceptional service, I make sure to let a manager know to ensure job security for the employee. Let’s take Kyle, our UPS driver who keeps an entire notebook on all the dogs on his route so that all substitute and weekend drivers know who to greet. Kyle, he is the absolute paws-down favorite, most popular person in our neighborhood. You can practically hear tails wagging up and down every street, as his brown truck rumbles by. This man gave my dog a Christmas present. So you can bet Kyle got a fan letter and a public shout-out (yay, @upsdogs). Small world: one of my clients is friends with someone on the UPS board. One email later, and guess who is getting a commendation letter from UPS?

Yes, it takes time, but it’s pure joy to commend someone. I hope it’s pure joy for them to feel noticed and valued. I hope it gives them job security, especially when their managers and leaders respond, assuring me that my note is now in the recipient’s employment file. A bunch of them have gotten bonuses. And then their aside: how rare it is to ever hear about the good in this world of rants and complaints. That, right there, is the fly wheel of joy.

Share your enthusiasm: A friend yesterday commiserated about how loathsome the cesspool of social media is. Even so, she popped onto Facebook to post about a rare typewriter she found—and her geeky, enthusiastic subculture of typewriter fanatics were geekily enthusiastic. Her post reminded people of our fundamental togetherness even in this terrible time. So whatever your geeky enthusiasm, share it.

Celebrate every little thing: The world feels so bleak and hard. For me, I am now creating my atomic habit of rewarding myself for every single milestone I hit in writing and rewriting. Savor the chocolate (or those potato chips), that’s what I say.

Build community: As a writer, my schedule is mostly my own. A privilege I intend to use well this year. I’ve blocked off my late afternoons for friendercizing: scheduling friends for weekly, biweekly, monthly walk-and-talks in person and by phone. This gives me a set cadence not just to keep in touch with my friends (and work off those potato chips), but to support my besties more proactively.

As our spines strengthen, may our hearts also soften. So when we act—and we will—we stand on the firm foundation of joy. It is our why, joy.

However you subscribe, I am deeply grateful that you read unbound.

XO Justina

Thanks for reading unbound. This one is for the time when we must give ourselves oxygen first so we can be at the ready to save our world. Seriously.

2026 has kicked off with unimaginable headlines, all violent. It’s so easy to be immobilized with disbelief and grief.

This reminds me of yet another time that paralyzed my thinking, my decision-making, my agency. On a despair walk in the midst of my contentious divorce after I received yet another term-changing spreadsheet, I did circuits around the block. Circuit after circuit with quick pit stops at home to check on my kids. Circuit after circuit, I walked until my spiraling mind quieted enough for me to hear my still, small voice.

I caught the words: Soften and strengthen.

Strengthen, I understood, but soften? Soften was so countercultural because I needed to be tough, didn’t I? Yet softening was empathy and forgiveness. Softening broadened my view so I could see what was important: not the injustice of the situation. Not the unfairness over the settlement, but my focus on my children.

Soften and strengthen, that became my mantra through the divorce.

Soften and strengthen, words I am dusting off for such a time as this.

SOFTEN.

We know that the whole point of flood-the-zone news, shock-and-awe policies, and intentional cruelty is to wear down our spirits to nubbins. We also know that enemy states deploy bots on social media to polarize us. All of this hardens us into hatred. And what happens to hardened hearts? It stops beating. It saps ourselves of our own humanity. We stop seeing each other as people.

We stop acting out of love.

The truth is: we are strongest when our front foot is love, our back foot is truth.

I relearned this recently. After the pitbull attack back in November, I powered through a week of writing, forcing myself to put words on the page. Then: I smashed into the PTSD wall. Simply sitting at the computer hollowed me out.

So I did something distinctly not Justina Chen, fixer-in-residence™. I took the last four weeks off to be gentle with myself. No writing, no progress. No pushing, no productivity. Instead, I enjoyed the holiday season, then gave myself ample time and space to prepare for the new year with my vision boarding and journaling, dreaming and planning.

Surprise: my head cleared and my nervous system settled.

Good thing, too. 2026 happened.

Out on a friendercizing walk, my longtime friend and I spoke about the softening we must proactively do so we can love our neighbor. That is a hard calling these days, even when we share the same worldview. Ever-present anger—righteous, but still anger—is always right there, easily tapped. And just like that, we are easily trapped with hatred.

Yet my friend, my beautiful friend Julie, walks this humble walk, one gentle step at a time toward our neighbors. She actively seeks out and remembers birthdays, first days of work, the loss of a parent. Each one, she marks with a handwritten note. Each word, communicating: I see you. You matter. Your joy matters. Your grief matters.

What are you actively doing to keep your heart soft? Do you need an interlude of intentional quiet and deliberate gentleness so you retrain yourself to softness?

STRENGTHEN.

But what can we do? That’s the lament after every new news crisis I hear on every walk I take with friends, every coffee conversation, every text exchange. This is the lament I think we’ll increasingly hear when the most powerful leaders in our country keep modeling boundary-trampling. Their behavior is normalizing self-servicing boundary-trampling in our everyday lives. I’m convinced of it.

So what can we do? We strengthen our convictions. I am an introvert. As much as I love my friends and family, being in the solo company of my thoughts is the way I make sense of the world. I need to be alone to reach clarity. When I do, I marshal my inner strength. Important work since inner clarity coupled with inner strength is what this moment demands.

With clarity, we write the scripts for pushing back against boundary-breakers, and we proactively rehearse them. Then when that happens in our very faces, we are ready with our rehearsed and firm “No.”

This preparation strengthens our courage so we can stop gaslighters with the simple truth: “Actually, the tires were turned away from the ICE agent. She wasn’t mowing him down; she was driving away. You can see it with your own eyes.” We counter false narratives with our own testimony: “Let me just say that if a man—a stranger—in a mask reached into my car, yelling at me, I’d try to drive away from him, too.”

We get so clear and strong, we can show up for hard, uncomfortable, but necessary conversations. Boundary-setting conversations. Teachable moment conversations. So let’s say we see a kid take someone’s toy. (Or in today’s world, an adult snatching—stealing—a baseball right out of a kid’s hand, a baseball that s/he caught at a professional game.) Well, maybe we now step in and teach: “No, that toy belongs to them, not you.”

What are you doing to strengthen your clarity and voice so you’re ready to speak?

Readers, I’d love to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, here is my new year’s wish for you: May 2026 be a year where we all soften and strengthen so we meet this moment with clear conviction.

And for my paid subscribers, if you haven’t already, let’s book our hourlong brainstorming, vision-planning session together. I’m here for you.

Thanks for reading unbound! This one is for when you need to rewire your nervous system before you muster the nerve to (re)write.

Ten days after a pitbull attack, the stitches were plucked out of the wounds on my left hand. Bad news: the gash on top was simply not healing. Then: I broke out in a full-body hive-rash. My face was so swollen and red, the police officer who came to check on me flinched when I opened the front door. Neither the urgent care nor the primary care physician were able to diagnose the exact cause of the hives and rash: contact dermatitis? Allergic reaction to antibiotics? Stress from watching my fur baby nearly die? Outrage that the owners of the pitbull mix are contesting the dangerous dog designation?

