I never expected a soccer tournament to wrap itself around my heart and not let go, but that is exactly what these past few weeks have done! What makes it funny to me is that this shouldn’t have caught me off guard at all. I played soccer growing up in Kansas City. So I should have known what a field full of people chasing one ball can do to a person. I’d just forgotten. It took the whole world showing up to remind me.

I went for the matches, for the noise, for the fun of a once in a lifetime thing, and for the chance to be near my mom. Watching people from every corner of the earth pour into the streets of Kansas City and hearing the singing and the drums, catching high fives and hugs from strangers gave me so many feel good chicken skin kind of moments. I teared up many times. The good kind of tears, the ones that come when you can feel how much something matters while it’s still happening right in front of you.

America has felt so broken to me lately. A lot of us have been walking around grieving a country we weren’t sure we recognized anymore. And then, for five weeks, our country threw its doors open to the entire world. In crowds packed with people of every race and culture, in bars full of people cheering in all different languages at once, it came back to me that people really do still get along, really do still love and care about each other. There was so much love moving between total strangers, freely given and freely returned, the kind you don’t have to earn or explain. We can celebrate what makes us different. We can meet in the plain fact that underneath all of it, we’re all just human, all of us hoping the same ball finds the same net.

For the first time in a long time, I felt proud to be an American again. Standing in those crowds, I saw families of every nationality and faith and background I could imagine, folded in together, people who came here carrying hope, people still chasing a dream they haven’t caught yet. And it landed on me that this, all of it, is the America I love.

One day at the FIFA Fan Fest there was a man wearing a shirt that read “All of my heroes killed colonizers.” I spotted it the second he walked in, and the truth is I loved it. I thought he was brave to wear it out into that crowd. I watched white people read it and go a little confused, not fully catching the weight of what it was saying. It didn’t offend me for one second. I am a product of colonizers and I know that all the way down, and I don’t think enough of us are willing to say that plainly. Knowing the truth doesn’t wound me. It just makes me want to stand closer to the people who are telling it. We kept crossing paths with him all evening, and by the time the night really got going we were standing right next to him, his brother, and his brother’s wife. They were some of the kindest people I met the whole trip. At one point I got to tell him his shirt was powerful and that I hoped people would sit with what it meant. Turns out he had flown in from Japan for the World Cup, where he does work for United Way all over the world, and his brother and sister-in-law had come in from Atlanta to meet him. By the end of the night we were hugging like people who had known each other for years. We had been strangers when the sun went down, and we were friends by the time we said our goodnights.

Living in the islands as long as I have taught me that aloha was never only a greeting, and ohana was never only about blood. What I’ve come to understand of aloha is that it carries love and breath in it, a way of moving through the world with kindness, humility, and patience. And ohana reaches past blood to hold your extended family, your friends, your neighbors, even the strangers who become yours, bound by one simple promise, that no one gets left behind. For a few weeks this summer the whole world felt like one loud, joyful ohana!! What stayed with me most was that our differences in language and faith and story were the point of the whole thing, not the problem we keep making them out to be. It’s the same thing I’ve always loved about soccer, that it’s a language of its own, one you can speak with anybody on any patch of grass on earth without ever opening your mouth. Somewhere along the way I think a lot of us forgot how remarkable that really is.

For those few weeks, the politics fell away. There were no strangers, just a whole lot of people looking up at the same sky, celebrating together, each one carrying their own story of the long way they’d traveled to be here. I loved watching people from all over fall for this place, watching them realize we are not the country the ugliest headlines make us out to be, that most of us are not hateful or closed off, that there is real warmth here if you come looking for it. America has never been perfect, and I’ve come to think that loving your country doesn’t mean pretending it is. It means believing it’s still worth showing up for, still worth being proud of, still worth letting the rest of the world see the best of who we can be. This whole thing handed that belief back to me right when I needed it, the way the game used to when I was young and the world felt wide open.

I’m back home in Hawai’i now, and I already know how I’ll answer when someone asks me someday, “Were you in KC that summer?” I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. All those cultures coming together, celebrating, taking care of one another, all love and no hate. So thank you to everyone who traveled in and shared your culture and your joy with us! You reminded a whole lot of us that connection is stronger than division, and that there is still so much good in this world. From way out here in the middle of the Pacific, with a little grass stained kid still living somewhere in me, I’m holding onto every bit of it!

I’ve been feeling so lost lately, trying to find my footing in this new version of America. I suspect most of you have felt it too. That disorientation, that grief that surfaces at odd moments. Any decent human being is feeling the strain of these insane times. At least I hope you are. The alternative is too lonely to think about. And it’s hard to admit, but I’m not sure this is a new version of America. I’m beginning to wonder if America was ever truly great to begin with. Great for whom? Not for the Indigenous people whose land was stolen and whose nations were nearly wiped from the map. Not for the Africans who were trafficked here in chains and built this country with their bodies while being denied their own humanity. Not for women, who fought for centuries just to be considered full citizens, and are still fighting now. Not for queer people, who have been beaten, criminalized, and erased simply for existing. Not for anyone who wasn’t a straight white man with property. And here’s the part I think we are not allowed to say out loud: those exclusions were not accidents. They were not the system failing. They were the system. Written into the founding documents themselves. The three-fifths compromise that literally calculated a Black person as 60% of a white one. Property as a requirement for the vote. Women as legal extensions of their husbands. Whole peoples removed by federal law. The “greatness” we were taught to believe in was always partial. Always conditional. Always written by the people it served. I have lived in Hawaiʻi for twenty-three years, and I have watched up close what it looks like when a culture survives American “greatness,” not because of it. The kingdom that was overthrown. The language that was banned in schools. The land still being fought for. Greatness, from where I sit, has always had a body count. Maybe what we’re seeing now isn’t a departure. Maybe it’s just the mask slipping, and a lot of people are finally willing to admit they liked the face underneath all along.