For over a year, my hubby and I had plans to go on a Caribbean cruise with my son and his fiancée, which in itself is a little weird. We are not cruise people, the four of us. Between my anxiety about leaving my doggy and my weeping wound, I was going to cancel.

However, one look at me, and my doctor advised, “You should go. Your body is tweaking out. Just stay out of the sea.” My dog trainer who responded to my post-attack SOS to work with me and Nester agreed, “Your dog is fine. Go on vacation or you’re going to get really sick.” My dogsitter echoed, “Go. I’ve been studying videos on dog attacks. I got your fur baby. Plus, I kicked a pitbull off my first dog.”

So off we went.

My big plans, my original plans, were to use our down time as my personal writing retreat. A bunch of authors go on cruises to finish their manuscripts. Makes sense: no cooking, no cleaning, no obligations to anything other than your book. Every day, a different vantage point of beauty on the sea. The perfect conditions for a writer.

I intended to write. I really did.

Once on the plane, though, those grand plans hit the twin wall of PTSD and a creative muse who had quietly quit.

Are you experiencing a creative weariness that has nothing to do with the hustle-and-bustle of the impending holidays and everything to do with life? This last weekend was particularly brutal: the murder of the Reiners. The mass shooting at Brown. Another at Bondi Beach where I spent one Christmas under the sun.

Practicing radical self-care for ourselves in this time of deep despair is possibly the biggest gift we can give our creative muse. If you and your muse are burned out, here are a few tactics that helped revive my creative spirit in hopes that yours will be, too.

1. Give yourself permission to set down the work. For the last year, I’ve kept a (beautiful, colorful) calendar to track my writing progress: every scene, every chapter, a daily word count. It is visible, tangible proof of my novel growing, layer by layer. An effective tool that kept my momentum going. It was in my tote bag to take on my trip.

Yet lugging that calendar felt more like prison than progress, accentuating how I couldn’t write. How I couldn’t muster the energy for words. Or story. So for once, I decided to set down my productivity goals entirely, not just for the week of the cruise, but for the entire month. Out with my word-count calendar. Adios, 2025!

What do you need to retire symbolically to give yourself permission to rest?

2. Have an adventure without an agenda. Off I went, goal-less and calendar-less, to soak up the sun and fill my heart with an expanse of time with my son and his fiancee, no kids, no word counts. And ultimately, no work. Just nine agenda-free days. What few plans we made had to be abandoned when my hubby got sick. Yet, that, too, felt like a gift of simply being together.

For a few months, I’ve been toying with restructuring my writing week so that Friday afternoons are my personal time, nobody else’s. Not my clients, not my work-in-progress, not my family, including the fur baby. Just my time to do as I please, even for an hour. Why not if I can? Really, why not?

How are you going to make room for adventure without agenda?

3. Listen to your body. Between worrying about my doggy, then replaying the pitbull attack approximately a billion times, I had slept fitfully for weeks. My usual exercise routine is hard biking, then heavy weights. Yet my body rebelled: hello, hives. So I slowed myself down to gentle movement. And it felt so healing.

How are you building gentleness into your day?

4. Read outside your norm: On my vacation, I soaked up four books and two audiobooks. All beyond my typical genres. These new stories—and new story structures—broke something open in me. An eagerness to return to my own work. Excitement to play with my story come January.

How are you expanding your worldview so you see your work anew?

Surprise, surprise: three days into our trip, three days of breaking my routine, my hand healed. So did my creative spirit. May yours as well.

Thanks for reading unbound! This one is for the time when you need to grab and keep someone’s attention.

A neighbor’s pitbull-catahoula mix attacked my dog and me six days ago.

No warning, six days ago, as we stepped out of our home and started down the street, Nester and me. Me happily walking because my husband’s surgery was successful; Nester happily sniffing this red leaf, that patch of rain-wet grass, those scrubby bushes.

Then: out of nowhere, a silent blur of tan and teeth. My labradoodle screaming, shrill with fear, then pain, as the pitbull mix sank its sharp teeth into her: neck, throat, haunches. Neck.

We fell into the irrigation ditch, rimmed with grass slick from morning rain. My sneakers kept slipping when I tried to kick the pitbull mix off Nester.

I kept falling. My dog kept screaming.

The pitbull kept biting, first Nester, then me, then Nester. Nester. Nester.

No collar, no way to pull the pitbull off his killing mission. No way to ring his thick neck with my leash when his jaws of death were clamped on my fur baby. Stupid, I know, but I punched the pitbull on its head, once, twice, three times.

Thankfully, the neighbor finally heard me and Nester screaming our duet of howled terror. Thankfully, she wrested her dog off mine.

All I remember is running across the street to my home, Nester somehow in my arms, crying out for my husband who was recovering from his surgery. Him, post-anesthesia confused. Him, seeing the blood, so much blood, pooling on the hallway floor. Him, shocked awake.

Two ER visits, a ton of stitches and shots and meds later, we are healing, Nester and me. Yet days later, we continue to find droplets of dried blood splattered on our walls.

***

From a narrative standpoint, I hope you felt drawn into my story. Even more, I hope you felt like you were right there at my side. That you were stuck in that irrigation ditch with Nester and me. That you felt the terror of those snapping teeth, of losing traction. That you fought as hard as you could to save your beloved dog-friend-child.

Aghast? Good. Angered? Excellent.

We are facing a global cratering in empathy, the ability to understand the feelings of others. According to the 2025 Compassion Report, almost two-thirds of Americans believe that empathy has eroded. Plenty of psychological studies have documented the decrease in empathy for others at the same time that me-me-me narcissism has risen.

What creates empathy? Story.

In fact, a study showed that after kids read Harry Potter, their empathy increases for marginalized groups. (Perhaps JK Rowling would do well to reread her own words.) This is the very reason why stories are so dangerous for fascist regimes: when you understand another person’s plight, you get a glimmer that our systems might be the reason for that plight. You get an inkling that our systems should be fixed. And then you get fired up with the belief that no one should live with that plight and you know—you know with absolute certainty—that our systems must be fixed.

Empathy is dangerous because it is the impetus of change.

Now add to the empathy epidemic, our worldwide attention deficit. Reports suggest that attention spans have dropped to an anemic 47 seconds.

With 47 seconds to command and keep attention, how do we shift our storytelling?

ONE. Our storytelling must be more visceral. We storytellers need to be strategic and deliberate about deploying sensory details that plant your audience right at our side, so they, too, are fighting off the pitbull. They, too, are fighting for a dog’s life. They, too, feel the terror of the attack. Lifeblood is good for the story.

TWO. Our storytelling must use muscular prose. Sharp prose. There is a season for lyrical words that make our souls sing. We are not in that season yet. One day, but not today. Our season demands words that grab people by the chin and command them: do not look away.

Look here, our stories must howl. Look right here.

THREE. Our storytelling must have precision of language. When people soften language, ask yourself, Who benefits from that softened language? And how does that watered-down language alter the story? From the Epstein reports, I’m thinking of the nonsensical term “underaged women” instead of the precise terms: “girls” or “children.” So why the language change? Well, women can give consent; children cannot. If an audience buys into “underaged women,” then they are one step closer to agreeing that women, even underaged, know exactly what they’re doing. There goes assault. There goes rape. There goes wrong-doing and responsibility and accountability for horrific sex crimes.

***

All to say: our stories, told with physical detail and muscular prose and precise language, give us each a dog in the fight. And today’s fight is our collective vested interest to live our best story. The story we are living today with immigrants and U.S. citizens alike being disappeared, with pastors attacked for speaking the Truth, with rights liquefying, with civility and empathy cratering—this is not our best story.

So we rethink our storytelling. We call out storytellers whose words first diminish, then erase the truth. We fight with tooth and nail and story because people matter. Your beloveds matter. You matter.

Thank you for reading unbound! This one is for communicators who want
to breakthrough the 47-second attention span.

In a quaint seaside inn, publisher of Philomel Books, Patty Lee Gauch, completely changed my approach to writing. In stockinged feet, sensible shoes kicked aside, Patty instructed some twenty of us, all children’s book authors, all published.

She told us that we were writing good work. Great, even. But what readers needed, what young readers deserved, was transcendent books. It wasn’t enough for readers to shed a single tear; we needed them to weep from having their heart broken. A tiny chuckle was insufficient; our aim was howls of laughter. Pee-in-their-pants chortling.

The only way to reach transcendence, according to Patty, is to know every tool in our toolkit and to use them with surgical precision.

The same is true for communicators, especially now. Attention spans have dwindled to a scanty 47 seconds. You read that right: 47 seconds before our brains tune out. 47 seconds before you lose your audience. So how the heck are you going to command TikTok-ruined attention? How do you hold attention for an hourlong keynote? A critical piece of longform writing? Heck, even an op-ed?

We learn from our sister-genres. We borrow liberally from their time-tested techniques. And we strategically retool our communications toolbox.

How?

In my mind, speechwriting is the closest to songwriting: both are written specifically for the ear. Martin Luther King, Jr’s words are enduring because of their hymnal quality. The musicality in phrasing. From songs and songwriters, we learn lyricism. Cadence. The art of the ear worm. Consider reading legendary music producer Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being—and deploy his methods to tease the best out of musicians.

Poetry is the art of economy. It is pithy meaning injected straight to the heart: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” My morning ritual includes reading one poem by Mary Oliver and Rumi each. Consider doing the same to train your ear. As well, pick up Poemcrazy by Susan Wooldridge. You won’t be sorry.

From thrillers and mysteries, we learn pacing. No more sagging middles in our speeches. Imagine the incisive use of foreshadowing and cliffhangers to add interest (and intrigue) in a speech. Along with immersing yourself in the likes of Ruth Ware and Tana French, consider reading Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron.

From children’s books, we learn to write tight and write authentic. You want to hear voice that lives in your heart for the rest of your life? Open to the first page of any recent Newbery Award winning book, read three paragraphs out loud, and pow: voice will smack you hard in the heart. It will beguile you even as you read about the hardest of lives. Kate DiCamillo’s Louisiana’s Way Home is an example of tough life turned hopeful, holding us with rapt attention, hearts wide open, with powerful voice. One of the best writing craft books for kids is The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by one of my editors, Cheryl Klein.

From sci fi, fantasy, and romantasy, we learn worldbuilding. If we have any hope of uniting people to build a future together, we must write a vision of a better world. Ursula Le Guin was and continues to be a legend in speculative fiction, and her Steering the Craft: A 21^st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story is an excellent study.

If brevity is the soul of wit, then banter is the soul of chemistry. Chemistry, connection—that is how we command the stage. And what genre does chemistry and connection best? Romance! Delight yourself with any of the recent bestsellers known for sparkling wit: Abby Jimenez, Emily Henry, Lauren Kung Jessen. Relish in their banter, then ask yourself: where in your speech are the memorable and resonant quips?

We are all tired. Our leaders may resist saying anything at all. So why bother with our craft as communicators?

We bother because the world needs our very best words and stories right now. We bother because no passion in the speechwriter, no life in the speechgiver. We bother because learning engages our mind, and great writing stirs everyone’s hearts.

If nothing else, astonish yourself when you put on your creative writing hat. Pick up your pen, writer. Speak to our better angels. Sing out the truth.

Thank you for reading unbound! This one is for communicators who want
to make a mark on today’s world.

Truth is withering on the vine, sickened by misinformation and poisoned by disinformation. What has worked before in communications no longer works now. Why? The incessant cadence of chaos and lies. Spindly attention spans that have dwindled to 47 seconds. The great silencing of voices—novelists, journalists, academics, researchers. Leaders.

All this at a time when we need more voices. More championing of the truth. More light.

A recent panel including the president of Stanford, former president of Yale, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addressed the embattled state of higher education. All three pointed to inadequate storytelling as the reason why universities are under attack. Because we haven’t told a compelling story about the impact of higher education on the world, people assume universities only serve the elite. That, of course, is far from the truth.

What needs to change for the truth to break through?

The latest Brands in Motion study by we. Communications provides a hope-filled roadmap. A hint lies in the title: The World Got More Complex. Communications Got More Critical. Specifically, audiences want more humanizing. (What is that if not storytelling?) They want more leaders to show up, but to show up differently. They want plain-speak. (What is that if not less rehearsed executives and more real leaders?)

This is an exciting moment for professional writers—from speechwriters to PR experts to internal communications. We have the opportunity to rethink our roles and responsibilities. We are called to reinvent our craft specifically to connect with audiences. We have the absolute delight of preparing our leaders to show up as real people with real beating hearts!

New Roles for Communicators

At our best, we writers are thought provokers and meaning-makers. Writing that stands out—whether speeches, novels, or op-eds—advance a new perspective. A compelling insight that makes an issue matter. A fresh idea that inverts conventional wisdom.

This is why writers are being silenced and why our books are being banned. We write to make sense. We write to bring forth clarity out of chaos. Our end product is so much more than a speech. Or a book, a song, or a poem. It’s insight. It is meaning. It is wisdom. And that, wisdom, is what the world desperately needs. Let’s be honest: the world has enough intelligence—human intelligence and artificial intelligence. Intelligence asks: can we do this? Wisdom asks: should we do this? Intelligence games out: what will happen if we do this or that? Wisdom asks: does it serve the world if we do this or that?

Writers are the wayfinders of wisdom.

What if we elevated these little-known, yet essential skills? What if we deliberately inhabit being a Thought Provoker and Meaning Maker—by naming and claiming these roles? What if we demonstrated their importance by calling meetings for thought experiments and showing up in these roles? What if we intentionally develop our skills as Thought Provokers and Meaning Makers?