And even with all of that, I still hold tight to the aspiration. The country we keep promising we are. One where every person matters. Where dignity isn’t conditional. Where justice means the same thing for all of us. We’ve never fully lived up to it. But I have to believe we could, if we ever stopped flinching from where we started. Which is why what’s happening now feels morally obscene. This whole lie that’s been sold to so many people is the complete opposite of anything good. Look at what they actually offer. There is no love in it. No joy. No laughter. No light. No kindness. No tenderness. No generosity of spirit. Nothing that nourishes a soul or builds a community or lifts another human being up. It is hate dressed up as patriotism. Cruelty dressed up as strength. Grievance dressed up as freedom. They have never once offered a vision of something beautiful. Only something to be afraid of. Only someone to blame. Only someone to hurt. And somehow that has been enough for millions of people to follow them straight into the destruction of a country that had every possibility of finally, finally, becoming something worth the name.

I learned the golden rule as a little girl in kindergarten at Holy Trinity Catholic School. Treat others the way you want to be treated. It was so simple. It was the whole moral foundation I built my life on. And to realize, all these years later, that the country I was taught to believe in never actually practiced what it preached, that so much of what I was taught was a beautiful story papered over an uglier truth, has broken something in me I don’t think I’ll ever fully put back together. But I can’t talk about that aspiration without naming what’s standing in the way of it. The lack of empathy people are performing right now is not the look you think it is. The mockery, the gloating, the glee at other people’s suffering. It’s not edgy. It’s not strong. It’s not a flex. It’s ugly, it’s small, and one day you’re going to have to sit with who you became in this moment. Cruelty has never aged well. It’s not going to start now.

For ten years now, the same question has been rattling around in me. Ten years of my life, the best of them, hijacked by this. When did we start celebrating the bully? When did cruelty become something to admire instead of something to be ashamed of? When did caring for other people, looking out for the vulnerable, choosing gentleness, become the thing to mock instead of the thing to aspire to? And the more honest I get with myself, the more I realize no switch actually flipped. This was always here. It was always in us. We just kept the veil pulled tight enough that most of us could look the other way. What’s different now is that the veil is being yanked off, and we are being forced to see what was always underneath. And I am mourning the culture we used to at least pretend to want, the one where kindness wasn’t weakness and decency wasn’t a punchline.

And I have tried to understand. I really have. I’ve sat across from people who support all of this and asked them to explain it to me, and I’ve listened to every reason. Government efficiency. Smaller government. Lower taxes. A stronger economy. I’ve heard them all, and I’m familiar with the logic. But not once, not a single time, has anyone explained their position to me in a way that sounded like love. Not once did I hear compassion in it. Maybe I’ve been talking to the wrong people. Or maybe, and this is the part that unsettles me, their whole framework has quietly decided that empathy and compassion just aren’t a priority. That they’re optional. Negotiable. Something you can set down when they become inconvenient.

What weighs on me most is knowing we are not regressing. We are revealing. The cruelty wasn’t waiting somewhere outside us. It was always here, just better hidden. The hard won progress we celebrated was always more fragile than we let ourselves believe, because it was built on a foundation that was never honest about itself. To watch the mask come off this completely, and to know how many people are relieved to finally take it off, is its own particular kind of heartbreak. And knowing this is what we are handing forward, not the lie we were told about who we were, but the truth we never wanted to face, is the most painful knowledge I carry. And yet. I have this strange, persistent feeling that maybe all of this is happening for something. Not in a tidy, comforting way, but in the way watershed moments work. Like we’re being asked, collectively, to parse out what’s no longer serving us. What we’ve outgrown. What we were never meant to carry. Like we’re being pushed to understand our role on this earth, to each other, to the land, to whatever comes next, more clearly than we ever have. I don’t think that makes the suffering okay. But something is being cracked open, and what we do inside that crack matters. And inside that crack, I see something else too. We are not lost. We are not alone.

Here is what I know for sure. Love is the filter through which my faith flows. It’s the test I run everything through. If something doesn’t align with what I know of love, then I know something is off. If my theology ever tells me that prosperity is fine when it’s built on someone else’s suffering, then my theology has lost its way and I need to go back and find where it went wrong. That’s not a soft or sentimental belief. It’s the most demanding thing I know, because it asks me to check everything against it, including myself. And it’s why I can’t stay quiet. I’ve made it my mission, in whatever small ways I can, to push back against this harmful way of moving through the world. And when this sickness finally burns itself out, and it will, we cannot go back to what we had before. We cannot rebuild the same country that allowed this to happen in the first place. The old version was never as good as we were told. It carried the seeds of this moment inside it from the very beginning. What we build next has to be something entirely new. A country that doesn’t just promise dignity but actually delivers it. That doesn’t just claim to value every person but structures itself around that truth. That doesn’t bury its history but finally learns from it. We don’t need a return. We need a reckoning, and then we need to start over.

So I’ll leave you with this: Hope is not naive. Hope is not soft. Hope is the most defiant thing we have left. Every parent who tells their child the truth about this moment and then tucks them in anyway, that’s hope. Every neighbor who shows up with food. Every stranger who locks arms with another stranger at a protest. Every artist still making beauty. Every teacher still teaching. Every person who chooses tenderness in a country that keeps trying to harden them. That is hope, and it is everywhere, and it is ours. We have been the people who built things before. We can be those people again. Not the country we were, but the country we always said we wanted to be. The one future generations deserve. The one we’ll be proud, one day, to say we fought for when it would have been easier to look away. So please. Don’t look away. Don’t go quiet. Don’t go numb. The world we want is still possible, and it is being built right now, in conversations, in choices, in the way people keep showing up for each other. I’m not giving up on you. Please don’t give up on us.♥️

Aloha ʻĀina. Aloha Kai.🌺🌊

The environment is the one thing we all share. Every ocean, every mountain, every breath. And from where I stand, on this breathtaking island, that feels more true than ever.

Earth Day 2026. The stakes are real, and so is the beauty worth protecting. May today remind us what we’re fighting for and inspire us to fight a little louder. Get outside, do something kind for this planet today. Love the land. Love the sea. Protect both fiercely.