When we do this, we enhance our value, impact, and job security, and we up-level our writing itself. We raise the bar from good writing to great writing because we’re writing to illuminate truth, to share insight, to advance wisdom.

We write to declare: this matters. We write to drive a stake in the ground: this is the truth. We write to signpost: do not look away.

How do we practice our new role?

To be a Thought Provoker and Meaning-Maker, we writers need to occupy more space.

We writers don’t just take notes. We advance thought provocative ideas and such deep meaning that our leaders and readers take note. If our pens are our swords, then our writing becomes the shield that protects and advances the truth.

Thanks for reading unbound. This one is for the time when you hear a lie.

Grief buried my words for the last two weeks, an avalanche of sorrow as my mama’s second death-day came, then went. In this void of my wordlessness, I’ve been reading. Filling myself with other people’s words and thoughts, musings and insights. Saturating myself with story and language and narrative form.

Then I stumbled on an article about the rise of the Chill Girl. What I read chilled me right out of my grief-stupor.

See, Chill Girl is so cool, she lets misogynistic and racist comments slide. Heck, Chill Girl is so damn cool, she might even laugh: bring on the so-called locker room talk, I’m one of the guys! Chill Girl is the kissing cousin to Gone Girl’s Cool Girl: “Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, sh*t on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”

On the same family tree is the Chill Christian who’s turned the other cheek, not to practice forgiveness, but to look the other way. The Scripture is inverted and perverted right in front of Chill Christian’s very face. ICE is disappearing people here in twenty-first century America when the Bible exhorts us to take care of the stranger, the foreigner, the immigrant. And Chill Christian remains silent to protect the peace.

This is not peace, but a complicit truce against truth. To be silent now is to join a silent retreat from what is good and right and true. To quash our voice now is to quiet-quit our right to speak freely.

Years ago, after an unexpected divorce, I boomeranged back to corporate work. My second stint: to be the speechwriter for Robbie Bach, then president of Microsoft and Chief Xbox Officer. Robbie is now a civic engineer, an advocate and architect for a society that serves us all. And let me tell you, Robbie is not one for silence.

An avid letter writer, Robbie has begun penning a series of frank open letters to America. His third letter calls for a change in the way we communicate. In other words, stop being so chill, people.

FIRST. We need to converse. Listen and talk; talk and listen. As Robbie says, we’ve got to engage by listening and speaking, both.

“As painful as it may be, we must engage with those who disagree with us and listen to their ideas—and make sure they know we’ve heard them. But …we must make sure we communicate our own ideas well, including being upfront and clear when we disagree. It’s time to stop going to dinner parties and just discuss our kids, the weather, our next trip.”

This sharing-of-the-minds is the complete opposite of the laughing Chill Girl, the bite-thy-tongue Chill Christian, the stoic Chill Neighbor, the scared-silent Chill CEO. Robbie and I saw the power of this conversational mindset firsthand. In one of our first projects, we embarked on a Discussion Tour. Ten meetings over a meal with ten leaders, thinkers, and doers at a time. A commitment of fifteen hours of presidential presence. The team spoke. Robbie took notes. They had questions, hard questions. He answered. When he couldn’t, he followed up. And then, he followed through.

A heart-to-heart exchange led to meaningful change. May it be so with us today.

TWO. Call Out Lies. My coach-therapist shared the secret to successful step-parenting: connect, then correct. In other words, build a trusted connection before you do any correction, whether it’s reminding stepchildren to take their dirty plates to the sink or to pick up their dirty socks from the floor.

That is why we first must converse. The next step asks more of us: to be the frontline for the facts. We cannot avoid and hope to fill the void of truth. As Robbie writes:

“It’s impossible to move forward if we can’t agree on basic facts: January 6th was an insurrection. Congress is responsible for the country’s purse strings. Vaccines work. Speech must be free. The Fed is independent. The border must be defended. President’s get two terms. Due process applies to all. Discrimination is discrimination. The list could go on. The challenge here is drawing lines that are long-standing and clear, and less subject to interpretation.”

Conversations today are an act of courage. Calling out lies calls for bravery. I hope we answer this call and do this hard work of showing up for the truth. When we do, we are closer to finding common ground rather than a burial ground for the values we hold dear.

In missing Mama, I realized something powerful. She fed me Love.

So opposite of the hate-filled narrative we’re being force-fed. Words that spit ugliness. Terms that demean and dehumanize. Speeches told with malignant intent: to divide, to other, to incite violence. To breed hate.

The research shows that hate-fomenting speech is sticky: lies disguised as truth are memorable. (e.g.: They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!)

Yet to be enduring—to be lasting—I believe speeches, stories, must be steeped in love. “I Have a Dream”—that is love-filled vision. The Gettysburg address—love-filled vision. Mama’s words when she’d drop off soup for sick me—love-filled purpose and action to heal me.

I’ve seen this very love-filled vision in action: in the corporate world. Yes, the corporate world of profits and losses, products and services. After nearly twenty years as a speechwriter, I know this to be true:

They accomplished this by sharing what I call a VISION NARRATIVE—the story about their purpose that serves the world. (Not serve themselves or their organization, but the world.)

So often, other people see your work more clearly. So I love how Laura Lowery, a communications strategist, defined my work in her forthcoming book, FEROCIOUS: A Vision Narrative is the most powerful expression of your purpose, written and spoken in a way that moves people into action.

THE DISCOVERY DRAFT

As always when I tease out a leader’s vision, we begin by writing a love letter to the world. Two minutes, pure draft, grammar be damned. The only requirement is that your write from your heart: what do you want for the world.

It is hard to publish a zero draft, a discovery draft where you are still figuring out what it is you want to say, what you believe, let alone how to say it. But for the sake of this exercise, here it is, my zero draft, the discovery draft: a Love Letter to America, written from the sick bed, but holding the pen firmly for two minutes:

Dearest America,

Because you are so dear to me and millions of others who call themselves Americans. You who called forth my own parents to become Americans.

Today I call forth your better angels and declare to you what I want most for you: an All-American Dream.

I want all your people to prosper in health and happiness.

I want all your people to be free to pursue their biggest, brightest, most audacious dreams for themselves and their families.

So America, let’s begin at the beginning. What environment best helps people to prosper? Clean air, clean water so that your people can live free, breathe free.

I want all your people to live in peace and harmony.

I want them to have plentiful food of the highest nutritional value so their bodies are healthy. When they are sick and hurt, I want them to be cared for. Their job in healing will simply be that: to heal. No more time wasted worrying about the cost of care. No more fretting about getting an appointment to see a good doctor for themselves or their children or their parents.

I want them to have the tools to thrive and that means a good education.

I want the logistics of daily life to be as smooth as possible for all your people: good roads and public transportation so no one is stuck in endless traffic. Electricity that can be counted upon. Information that is accurate and accessible.

I want all your people to have ease so they have time to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Time to relish each other’s company. Time to read the books they want, watch great movies, play great games. Time to move and take care of their bodies. Time and money for a vacation now and again to build core memories with their beloveds.

I want our country’s richness to be our love and laughter. Our instinct to uplift each other. To lend a helping hand. To build strong communities. To be love in action.

That is the America I know to be possible. That is the America I want for you and you and you and you. All of you.

With love,
Me

Rough, yes. Needs revision, clearly. Needs deepening, obviously. But I hope you can hear the heartbeat in this letter. Every word is love. Every sentence culminates in a love-filled vision.

Let us begin our visioning from here: with love.

Thanks for reading unbound. This one is for the time when you must pick up the pen.

This last week, I was sick with a cold. Then sick at heart about Charlie Kirk’s death and the rising political violence in our country. Then sick with despair at the seizing of that political violence as an excuse to silence people. For days, I could not write.

Last night, I picked up the pen. I wrote fire to Bob Iger, CEO of ABC/Disney.

Perhaps writing a letter will not change anything, but I like to believe that writing fire is an exercise of our voice and courage. A reminder of our agency. Most of all, I like to believe that someone, somewhere will find a phrase within my writing that moves their heart, and possibly moves them to pick up their pen.

So in that spirit, I deconstruct my open letter to Disney/ABC.

INTENTION
Before writing a single word, I meditate on my intention. Enough people have excoriated Disney/ABC about their decision to protect profit over freedom of speech. Here, my goal was to frame this decision against Disney’s own heritage and canon—their filmography. And to encourage Bob Iger, CEO of Disney/ABC, to act with courage.

AN OPEN LETTER TO DISNEY/ABC

Dear Mr. Iger,

You have been a model of strong, principled leadership that I point to in my executive presence work with senior leaders throughout the tech industry. You said, "Identify what the issues are and when you find them, don't hide from them." You wrote, "The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation." You wrote, "To succeed, you have to believe in something with such passion and conviction that it becomes a reality."

In this letter, I want to draw in my reader. The fact is, Bob Iger has been a leader I reference, and I have read his latest book. Additionally, I wanted to foreshadow how his and his board’s decision lies in direct opposition of his own principles. So quoting Bob’s own words, both spoken and written, in the first paragraph added strength upfront and resonance later.

It was with such profound disappointment that you—of all leaders—would cave to the FCC under pressure and remove Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely. You who knew the issue at stake--freedom of speech--and you didn't just hide. You ran. You knew that the heart and soul of Disney—creativity and the unique ability of satire to innovate insight—was under attack, and you did not push back with so much as a mouse's squeak.

Here, I frame the decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel through the lens of Bob’s own words and actions. While I understand the need to make hard business decisions, this letter focuses on his leadership. So I don’t even mention profit, the affiliate stations, and what not. To end this paragraph, I cackled as I wrote “mouse’s squeak,” a nod to the icon of all icons for Disney. Reader, you chuckled, too, didn’t you?

You abandoned the passion and conviction that has been the DNA of Disney: the company's history and heritage. Back in 1941, Disney leveraged its storytelling in service of anti-Nazi films. Walt Disney himself and your company produced pro-American stories to push back against fascism. Walt Disney himself and your predecessors understood how animation was a cultural weapon that could quickly, succinctly, and powerfully show people why democracy must be and should be protected.

As a speechwriter, I always love weaving in history because it’s a way of saying: this is who we have always been. It is credibility conveyed in an economical way. And Disney’s history of producing films for the US Government to push back against fascism is heritage that bears reminding.

YET you abandoned the passion and conviction about courage that runs through virtually every single iconic Disney film: The Lion King where we learned to face our fears and take responsibility. Moana where we learned about the power of our own strength. Mulan where we learned to stand up for what's right. You are the keeper of the Star Wars canon where story upon story illuminate heroism.

Here, I continued the drumbeat of Bob’s own words and principles—“passion and conviction”—as I advanced my argument. He abandoned those two ideals, not just by turning his back on his company heritage, but turning his back on Disney’s canon itself. This paragraph could have been ten, twenty sentences longer: there were so many films I could have referenced. I chose my personal favorite films since this is a personal (albeit open) letter.

And now this: a cowardly abandonment of the principles, stories, and messages that formed Disney and informed Disney's creative work.

What is the opposite of courage? Cowardice. I wanted an impact line that was lyrical. So you have the ear-pleasing “formed Disney” and “informed Disney’s work.”

Yet as storytellers, we also know this: every belly of the whale moment, every trough of disappointment is a moment of truth.

Here, I wanted to remind Bob that, at heart, Disney’s crown jewels are story and storytelling. So I framed this perilous moment in storytelling terms, reminding him that this plot point is a moment of truth.

So what is your truth? Where will you stand at this perilous time with your creatives who are under attack for their creative expression? Will you continue the legacy of Disney's courage and creativity? Will you leave a legacy of strong, principled, and courageous leadership that will reverberate through time?

Or will you continue to cower?

In speechwriting, I love, love, love building a speech to its climactic moment. The big ta-da, the culmination of insight, built upon every single anecdote, data point, quote used in the speech. Here, I tried to achieve a rousing moment by using a series of questions to call back to heritage and canon AND to call forth the best of Bob’s leadership. I ended on one last question, short and damning. It should feel like a punch to his very soul. I went back and forth on using an even more pointed question: “Or will you leave a legacy of cowardice?” But that felt too harsh since Bob Iger has done great work.

All to say: my family of ardent Disney fans held a meeting. We have cancelled our subscription to Disney+ and will not be visiting any of the parks for the foreseeable future.

With hope, as fans, we await your next act.

In closing, I wanted to spell out the consequences of his decision on a personal level, yet remind him that he, too, has agency. All (Disney) stories are about redemption. So I hold out hope for his redemption of leadership, and I hope Bob Iger does, too.

All best,

Justina Chen

READER, is it time for you to pick up your pen? I believe it is. Write your own fire.

Thanks for reading unbound! This is for the time when you are burning at the injustice of it all.

Ten months ago, a young woman in head-to-toe Alo yoga wear cut in front of me at the TSA security check, stepping between my husband and myself.

As my husband walked through the metal detector, blithely oblivious in happy pre-vacation mode, I murmured to the young woman, “Excuse me.”

The yogini ignored me, then proceeded to take her own sweet time, first shrugging off her backpack, then hauling her luggage onto the conveyer belt. I waited. One of the TSA employees looked at me; I looked at him and said, “That was kinda rude!” He nodded. I shrugged, then refocused on my peace. On the trip ahead to escape my father’s birthday at home, the first without him.

When I finally walked through the metal detector, my perplexed husband asked, “Where were you? What happened?”

Still caught off-guard, I told him with a slight nod at the young woman behind him, “Oh, she cut in front of me.”

Yogini erupted: “That’s so passive-aggressive of you!”

She blame-flipped, advancing (loudly) the (false) narrative that she was the victim, and I was the instigator. My response to her infraction became the issue, not her original sin of cutting in line. Not the tertiary issue: her eavesdropping on a private conversation.