She’s worth it. Happy Earth Day. 🌍

I have lived on Hawaiʻi Island for almost twenty-three years. I came from Kansas City, which came from Ireland, from southwestern England, from Denmark, from the northwestern edges of Europe. Places I could not find my way back to in any meaningful sense even if I bought the plane ticket. I have built a life here. Real roots, the kind that take decades and require you to show up, again and again, for a place and its people. I am not a tourist. But I am also not from here, and the land knows it even when I forget. Here is what I have come to understand, after all these years of paying attention: belonging is not something you can hustle your way into. You can love a place fiercely and still be a guest in it. You can be transformed by a culture and still carry the weight of what your people did to cultures like it, everywhere, for centuries.

I grew up in the American Midwest without anyone ever naming what had been there before us. The rivers had names I did not learn. The burial mounds sat in farmers’ fields like they were nothing. The Kaw, the Osage, the Pawnee had ceremonies for that land, prayers for that sky, a relationship with the tallgrass prairie that went back thousands of years. None of that was taught to me. The interruption was so complete it did not register as a loss. It just registered as normal. As America. That is the thing about whiteness. It does not feel like a wound because it has convinced itself it is not one. But the numbness is the wound. I do not know the songs of the rivers where my ancestors are buried. I do not know the stories my great grandmothers told by firelight, or which plants they used to heal fevers, or how they marked the turning of seasons. I do not know what they sacrificed, what weather shaped them, what foods they prepared for grief and celebration, what they whispered to the land to ask permission and what the land whispered back. That knowledge, the ancestral knowledge of their place, was shed somewhere on the long road to becoming American. Sometimes violently. Sometimes through the slow erosion of assimilation. Always in exchange for the idea that we did not need it anymore. That we were beyond it. That progress meant leaving the old world in the ground. And here is where it gets complicated, and I think it has to: my mother is fully Irish. Her people were colonized, starved, scattered. They knew dispossession firsthand, had it done to them, before they arrived on shores that had already been taken from someone else. That history does not cancel anything. But it does tell you something about how the machinery works. How people who were broken by a system can, in their hunger for safety and stability and belonging, become instruments of that same system for someone else. How trauma, unexamined, does not just disappear. It finds a new direction. We left it all behind. And then we went everywhere and made sure everyone else did too. This is not theoretical. I can see, with my own eyes, what it looks like when a culture fights to survive the kind of erasure my ancestors helped perfect. I have been welcomed into community and friendship and shared life here in Hawai’i, and that welcome has sometimes made the reckoning harder, not easier, because grace is more difficult to metabolize than condemnation.

I think a lot of white Americans are walking around with a hunger we cannot name. We reach for things: land, stories, spiritual practices, identity. We reach because something in us knows we lost ours. But instead of grieving the loss, we consume. We take what belongs to someone else, the land, the labor, the stories, the practices, because we have forgotten, or never learned, how to tend to what was ours. We swallow whole what should have required patience and reciprocity and the slow, humbling work of being in relationship. You cannot consume your way into belonging. I know. I have watched people try. And I want to say something to the white friends in my life who are comfortable right now. Who are going about their days, maybe frustrated but mostly fine, watching this country come apart and feeling like it is someone else’s problem to solve. Who have decided that their own ease is more important than their own awakening. I need you to understand something: the comfort you are protecting is built on the same foundation as everything that is burning. The grief I am describing is not a liberal talking point. It is not about politics. It is about something so much older and deeper than that. It is about the fact that we, our people, your people, my people, made a series of choices over centuries that severed us from the very things that make a human life feel rooted and whole. The elders. The stories. The land. The rituals for grief and for joy. The knowledge of what to do when someone dies or when a child is born or when the season turns. We threw all of that away, or had it taken, or took it from others, and told ourselves it did not matter because we had progress instead.

And now look.

Look at what we have built with all that progress. Look at how lonely everyone is. Look at how untethered. Look at how quick we are to consume and discard, to move and uproot, to mistake noise for community and outrage for connection. Look at how we do not know our neighbors. Look at how we do not know ourselves. And sometimes, in my darker and more honest moments, I find myself sitting with a question I do not know how to answer: what if this is the return of what we sent out? What if the unraveling we are living through right now, the fracturing, the cruelty, the way this country seems to be eating itself alive, is in some way the accumulated weight of what was done to the indigenous peoples of this land, to the enslaved people who built it, to everyone who was broken or discarded or erased so that we could have our comfort and call it freedom? I am not saying it as a verdict. I am saying it as something I cannot stop wondering. As a question that sits in my chest when I watch the news and feel the particular shame of being American in this moment. What if we are living inside the consequence? What if the belonging we destroyed in everyone else is exactly what we cannot find in ourselves?

I have lived far from where I was born for twenty-three years. I have been changed by this place in ways I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand and honor. And still, some nights, I feel the particular ache of not knowing the songs my grandmothers’ grandmothers sang. Of not knowing what the rivers of Munster held of my people, or what the chalk downs of southeastern England asked of my blood, or what the cold gray coastline of Denmark remembered of the ones who stayed and the ones who left. That loss is real. It lives in the body. And we have never, not once, been asked to grieve it. Instead we were handed a flag and told that was enough. It was never enough. And somewhere, underneath all the noise and the numbness and the performative pride, I think you know that too. The question is not whether this country is broken. It is. The question is whether you are willing to look at your own part in the breaking. Not just the political part, not just the voting record, but the deeper part. The part that chose comfort over consciousness. The part that looked away because looking felt like too much to bear. Grief is supposed to be too much to bear. That is how you know it is real. And until we learn to bear it, really bear it, without flinching, without deflecting, without wrapping it in a flag or a hat or a brand or a political identity, we will keep building the same thing over and over again.

We will keep losing what we never let ourselves mourn.

Love is the thing we’re all walking around looking for, even when we pretend we’re not. It’s what makes a stranger stop to help someone who’s fallen. It’s what makes us weep at weddings for people we barely know, because somewhere deep down, we recognize that love, any love, all love is what we’re desperate for in this world. Love is love is love. It’s the force that says: You matter. You’re not alone. And God, do we need that right now. We need it because hate is so loud. Because cruelty has become casual. Because we’re all exhausted from being told we’re supposed to be divided, supposed to be afraid of each other.