The real cost, though, was my peace of mind. For two weeks, I played and replayed the incident. (Yes, overthinker here.) I vacillated between blaming myself for not speaking out louder—EXCUSE ME—and blasting myself for being passive-aggressive: I HAD responded to my husband’s question loudly enough for the yogini to hear. I HAD pointed out that she was rude to the TSA employee.

But then I realized something: the yogini had weaponized shame to silence me, and she succeeded! Her voice was deliberately loud to gather support from the strangers around me. This shame-weaponized micro-incident is familiar because it’s being replayed over and over on a much larger macro scale as social norms and democratic norms are hit-and-run. Bulldozed. Smashed.

Our response has become the issue itself. Shame—finger-pointing, dehumanizing shame—is weaponized to control and silence us: how dare they tell the truth! How dare they speak up and protest and march!

How dare they make fun of the way we speak?

How. Dare. They.

Shame freezes us even as it others us, and that’s the whole point. Shame paralyzes us from feeling (righteous) anger, fear, and grief—all the emotions that are the groundswell of change.

So this national shaming of truth-tellers and truth-seekers is part of the psychological flood-the-zone assault to create a sense of collective powerlessness. To induce a nation-wide fog of depression: why bother? what difference will anything make?

Which is why joy is a radical act of agency because it declares: I deserve joy.

And why speaking up pierces the lies of shame because it proclaims: I am not the problem.

So perhaps we flip “how dare they” to “Do we dare more?”

We could fight fire with fire, but I prefer the origins of that idiom from Shakespeare: “Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; threaten the threatener and outface the brow of bragging horror.”

That’s what fiery words do: they stir. They stir up trouble. They stir up the truth. Words can also stir up love and strength, vision and movements.

As storytellers, we answer Audre Lorde’s call before her death: “Write fire.”

Writing fire is head and heart together. Head to burn through the flammable material of half-truths. Heart to deprive lies of their fuel of shame.

Writing fire sparks from love, angered. Love, wronged.

This is what dream team Gavin Newsom and Camille Harper Zapata are doing: one with his platform, the other with her words. They are writing fire. Their satire burns through bullsh*t. But more than that, their words stir up our strength, laugh-to-laugh, heart-to-heart.

Truth, courage, strength, togetherness, joy: these are the antithesis of shame.

Storytellers, how do we write fire?

1. Discern. The moment we feel shame, stop. Are we being gaslit? Is blame being shifted to us? Is our response being framed as the issue? Assess every situation like a story: who is doing what and why?

2. Reframe and write tight. Reduce this gaslighting to a single-line truth. Actually, what’s happening is this: <fill in the blank>.

3. Rewrite. Study Antonia Scatton and her Do Not Associate and Do Associate lists. Rewrite accordingly so we don’t inadvertently add power to the wrong narrative.

4. Then write fire. Accurate writing is inadequate for this moment. Acute insight will win hearts and minds. So recruit your heart. Gather your anger. Hold the pen and land the truth with all its fiery emotional impact.

5. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Storytellers, may fire shoot from your fingertips. Embrace your anger, and let your love for our world burn bright, as your words burn down all the shameful lies.

Thanks for reading unbound. This is for the time when you are bursting with something to say.

As a lifelong letter writer with a significant obsession with stationery, I’ve increased my output. In the last few months, I’ve written to the neighbor who made a racist comment to me. To leaders who are taking principled stands. To managers and business owners whose employees are ambassadors of kindness. And to my pastors urging them to advance the true teachings of Christianity.

Because letter-writing is both an instrument of change and an exercise of agency (I will use my voice!), I thought I’d deconstruct my open letter to my pastors in case this encourages anyone to pick up their pen.

First things first: before I write a single word—letter, speech, novel—I think about my intention. Here, my goal was to frame the moment, lay out the stakes, and welcome conversation. Below is a lightly edited version to protect privacy.

An Open Letter to My Beloved Pastors:

Reading the Book of Daniel with our church has been affirming, yet alarming. I am no theologian, yet the word I received as I study is this: nothing and no one—no ruler, no craftily calculated policy—could avert, invert, subvert, or pervert Daniel’s worship of God.

In speechwriting, we typically heed to the rule of three’s: friends, Romans, countrymen. Yet there’s power in using four beats: avert, invert, subvert, pervert. I ended on “pervert” to pack the biggest emotional wallop. That gut-punching word also nods to today’s times where a sex trafficker is repositioned as the victim, a foreshadowing of the inversion of good and evil that this letter calls out.

It almost goes without saying that these troubling times feel like they are doing exactly that. But that, right there, is the problem. Who is doing the saying?

Here I frame the problem of silence and foreshadow the impact line tying silence to perversity at the end of the letter.

Who is calling out today’s:

Inverting good and evil: A call for mercy towards those living in fear somehow enraged Christian Nationalists. Somehow, it is good to gleefully pose before immigrants who’ve been rounded up and carted off to horrific conditions.

Here I repeat “somehow” to underscore the repugnant preposterousness of these situations.

Subverting the authority of God: We have a leader whose followers call a “modern-day messiah.” A direct likening of any man to Jesus feels like it undermines the singular authority of God.

Here I add a direct quote to add immediacy and deliberately did not include attribution to underscore how universal this knowledge is. This again sets up the impact line at the end about silence.

Perverting the meaning of Christianity: Today, we have a Christian Nationalist pastor teaching that slavery produced “genuine affection between the races.” That there is no such thing as marital rape. That women are “the kind of people that people come out of.” All of this feels in direct opposition of Christ’s teachings.

Here I add direct quotes to create a roll call of inaccurate theology.

Averting the worship of God: No wonder Christians have been declining as a percentage of the US population, according to Pew. Given what Christian Nationalists profess above, is it any wonder why people are falling away from the church? Is it any wonder that people might assume that the position of Christian Nationalist church leaders is the position of Christianity? That this is the true teaching of Christ?

Here I punctuate data with a series of questions ending with the one that is squarely the responsibility of pastors: teaching about Christ.

As a writer, I worry that we are ceding too much in a narrative battle that’s being waged in a much larger spiritual war. Without advancing in no uncertain terms what it means to be a Christian, I worry that we are contributing to our culture’s aversion to Christ.

Here I use the wordplay of “narrative battle” and “spiritual war” to land the stakes: our culture’s aversion to Christ.

So yes, to all the sermons to date on the Book of Daniel. Yes, to paraphrase the last sermon: God is with us during these difficult times. He is there for the tech workers within our community who have lost their jobs. For our brethren in war-torn Congo.

Here I paraphrase specific examples from the sermon that reinforced our community’s bubble rather than address today’s troubling issues that are in direct opposition of Scripture.

YET: we miss the moment when we do not call out that God is also for the immigrants who are scared of being rounded up. He is for our sick and elderly who are scared of rising medical bills. For our very poorest children who do not have a reliable source of food.

Now we move to the meat of the letter: how our church is missing the moment for the very people that the Scripture exhorts us to protect.

We miss the moment when we do not correct Christians who laugh about Alligator Alcatraz and all cruelty of that ilk.

Here I use an example of how our church did not call out ungodly behavior.

We miss the moment when we do not remind everyone that we are to love our neighbor and our neighbors do, in fact, include refugees like Jesus himself.

Here I point back to the essential teaching: love our neighbor.

We miss the moment when we do not speak up. And we absolutely miss this moment when we do not speak out about craftily calculated policy that stands in direct opposition of God. To be clear: this is not political. This is protecting the truth. This is advancing and actuating the true teachings. This is standing with and for Jesus. Think Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. Think Pope Francis and Pope Leo. Think Bishop Budde. Think the Catholic pastors in Kansas.

Think Daniel.

Here I tie “craftily calculate policy” directly to our study of the Book of Daniel. I delineate the difference with being political versus protecting the principles of Christianity. I end with a litany of Christian leaders through history who have corrected false teachings and defended the true teachings of Jesus.

To be silent in the face of this narrative assault on Christianity and this policy assault on the word of God is to be complicit in the perversion of Christ.

Drum roll: the impact line with the drumbeat of “assault” and the circle-back to the word “pervert” to spell out the end game of silence.

I offer my thoughts and welcome a discussion in the spirit of love.

Finally: I invite conversation. From a strategic communications standpoint, I bet that my pastors would respond (they did) and I could follow-up in a second missive that could hold my pastors accountable: use your pulpit to clarify the true teachings. Use your God-given gift of word and Word to build Kingdom.

With love,
Justina

My words may be imperfect. They always are. Yet I hope this deconstruction encourages you to take up the pen, too. And when you do, I hope you defend values worth our defending.

I hope you write with the courage and conviction you wish someone would advocate for you and your beloveds.

Thanks for reading unbound! This is for the time when you despair that people understand you—and what’s going on in our world.

Writing tight is not my forte. My chaotic thoughts spiral and spill in long winding stream of consciousness. My children can attest to my ability to mama-logue. My mother tongue of writing is novels. Novels full of subplots that weave and echo.

But in my other world, as a former speechwriter, writing tight is essential. No speech has room for rambling blah-blah-blah, especially within a long forty-five minute keynote meant to energize. A speech is not a sleep story. There is nothing so humbling for a speaker or horrifying for a speechwriter than a half-asleep audience.

So keep them rapt. You do that with the judicious use of impact lines. Lines so interesting, they alert brain cells: everyone, listen up! Lines so powerful, they resonate for weeks, months, years after the speech. Lines so insightful, they bear repeating.

This disciplined brevity in crafting impact lines in speeches is needed throughout all our communications today.

Attention spans are woefully short and shrinking. Over the past few decades, our ability to maintain attention has all but collapsed. The average attention span today is roughly 47 seconds.

47 seconds. You can barely make your bed or floss your teeth in that time.

Digital distractions aside, our attentions are under assault with the flood-the-zone news cycle. The design goal of this torrent of news is to exhaust us and render us hopeless. To overwhelm so we become somnolent sheep.

So how do we command attention in an attention-fragmented world? How do we enrapture, not just engage weary readers? How do we convince, not just clarify? And how do we win minds, not just hearts?

We do it with language. Short, powerful language. Writing short cuts through chaos and complexity with incisive insight. It packs a meaningful punch in a single line. It’s the masterful use of apt metaphors to make meaning.

Case in point:

“When Democrats respond to Trump’s attacks with policy papers and fact-checks, they’re bringing a calculator to a knife fight.” –Chris Armitage.

Let’s dissect. Calculator to a knife fight: it’s metaphorical. Meaningful. Memorable. That, right there, is the power in writing tight.

Some thoughts about honing our ability to write with surgical precision:

1. Study Antonia Scatton, particularly paying attention to the neuroscience of word association. Her posts provide linguistic guardrails. So lean hard on her DO NOT ASSOCIATE and DO ASSOCIATE guidelines before you begin writing.

2. Practice short-form writing. Darien Gee is a microprose author and teacher who is an ardent, thoughtful, and heart-forward practitioner of the 300-word story. She can get you to weep in less than 300 economical words. Study her.

3. Morning stack. Every writing day begins with a few curated books to ground and uplift me. Like a hummingbird, I sip at each and study how the authors pack so much meaning in short, meditative snippets.

My current morning stack includes two devotionals on grief: rumination, application. The First Nations version: An Indigenous Bible Translation—that makes me see Scripture anew. Rick Rubin’s musings: each missive is an etude about the act of creating. Mary Oliver and Rumi: in a few lines, their poetry illuminates a truth. Curate your stack with an eye for breadth and a learner’s mindset for brevity.

4. Collect metaphors. The more complex a concept, the more a metaphor can explain. Neuroscience confirms this. We need to build our metaphorical muscle as storytellers. So go on a metaphor walk. Challenge yourself to find three objects and use them as metaphors. This way, we are actively tuned and ready to make meaning with metaphor.

5. Be obsessive about condensing. Richard Peck—here was a writer who could make you weep with laughter—famously made it a practice to cut 20 words from a page to ensure clarity and focus. Try it. Edit ruthlessly.

Brevity is the soul of wit—and the way to breakthrough today. All to say, storytellers, simply put is simply powerful.

This loss upon loss has made me despair, what’s the point? Why even bother speaking, writing, creating?

And still, I write. One writing morning, not too long ago, a Cooper’s hawk screeched, so loud it broke through my zen-flow focus. Half-irritated, half-intrigued, I left my computer for the window. There down below, this thing of beauty:

Cooper’s hawks, as my writing mentor and friend, Janet Lee Carey, reminded me, “symbolize taking the long view and riding the thermals. Seeing the full landscape and circling above what you want. Spotting the small things that mean life.”

That Cooper’s hawk wasn’t flying overhead, hunting its meal. It was walking around in my backyard, hawking its message: In disquieting times, the last thing we can be is quiet.

Making good trouble requires good troublemakers.

And this is precisely why children’s books are being banned.

When you’ve feasted on a steady diet of Jo March and Anne of Green Gables and Betsy-Tacy—and their spunky offspring: Ramona the Brave, Junie B Jones, Judy Moody, Jasmine Toguchi, Mia Tang, Maizy Chen, Minli, JoJo Makoons Azure, A Boy Named Bat, Jordan Banks, Dyamonde Daniels, India Opal Buloni, Merci Suarez, and so many other troublemakers. So, so many others…

WELL. You raise up a generation who believes their birthright is attitude: oh, yeah? Watch me!

You raise readers whose favorite characters were rewarded for questioning: why? Who realize that the only way out of whatever mess they find themselves in is to invoke why’s dangerous kissing cousin: Why not?

It is troubling, these troublemakers, who believe that the hard truth must be spoken. That systems that don’t serve all of us can be toppled. That over and over again, we will bounce back up, stronger than before. And that, above everything, we will bring others along. (You will never, ever see a children’s hero save only themselves. No way.)

So of course, children’s books are being pulled from library shelves. It is inconvenient for authoritarians to have a populace that knows (duh!) every good story has hardship…so they do not flinch at failure. A populace that knows obstacles (and failure) are simply meant to be overcome. That wit, work, and wiles, truth-seeking and truth-speaking will create a redemptive plot twist.