Love is the antidote. Love is greater than hate, not because it’s naive, but because it’s the only thing strong enough to actually change anything. Love is the light when everything feels dark. It’s the hand reaching out when you’re drowning. Love will find a way. Through borders and barriers. Through fear and difference. Love keeps showing up. It keeps trying. Love is the greatest gift of all. It’s the quiet moment when someone really sees you. It’s the warmth that spreads through your chest when you make someone else smile. It’s knowing that in a world that can feel cold and hard, there are still arms that will hold you, voices that will say your name with tenderness, hearts that beat a little faster just because you exist.

I am love. You are love. We are love.

And when we remember that, when we let ourselves feel it, give it and become it, everything changes. The world gets softer. The walls come down. And we remember what we’ve always known: we were made for this. For each other. For LOVE.♥️♥️♥️

I was scrolling through my feed the other day when someone’s comment stopped me cold: “Micro joys are how you survive macro grief.”

I sat there on my lanai, looking out at the vast ocean and Maui in the distance, and just… breathed that in.

Because I understand macro grief intimately. My father died of COVID in2020 after five years of Fox News, QAnon, and MAGA turned him into someone I barely knew. I grieved him while he was alive. I’m still grieving what that cult did to so many families, including mine. The lies didn’t just take his life, they stole years we’ll never get back.

You have to find the small things. The micro joys. Or you won’t make it.

The macro grief is real. It’s watching someone you love choose lies over their own life. It’s the strain of a relationship crumbling starting in mid 2015 when the MAGA movement began and you could see exactly what it was and what it would do to us, but your own father couldn’t or wouldn’t. It’s the fights. The names. The slow motion loss of someone while they’re still breathing.

And then it’s the actual loss. COVID. A preventable death because he believed the grifters instead of science. Because Fox "News" (Entertainment) was more convincing than his own daughter.

The macro grief is climate anxiety and extreme political chaos and watching misinformation literally kill people you love. It’s worrying about family scattered across the mainland. It’s the constant low hum of wondering if the institutions we depend on will hold. It’s grieving not just one person, but what we’ve all lost under this horrible, horrible man and his enablers. It’s too big to hold all at once, this grief for what we’re losing, what we’ve already lost and what might never be. And if you try to carry all of that, all the time, you’ll collapse under it.

But then there are the bees. The way they move with such purpose, building something beautiful cell by cell even when the world around them is uncertain. There’s my hula practice, connecting me to this land and to a culture that understood survival and resilience long before I got here.

The ocean view from my lanai that grounds me every single morning. The moments when I help someone find their real voice instead of some corporate script, and it matters because authenticity still matters even when everything feels fake.

There’s the smile from a stranger in the parking lot. A kind gesture you weren’t expecting. A compliment that catches you off guard and stays with you all day. The sweet lady in the produce section at KTA who gives you a hug because that’s just who she is, and somehow she knew you needed it.

These aren’t distractions. I know what people say about toxic positivity, about bypassing the hard stuff. But this isn’t that. These small things are what keep me standing when the weight of everything threatens to take me down. They’re survival tools. They’re how I remember what I’m fighting for when the grief gets so big I forget why any of it matters.

And I need them. Because I’ve been grieving since 2015. I grieved my living father for five years before COVID took him. I’m still grieving what that cult did to him, to us, to so many families. I’m grieving the country I thought we were. I’m grieving the illusion that facts and love could compete with Fox "News" (Entertainment).

I think about the farmers market, our community coming together every week, supporting local growers, creating connection. These small acts of showing up for each other matter. They’re micro joys that create macro meaning. They’re proof that while some people choose division and lies, others choose community and care.

The thing journalism school taught me, all those years ago at KU, was to look for the truth in the details. To fact check. To question sources. To follow the story wherever it leads. Maybe that’s why I could see through the MAGA movement from the beginning, why the fights with my father started so early. I was trained to spot bullshit.

And what I’m learning now is that the reverse is also true: when the larger truth is too overwhelming, when the grief of losing your father twice, once to a cult and once to a preventable disease, compounds with the grief of watching it all continue to happen, you survive by attending to the specific, concrete moments of goodness.

Here’s what I know: you don’t get to choose between awareness and joy. You have to hold both. You let yourself be broken open by the grief while allowing yourself to be held together by the small, beautiful things.

The bees don’t wait for the world to be perfect before they build their hive. They just keep going, cell by cell, creating sweetness in the midst of everything.

So I’m practicing. I’m looking for the light daily in everything. The glimmers. The helpers. The people who choose kindness when cruelty would be easier. I’m letting myself laugh even when the grief is enormous. I’m staying informed without drowning in outrage. And I’m trying to be the light and love I wish to see. I’m doing the work, the real work of showing up, of speaking truth, of protecting what matters while also protecting my own ability to keep showing up.

I’m choosing truth even though lies are louder. I’m choosing joy not as an escape, but as resistance against despair. I’m choosing to believe in community even while watching institutions fail. I’m choosing to fight for democracy even when it feels like we’re losing ground. Because caring deeply about the macro grief actually requires you to tend to the micro joys. Not to erase the grief, but to remember what you’re grieving for in the first place. To remember what’s worth protecting, worth fighting for, worth showing up for day after day.

Even in the midst of everything falling apart, even after losing your father to a preventable death, even while watching the same lies continue to destroy families and democracy, even as rights are stripped away and cruelty becomes policy there are still bees making honey. Still people showing up for each other. Still moments of beauty and connection and meaning. Still reasons to keep fighting.

And sometimes, that’s enough to keep going.

Sometimes, it has to be.♥️

I think the hardest part of the current political moment is realizing how many people around me are actually evil.

Not stupid. Not misinformed. Not misguided. Just blatantly, openly enjoying and relishing the suffering of other human beings.

This realization doesn’t come all at once. It arrives in small, sickening waves with a comment at dinner, a shared post, a casual dismissal of someone’s humanity. Each time, you think: surely this is the line they won’t cross. And each time, you watch them cross it with a smile.

I used to believe that if people just had the right information, they’d choose compassion. I don’t believe that anymore. Some people have all the information they need. They just don’t care.

No one told us that when you watch fascism and ethnic cleansing unfold in real time, you still have to decide what to make for dinner and do your laundry as if the world isn’t on fire.

My history book didn’t have a chapter on what we’re supposed to do right now. It showed us photos of people who resisted, who stood up, who said “never again”, but it never explained how they did it while their own hearts were constantly breaking. How they continued to show up for work, pay bills, water plants, smile at neighbors who might be complicit in atrocity.

The cognitive dissonance is crushing. We scroll through images of families being torn apart, children in cages, communities living in terror and then we’re expected to participate in normalcy. To be polite. To “agree to disagree.” To keep our voices down because politics makes people uncomfortable.

But this isn’t politics. This is people’s lives.

I have ZERO respect for anyone who supports ICE. I don’t care who you are and what our history may be, if you support ICE, you’re a complete trash excuse for a human being.

You cannot excuse a group of people with a power trip committing murder and still consider yourself a good person. You can’t cheer for families being separated, for people being hunted, for communities living in fear, and claim any moral high ground. You can’t support cruelty as policy and call yourself compassionate.

And yet, here we are. Surrounded by people who do exactly that.

The cruelty is the point, as others have said. But what breaks me is realizing how many people I know, people I once respected, loved, shared meals with find that cruelty acceptable. Even desirable.

I cannot view people the same who actively support such harmful things. That’s not being judgmental, it’s having standards. It’s understanding that our values aren’t abstract concepts we discuss over coffee or wine; they’re lived commitments that reveal who we truly are. When someone shows you they’re okay with brutality, believe them.

So what do we do with this knowledge? How do we hold both the heartbreak of who people really are and the hope for who we might still become?

My dream is that we find the middle, so all beings can coexist in harmony.

An impossible dream? Possibly. Probably.

But I refuse to let the cruelty of this moment extinguish the light I want to bring into the world. Not because I’m naive, I see exactly what’s happening. But because the alternative is to let them win twice: once by enacting horror, and again by making us so bitter that we become hard and closed.

I believe in a world where generosity and care are not just ideals, but economies in their own right. Where we measure wealth not in what we extract but in what we give. Where power is used to lift up rather than crush down. Where dignity isn’t negotiable.

To not feel overwhelmed and helpless in our country’s dark time, I will continue to try and be the best woman I can be while on this planet. I will bring love and compassion to everyone I encounter. I will be grateful and see the beauty all around me. I will support organizations and movements that are fighting for truth and peace and accountability.

This isn’t spiritual bypassing. This isn’t putting my head in the sand. This is choosing, every single day, to live in resistance to what this regime represents.

They want us afraid. I choose courage.

They want us divided. I choose community.

They want us silent. I choose to speak.

They want us to believe cruelty is strength. I choose to prove that compassion is.

BE Love💕

Not as an escape. Not as a platitude. But as an active, daily practice of refusing to let hatred shape who I am.

I will keep doing my laundry and making dinner and watering my plants. But I will also keep showing up, speaking out, and refusing to normalize what is happening.

Because this is the chapter our history books are writing right now. And I want my ancestors to read that some of us refused to look away. Some of us kept our hearts open even when it hurt. Some of us chose love not because it was easy, but because it was the only choice that let us stay human.

The world may be on fire, but I’m still here. We’re still here. And as long as we are, there’s still hope for something better.♥️

22 Years in Hawaii ~ Celebrating Yet Another Anniversary!

Twenty-two years ago today, I took the biggest leap of my life and moved to Hawai’i! Two decades later, I sit here in wonder at how profoundly this place has shaped who I am, how I love, and how I move through the world.

When I first arrived at the Kailua-Kona airport on October 1, 2003, I thought I was simply changing my address. I had no idea I was changing my entire life’s trajectory. I couldn’t have known that this island would teach me what it truly means to live with an open heart, to embrace others without judgment, to lead with compassion instead of fear.

What strikes me most after all these years is how Hawai’i doesn’t just accept difference, it celebrates it. It weaves it into the fabric of everyday life. Here, I’ve witnessed a way of being that feels almost revolutionary in its simplicity: treat everyone with kindness, look out for one another, honor the land that sustains you, and remember that we’re all part of something larger than ourselves. This isn’t just a philosophy here it’s practiced daily in the small gestures, the genuine smiles, the willingness to help a stranger and the understanding that your neighbor’s wellbeing is intrinsically tied to your own.

Sometimes I think about what America could be if we all lived a little more like Hawai’i does, if we approached each other with the spirit of aloha, if we saw diversity as our greatest strength rather than something to fear, if we remembered that community isn’t just a word but a responsibility we have to each other. The Hawaiian way of life isn’t perfect, but it offers a blueprint for how we might treat one another with more grace, more acceptance, more love.

Twenty-two years, and I still wake up grateful. I still feel that surge of recognition when the plane descends and I see the beautiful Pacific Ocean below, that sensation of coming home, of coming back to myself. This island has been my greatest teacher, showing me that home isn’t just a place you find, but a feeling you cultivate through connection, through gratitude, through showing up for the people and places you love.

To everyone who has made these twenty-two years so extraordinary, I owe a debt of gratitude that can never fully be repaid.

To my Aunty Pattie- you are the reason I’m here in Hawai’i! You were my happy face at the airport that first day, and you have been my brightest light ever since. You have guided me, protected me, and shown me what unconditional love looks like. Thank you for opening your heart and home to me, for believing in me when I was still learning to believe in myself, and for being the constant that has anchored me through every season of life here. I wouldn’t be who I am today without you.