It dismantles oppression, this sense of personal agency. Now couple personal agency with the collective agency of every single rebellion in fantasy and sci fi and historical fiction: well, readers are dangerous. Because. Children’s books create troublemakers.

So perhaps like me, you are facing and feeling loss. And your wrung-out heart wonders, how do I even muster the energy to speak up, let alone show up? Or get up?

How? I’ll tell you how! I don’t care how old you are, what you do as a living, where you live. Add to your summer reading, a feast of children’s books. Do it now. Today.

Submerse yourself in powerful storytelling and immerse yourself in attitude and agency. Bring forth your inner Minli spunk and Merci Suarez sass. Read like our lives depend on it because they do. Read for the day when we are hit with wave after tsunomic wave of loss—and we will be. Read so we can all rest in the knowledge that setbacks are simply the way of story. Know with assurance that obstacles will be overcome.

And when we do the work, we are the plot twist.

Phew! I feel so much better for writing this—and my gratitude for you reading unbound.

(Next up on my reading list: The Silence that Binds Us.)

Thanks for reading unbound! This one is for the time whenever you despair for an answer:
what the heck is going on in our world?

The single biggest differentiator between good leaders and great leaders that I’ve found after working in executive communications for nearly two decades comes down to this: a person’s ability to inspire from a Big Idea.

Mind-blowing, right? Great leadership isn’t just about people skills. Grasp of business fundamentals. Brilliant strategic planning. A sixth sense about trends. All of these skills make for a good leader.

But great leaders—and I am talking truly exceptional leaders—inspire. How? They catalyze a movement based on a profound Big Idea. In business parlance, yes, it’s Thought Leadership.

Their Big Idea informs everything: their vision, strategy, and plan. It advances the WHY NOW and creates urgency for this moment. It inspires a powerful, deeply felt reason to work the organization’s purpose. It energizes the leaders themselves and their teams, partners, and even the media with…hope. And it clarifies the work that must be done.

So what, exactly, is a Big Idea? Think: Brene Brown and her groundbreaking Big Idea. Here is a professor who researched in relative obscurity until she took the big stage to advance a Big Idea that completely inverted our perspective and beliefs: our power comes from our vulnerability.

Whenever I run workshops or work with a leader on their Thought Leadership, I use this example from one of my friends and formidable leader of momsrising, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, who spelled out the data years ago: “Women without children make 90 cents to a man’s dollars, single moms make 60 cents, and women of color experience increased wage hits on top of that.”

Now listen to her Big Idea: “Motherhood is now a greater predictor of inequality than gender in America.”

Do you see how this simple yet profound extraction can now shape policy? How it creates urgency? How it unifies and grows a 1M+ movement of energized people who believe: we must and will make a change for mothers now!

Simple is far from glib. As Steve Jobs said, “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Advancing a Big Idea is one of the most important jobs a leader has always had. In fact, way back when, Peter Drucker, the management expert, said that a crucial role for a CEO is to go out in the world, listen to all the weak signals of change, and bring back those key learnings in a distilled, understandable—today, I’d add, actionable—way.

It is action time, people. We have done enough brailling of what’s going on in the world. Yes, democracy is teetering. Yes, our ideals of liberty and equality, diversity and justice have been attacked and have eroded. Yes, we are good little students of today’s headlines and articles and data. Yes, yes, yes.

Now what?

We need more Big Ideas. We need more profound insights to capture people’s hearts and clarify minds. More eye-opening epiphanies to stir us all to turn strategy into action.

So what do we do?

1. Rigorously assess the trends and data. (Check! We have done this exhaustively over the last several months and we will keep doing this obsessively to spot any other small signals of change.)
   

2. Extract the meaning from the data and trends. Ask: what does all this mean? What am I seeing? Where is this all leading us? How do we change this trajectory?
   

3. Brainstorm. When I helped leaders develop their Big Idea, we would challenge ourselves to develop 10 solid contenders for their thought leadership. TEN different ideas, all steeped in data and trends. TEN different ideas, all defensible and advanceable.
   

4. Simplify. Take every single one of your top contender Big Ideas and frame each as simply as possible. Steve Jobs is right: simple is harder than complex. Aim for the simplicity of these Big Ideas that have popped: Motherhood is now a greater predictor of inequality than gender in America. Gaming can be one of the world’s greatest unifiers. Teach girls bravery not perfection. Vulnerability is our true power.
   

5. Test. The ultimate litmus test for a groundbreaking Big Idea, ask: Are you adding anything new to the conversation? If not, that is not a big enough idea.) Is your Big Idea a true epiphany—epiphany from Greek, meaning “to reveal”? In other words, is your Big Idea revealing something that no one else has thought, but once they hear you, it is an electrical, kinetic: yes, exactly that! And: why didn’t I think of that?!

All to say, if we want action—swift and effective—we begin with a Big Idea. Yours. Mine. Ours. Channel your inner genius. Inspire all of us now.

Thanks for reading unbound to unleash your voice.
This one is for the time you spot a false narrative that needs correcting.

Speechwriter Cody Keenan advised a bunch of us at an executive communications conference to “hold the pen.” Meaning: speechwriters were given the job to write, and everyone has an opinion about what needs to be said. Yet too many opinions and too many wannabe writers sap the narrative power of a speech.

So speechwriters, he said, hold the pen.

It’s time for a corollary.

Our world is upside-down: good is positioned as evil, and evil is feted as good (alligator Alcatraz, anyone?). Yet storytellers can be the frontline in defense of Truth to advance the Truth.

How?

1. Patrol for the deliberate corruption of language. Watering down language is the strategic first step in shifting a narrative and inverting the truth. Global warming, according to a 2002 Bush memo, was a more palatable term than Climate Change. So out with the highly disconcerting, and in with the less concerning.

So when we see “underaged women,” let’s edit that back to the correct term: child. When we see Christian Nationalism, which has very little to do with the Jesus of the Bible, rewrite to the more accurate Religious Nationalism.

2. Humanize in every single possible instance. Noah Hawley in the Atlantic demonstrated the power of humanizing when he wrote about how the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, killing “thousands of children trying to be good citizens, wondering what the morning snack would be.” That phrase—wondering what the morning snack would be—makes these children in a far-off time in a far-off Japan just like the ones we know and love in our own schools in our own communities, here and now. He humanized, specifically and succinctly.

So when we see a dehumanizing term (hello, “illegals”), correct that to: people. Beloved community members. Hard-working parents. Children who are wondering where their parents have been taken.

3. Correct like a copy editor; campaign like a publicist. Wherever you encounter a nonsensical term (a post, a conversation), correct it. You can do it gently. You can do it decisively. You can do it humorously. But the point is: correct it. That is how we can each individually stop the narrative shift and reclaim language, starting in our own circles.

Yes, in this contentious time, we will invariably get some language wrong. That is being human. So be human. Get it wrong, learn the right term, pick yourself up, and correct on.

Hold the red pen.