To my friends who have become my ohana- you have loved me through everything. You’ve celebrated my victories and held me through my struggles. You’ve invited me into your homes, your celebrations, your lives, and you’ve shown me that family isn’t just about blood, it’s about choosing each other again and again. The way you’ve embraced me, laughed with me, and created memories with me has filled my life with a richness I never knew was possible. You are my chosen family, and I am forever grateful for the bonds we share.

And to my hula family- you have given me something I struggle to put into words. Through hula, I’ve learned not just the movements and the stories, but something deeper about myself, about connection, about respect. Hula has taught me to listen, to the land, to the stories of those who came before, to the heartbeat of this place that sustains us all. It has shown me how to honor this culture with humility and reverence, how to understand that every gesture carries meaning, every story carries responsibility. Through hula, I’ve learned what it means to truly respect and care for this ‘āina, to recognize its life sustaining power, and to approach it all with the awe it deserves. My hula ohana, you have gifted me with knowledge, with tradition, with purpose, and with a connection to these islands that goes soul deep. The lessons you’ve taught me reach far beyond the hālau, they’ve shaped how I walk through the world.

You are all the heartbeat of my life here! You’ve made Hawai’i not just a beautiful place to live, but a place where I truly belong.

Here’s to twenty-two years of love, laughter, fun, living aloha, and to all the years still to come in this place I’m blessed to call home. Love y’all!♥️ 🌺​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The last few days have left me feeling heavy hearted. I’ve watched people I’ve known and cared about reveal sides of themselves that I didn’t expect to see. The craziest thing I never imagined even in my worst nightmares was watching people I once called friends embrace ideologies I thought they’d reject. White supremacy, Christian nationalism, authoritarian thinking…What even is this timeline? I’m absolutely at a loss for words.

It’s shaken something fundamental in me, that belief I’ve always held that most people are inherently good. And even though my heart is breaking, I refuse to give up on that belief entirely. It’s wild living in both the Information Age and what feels like a Dark Age simultaneously. We have access to more knowledge than ever, yet understanding feels more elusive.

There’s a progression we can’t ignore: “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions.” We’re seeing this play out in real time, and it’s terrifying. Somewhere along the way, being right became more important than being human. And that’s where we lost our compassion. But I still believe we can find our way back to each other.

Here’s what I know to be true: your social media algorithm is designed to make you angry because anger keeps you scrolling. There are people who exploit this, especially during intense moments, to gain attention and followers. Social media has tricked us into thinking ego is everything. Everyone wants to be the one with the answer. Everyone wants to win the argument.

And it’s killing us as a society of humans. We’re losing our ability to have genuine connection, to sit with discomfort, to listen without immediately formulating our rebuttal. We’ve traded deep relationships for shallow validation, meaningful dialogue for performative outrage. Social media is rewiring our brains to seek conflict instead of understanding, division instead of unity.

But the conversations that matter most aren’t happening in comment sections, they’re happening face to face, with people who see you as more than just an opinion. These are the moments where love lives, where understanding grows, where healing begins.

I keep coming back to those three simple gates: Is it kind? Is it true? Is it helpful? If we could just pause and ask ourselves these questions before we speak or post, imagine how different our conversations might be. Imagine how much more love we could spread.

I’ve been blessed to meet people from every background imaginable, and here’s what I’ve learned: underneath it all, we’re all just trying to be understood and loved. We all carry our own stories, our own struggles, our own hopes. And in those shared human experiences, that’s where the light shines through.

Stand up for what you believe in, absolutely. But let’s not let being “right” make us forget what matters most: our shared humanity. We’re all different. We all carry different beliefs. And that’s not just okay, it’s what makes us beautifully human.

What if we made kindness, love, and empathy our currency instead of whatever toxic economy we’re operating in now? Maybe that’s wishful thinking…but I choose to believe it’s not. I choose to believe that love always wins in the end, even when the darkness feels overwhelming.

So today, I’m sending love to anyone who needs it. We’re going to get through this together. ♥️✨

The news cycles spin endlessly. The rhetoric grows louder. The divisions seem deeper. We scroll through feeds that leave us feeling helpless, angry, or numb. In moments like these, when the weight of what’s happening in America and the world feels too heavy to carry, when we don’t know what to say or how to respond to the chaos around us, there’s one thing that remains clear, one truth that cuts through all the noise:

If you don’t know what else to do right now, DO LOVE.

This isn’t naive optimism or willful ignorance. This is radical resistance. This is choosing to plant seeds of hope in soil that feels barren. This is recognizing that while we may not control the headlines, we absolutely control how we show up for each other.

The true measure of a life...Perhaps the beauty of life is not in what we accumulate, but in what we give away. Not in what we keep, but in what we share. The love we offer freely, the kindness we scatter like seeds, the lives we touch along the way these become the real treasures that outlast us. You won’t be remembered for the size of your house or the balance in your bank account. You won’t be measured by your social media following or the brand of car you drove. When people think of you, they’ll remember how you made them feel. The kindness you shared, the love you gave, the moment you saw them when they felt invisible, these define your true legacy.

In a world obsessed with having more, being more, achieving more, there’s something revolutionary about focusing on giving more. More attention. More compassion. More grace.

Love without limits...In the kingdom of love, there are no scarcity rules. There is no competition for who deserves it most, no possessiveness that hoards it, no control that rations it out. Love operates on different mathematics entirely, the more you give away, the more you discover you have.

This defies everything we’re taught about resources and wealth, but it’s the most reliable truth many of us will ever encounter. The parent who loves multiple children doesn’t love each one less. The teacher who cares deeply for an entire classroom doesn’t diminish their capacity by spreading it around. The friend who offers support to many doesn’t run out of empathy. Love multiplies in the giving. It expands in the sharing. It grows stronger when it’s tested, not weaker.

In these ongoing days of chaos and confusion, when the problems feel too big and our individual power feels too small, remember this: love is both the quietest and loudest force we possess. It sounds like checking on a friend who’s been quiet lately. It looks like holding the door, making eye contact, saying thank you and meaning it. It feels like choosing patience when frustration would be easier, choosing curiosity when judgment would be quicker.

Get outside and notice the sky, the same sky that covers all of us, regardless of our differences. Listen to music that moves something in your soul. Call a friend and really listen to their voice. Have some chocolate and savor the simple pleasure of sweetness. Learn something new and let wonder replace worry, even for a moment. Go for a walk and remember what it feels like to move through the world at human speed. Play an instrument and make sound that didn’t exist before you created it. Help a stranger and watch how a small gesture can shift an entire day. Enjoy the trees, those ancient witnesses who’ve seen humanity through so much and keep growing anyway. Make art with your day, not just on canvas or paper, but with your choices, your words, your presence. Every day is raw material. Every interaction is a brushstroke. Every act of love is a masterpiece in progress.

My love for you is out there not just as sentiment, but as intention. It’s in the hope that you’ll find moments of joy even when joy feels rebellious. It’s in the belief that your presence matters, that your kindness creates ripples you may never see but that travel farther than you know.

In a world that profits from division, choosing love is choosing revolution. In a time that promotes fear, choosing connection is choosing courage. In days that feel dark, choosing to be light, not toxic positivity but genuine warmth is choosing to be fully, authentically human.

Don’t forget it. Don’t forget that you are loved, that you have love to give, and that this love imperfect and real and sometimes all we have is enough to start healing the world, one heart at a time.

I heart each and every one of you. Have a gorgeous day, friends.♥️♥️♥️

I stand frozen in indecision

Yet present in these tumultuous times.

At forty-five, bearing witness still.

In the quiet moments, I question myself

What more can I do?

When did my voice become so small?

When did I learn to look away?

The weight of unsaid words remains.

The burden of inaction stays.

Speaking truth to power without malice,

Without words designed to wound

Just facts aligned with justice.

This path alone can guide us through the abnormal days.

A simple "no" can change the world.

Love must carve new passages through stone.

Stand for those whose voices have been silenced,

Walk beside the persecuted ones

Those crushed by others seeking power,

Those broken under fear's cruel weight.

Hold fast to dignity and human rights,

These values light our way through darkness.

May we remember we are one species

Draped in different colors, shapes and sizes.

May communities rise against the wrongness,

May consciousness expand through love's embrace.

May our nation find its way to better shores.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

There's something deeply unsettling about watching people celebrate victories that are built entirely on tearing others down. When your greatest moments of joy come from someone else's pain, what does that say about the emptiness within yourself? The constant anger seems exhausting, a perpetual state of outrage that consumes the soul and leaves no room for genuine connection. I wonder sometimes if they remember what it feels like to celebrate something that doesn't require someone else's suffering as its foundation.

I don't understand how hateful so many people are. We all sang the same songs as kids and had the same lessons in school about love and acceptance and you all chose to become...this? Do you know how much better life is when you can just see people being happy and then just be happy about them being happy? But here you are just stewing so bitter and angry about everyone who doesn't look, live, and love the way you do. It doesn't make any sense.

It's as though somewhere along the way, a fundamental thread of our shared humanity unraveled. Those classroom moments where we joined hands and celebrated our differences...were they just empty performances? How does a child who once embraced diversity grow into an adult who fears it? The transformation is a tragedy that plays out in slow motion across generations. Every time I see someone rage against another's right to simply exist authentically, I try to imagine the moment when fear overwhelmed curiosity in their hearts, when difference became threat rather than wonder.

I truly believe it's how we enjoy each other that makes life worth living. Especially if we are all different from every where. This tapestry of human experience, the countless ways we express love, create art, prepare food, worship, celebrate, and mourn, this magnificent diversity is our greatest inheritance. When we narrow our circle to only those who mirror ourselves, we shrink our world into something pale and insufficient. The most profound moments of my life have come from stepping across boundaries and out of my comfort zone, from the electric recognition that someone utterly different from me can still touch my soul in ways I never anticipated. There is no greater poverty than a homogeneous existence.

We move through this world alongside others, and we don't always know what they carry. But we always have a choice in how we meet them. Let it be with softness. Let it be with love.

Every person you pass on the street is fighting battles you cannot see...grief that hollows them, joy that sustains them, fears that haunt them, dreams that drive them forward. The stranger whose politics infuriate you, the neighbor whose lifestyle confuses you, the family member whose choices you question, each carries an interior world as vast and complex as your own. Our responses to this complexity define us more than anything else. Gentleness costs nothing but transforms everything. The hand extended instead of the fist raised, this is what redemption looks like in practice.

Let's just remember we all want the same things: connection, community, peace and safety.

Beneath the shouting and the posturing, isn't this the universal truth? The parent in rural America who worries about their child's future wants fundamentally the same security as the immigrant family building a new life. The conservative seeking to preserve tradition and the progressive pushing for change both ultimately desire communities where people thrive. Our methods diverge, our visions sometimes seem incompatible, but at the core, we are creatures who seek belonging. Perhaps reconciliation begins with this recognition, not agreement on all things, but acknowledgment of this shared foundation.

When I was a kid, raised by my upper middle class American family, I believed in the dream of what the United States was supposed to be. I believed in a lot of things that I’m now incredibly embarrassed about.

That childhood innocence, believing the stories we tell ourselves about meritocracy, equality, and justice feels almost unbearably naïve now. I remember the pride I felt learning about American exceptionalism, the simple narratives that painted our history in broad, heroic strokes. The process of unlearning those myths has been painful but necessary, like removing a beautiful but distorting lens from my vision. The gap between our stated ideals and lived reality yawns wider each year. Yet somewhere beneath my cynicism remains a stubborn belief that we could still become what we’ve always claimed to be, if only we had the courage to face our contradictions honestly and do the difficult work of transformation.

Even as my heart breaks daily witnessing the unnecessary suffering cascading through our country, the cruelty disguised as policy, the pain inflicted in the name of tradition, the calculated erosion of empathy, I still choose to believe in our capacity for goodness. I can acknowledge the darkness while still turning my face toward the light. Perhaps that’s the most radical act in times like these: to refuse the easy comfort of complete despair or blind optimism, and instead choose the harder path of holding both truth and hope in the same heart. This isn’t blind faith or wishful thinking; it’s a deliberate practice of holding two truths simultaneously: that we are capable of terrible harm and extraordinary compassion. It would be easier to surrender to despair or cynicism, but I’ve seen how genuine connection can pierce through the most calcified anger, and I believe those moments, multiplied across millions of interactions, still have the power to transform us.

As the cool mist settles over Waimea's rolling hills, something magical happens each spring. The cherry blossoms, sakura in Japanese unfold delicate pink petals against our island's verdant backdrop, creating a scene that feels both wonderfully familiar and uniquely Hawaiian.

Here in lovely upcountry Waimea, these blossoms tell a story of cultural harmony that's been cultivated for generations. What many admire as simply beautiful trees actually carry a rich history dating back to 1953, when just three Formosan cherry trees were planted in honor of Fred Makino, founder and editor of the Japanese language newspaper Hawaii Hochi.

Makino's legacy, his newspaper that persevered through the Great Depression, two World Wars, dock strikes, and political changes lives on in these flowering landmarks. After his passing, his wife chose these blossoms as a living memorial, unknowingly planting the seeds for what would become a cherished community landmark.

The story of Church Row's cherry trees reflects the organic way Japanese culture has become interwoven with Hawaiian life. Parker Ranch gardener Isami Ishihara, seeing beauty worth sharing, propagated more trees from those original three. His vision found kindred spirits in the Waimea Lions Club, who in 1972, under President Frank Fuchino's leadership, planted 20 more trees donated by Ishihara.

In 1975, the collection grew by another 50 trees, planted to commemorate Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako's visit to Hawai'i and to honor the first Japanese immigrants who settled in Waimea.

The hanami (flower viewing) tradition takes on special meaning here, where Hawaiian concepts of aloha 'āina (love of the land) and malama (to care for) perfectly complement the Japanese appreciation for mono no aware, the poignant awareness of impermanence.

These blossoms, bursting with life against Waimea's misty skies, remind us that one of Hawai'i's greatest treasure is not just its natural beauty, but the way different cultures have intertwined to create something entirely new, a lei of many flowers, more beautiful together than any could be alone. It also reminds us that while we honor the beauty of cultural exchange, we must also acknowledge our responsibility to respect and protect the indigenous heritage of these islands. As guests on Hawaiian soil, we recognize that true harmony can only exist with deep reverence for Native Hawaiian culture, sovereignty and their enduring connection to this 'āina. From three memorial trees to a beloved community landmark, Waimea's cherry blossoms stand as living testament to the beauty that grows when cultures blend with respect and aloha!💗

Moving to a town where I am a minority has done wonders for my soul. I regularly hear a multitude of languages, I celebrate more holidays, I constantly find new favorite dishes from around the world that I love, and I meet kind people every day that make me so glad to be alive.

Human beings aren’t a one size fits all and our differences are what makes us each unique. We should be CELEBRATING this.

Living among people with different backgrounds and ethnicities transforms abstract concepts into personal connections. What were once foreign traditions become your friends and neighbors cherished celebrations that you're now invited to join! Diverse communities create natural opportunities for growth and each interaction becomes a doorway to understanding another perspective and expanding your own.

There's something profoundly nourishing about learning the stories behind a family recipe shared across a table, or discovering the meaning behind cultural symbols that have been meaningful to others for generations. These experiences remind us that beneath our beautiful differences lie common human experiences: love, loss, celebration, and the search for meaning.

The joy I'm experiencing comes from living in the fullness of humanity rather than just one corner of it. This appreciation for diversity reflects a truth worth remembering: we are at our most human when we connect across differences rather than in spite of them.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​♥️

What was once whispered in private is now proclaimed with pride. Hatred no longer hides; it struts openly through our streets, our social media feeds, our politics. The boundaries of acceptable discourse have stretched to accommodate cruelty, and those who were once marginalized find themselves targeted with increasing boldness.

Perhaps most disturbing is how quickly we've normalized this transformation. The shocking has become routine. The unthinkable has become just another headline, scrolled past with weary resignation. In this new landscape, bigotry doesn't slink through back alleys, it marches down main street.

We stand at a crossroads, watching hatred shed its shame and don the garments of righteousness. And our collective shrug in the face of this metamorphosis may be the most chilling development of all.

If this doesn't shake us to our core, we've already lost something precious: our capacity to be outraged by the outrageous.

What makes this reality even more heartbreaking is watching the cycle repeat endlessly throughout history. We see communities torn apart by preventable crises, individuals carrying burdens that could have been shared, and wounds deepening simply because those with the power to help chose to look away. Each time someone says 'I never understood until it happened to me,' it serves as a reminder of our collective failure to nurture genuine empathy, the kind that moves us to act not because we know the pain personally, but because we understand that every human deserves dignity and support in their darkest moments.

I never thought I'd see these days,

When history's darkest chapters

Would cease to be cautionary tales

And become our daily chapters.

In grade school, I read Anne Frank

And thought those days were past

Now forty-five, I feel her fear,

Those shadows here at last.

This "freedom" that surrounds us

Feels like gilded bars,

While billionaire patriarchs

Control our falling stars.

My mother's dreams of progress

Lie shattered at my feet,

As rights we thought were concrete

Crumble down our street.

I scan the morning headlines

With dread behind my eyes,

As freedom's precious promises

Dissolve in streams of lies.

The flag that once brought comfort

Now fills me with such doubt,

As I wonder if our future

Will find a different route.

America, dear homeland,

What have you become?

When half your children live in fear

And justice stands so numb.

Yet somewhere in this darkness

A flame refuses death

The spirit of resistance

Lives in every breath.

Though Anne Frank's fears echo today,

I refuse to hide away

Her strength lives on within me now,

I'll stand in light and stay.

Let history remember well

These days of doubt and pain,

When those who cherish freedom rise

To make things right again.

For this is not my ending,

Though dark these days may be

I'll fight to shape tomorrow

Into what it ought to be.