Because that’s the real job of an officiant, isn’t it? Not just marrying them, but giving them something to carry. Some solid advice for their next chapter.

When I reflect on the best advice I have learned, the piece I come back to often is not something I heard from my rabbi or a therapist or even my own mother.

It was Bill Cosby. Yes, that Bill Cosby.

It was the mid-1990s. Cosby’s son had just been murdered. When someone asked him in an interview how he was getting through it, he didn’t focus on anger, or grief, or God. He talked about being grateful for what he had with his son and what he had in his life.

That night, I started my own daily gratitude practice. Writing down five things every night that I appreciated from the day that has passed.

I needed it. I was in my mid-twenties, a year after coming out to my parents, and none of it had gone as planned. I was a hot mess over a breakup my parents didn’t know about with my first girlfriend. I blurted out my truth impulsively after my mother, concerned about how sad I had seemed, asked me for the third time if this was all about the “Aryan-looking man” from my cousin’s wedding? (A friend who was my beard for that evening.) To her credit, she was supportive in the moment.

Afterwards…not so much.

There I was: gay, confused, and living in the wreckage of two relationships. The one with my girlfriend and the deep connection with my mom that had existed before I told her.

Everything felt so different. So new. Not in the way the graduation speaker promised, where they assure you joy in all the opportunities ahead, but the way it felt in watching Sliding Doors, where every decision carried so much weight.

And then, on a post-breakup whim, I decided to move out of my post-college apartment - a high-rise in Lakeview where a number of friends also lived - to a third-floor walk-up in Andersonville, where everyone was so much older than me. Like, in their thirties.

I really didn’t know how to live in my own skin anymore, let alone a new apartment. All I knew was changes needed to be made. Out went the futon and the handmade collages of childhood friends. In came framed posters of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Silence of the Lambs. I was redecorating my entire person, not just my space.

To be clear, gratitude was nowhere on my radar. It was not something I was feeling or frankly even understood. Of course I knew how to thank someone for a gift of monetary value. I was raised by the queen of the handwritten thank-you note. I once spent an entire summer after my Bat Mitzvah writing ten thank-you cards a night until two-hundred relatives and fellow members of Congregation Ezra Israel had all been properly thanked for their $18 checks.

Over the years, I not only honed that skill, I learned to value it. And then became valued for it. In part it’s what makes me such a good fundraiser: the ability to thoughtfully acknowledge someone for gifting something they didn’t have to give.

But gratitude, that is different. That is internal. It involves pausing. Paying attention. Allowing the awe of every day moments to undo you one small piece at a time.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I found that first gratitude journal in a box we excavated during work we had done on our house. I smiled remembering buying that hardcover book - with the New Age-y sun and moon on the cover - from Dominicks.

The first entry, dated September 9, 1997:

• Pictures from last year’s trip to Paris

• 13 messages on my answering machine

• Teaching Mooch (my bird) how to catcall

• Ceiling fans

• Coffee

A few months later, the night I sat in the hospital while my father was on a ventilator following his “widow maker” open heart surgery, all the entries were about the types of animal crackers I got in the vending machine. Kangaroos came in at the bottom. While the one unbroken giraffe topped the list.

And then there were the five entries from July 16, 1998, where “meeting Ann Perkins” was number four. She rated below “an email from a potential friend with benefits,” but above “feeding french fries to birds on the beach.”

There were two things that struck me as I reviewed the journal. One was how small details made all the difference. Being grateful for “walking the dog” did not capture the same depth of being grateful for “the way Floyd’s ears looked like corduroy after the rain.” As the latter could transport me back to the moment and make me feel awe all over again.

The second was how pressing a pen into that thin lined paper, numbering one through five day in and day out, had worn an actual groove into the notebook. Deep enough that when you tear out a page now, the ghost of the numbers is still there, embossed on the sheet underneath.

I stopped writing in a journal after Ann and I got married and adopted the practice together. Since then - every night, no matter where we are in the world, no matter what happened that day, no matter how mad we are at each other, we share aloud five things we are grateful for.

We did this the day we got the adoption referral picture of our son, each of the days our parents died, and every random Tuesday where the biggest thing to happen was that the Costco brochure came in the mail or we found the missing blue sock.

In addition to officiating at the wedding, this past month Ann and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. When people ask what the secret is to our longevity, I tell them there is no fucking secret.

The answer is simple, and it’s available to anyone. You wake up every day and choose each other. You spend every day choosing yourself - meaning you work to be someone worth choosing. And then you end every evening choosing gratitude for whatever the day had to offer, the bird that catcalls and the giraffe crackers alike.

That’s what I hope my goddaughter and her husband find. Not some secret. Just the daily, unglamorous practice of showing up, again and again. Until twenty-five years later, someone asks you what it takes, and you can only laugh and point them toward that groove. Some days it may seem hard to find, but it is never hidden. It can just be easy to miss, in between all the ordinary Tuesdays.

.

Ann and I visited her Mom as often as we could, which sounds grander than it actually was, as I quickly learned that seeing family in Paris wasn’t so different from seeing family in say… Milwaukee. The reason being that the expectation of any long distance mother - no matter where she is based - remained the same - nonstop time with them.

Those early days in Paris were not spent hand in hand strolling down the Champs Elysees but rather filled with grocery shopping and endlessing walking Jane’s rude and ruddy toy poodle, Pipi. Dinners weren’t at a café overlooking the Seine, but around a table on Rue de Paradis, catching up on cousins’ kids I hadn’t met yet, eating meals that tasted more like an old fashion Americana supper than fine French cuisine.

Nearly three decades later, there’s a quiet hindsight ache for how brief our time with each of our mothers turned out to be. But back then, a new couple in our early thirties, we craved a little time to explore on our own.

So, on our second trip, Ann and I negotiated one night away, just us. We booked a room at a hotel we became mildly obsessed with called the Buci Latin. Each room in the hotel had a distinct feel - and we chose the one with a claw foot tub, plush turkish robes that matched the wallpaper, and windows that looked onto the Saint Germain. It basically screamed romance.

We also booked an intimate dinner at La Rotisserie d’en Face. It was a step up from our usual fare, but still a place locals actually went. Being Midwesterners, we showed up early, and got seated along a row of two-tops close enough that you had to hold hands and lean in to talk.

The occasion called for something memorable, so we asked the waiter for a splurge-worthy wine recommendation and landed on a bottle just under 100 euros, the most our early thirty selves had ever spent. It was worth every penny as it tasted like young love. By the time Ann’s moules and my chèvre salad hit the table, we were floating.

That is, until the duo from Belgium arrived.

These two men caught our attention the moment they walked in. Not because had style or flair - rather the opposite. They looked like a European version of Napoleon Dynamite But, in lieu of Vote for Pedro t-shirts, they sported short-sleeve button-ups with fully loaded pocket protectors that included their ballpoint pens and business cards poking out the top.

We nodded politely as they sat down, then turned back to each other. However, they clearly missed the memo, mistaking two women deep in conversation for two women open to their company. They tried, more than once, to break in with the kind of small talk that makes you want to disappear into your napkin - even after I brought Annie’s hand to my lips and kissed it, gently.

Relief only came when the sommelier finally approached for their order, and, without consulting each other, one of them glanced at the wine list and said, “We’ll take the 1985 Margaux.”

At which point, it was as if every thing went silent. After an extended pause - the sommelier’s face lit up so fully it was as if the ceiling had opened and heaven shone directly upon our table mates. Within moments, two waiters appeared carrying a small gilded table, on which sat a beautiful crystal decanter. When the chef himself came out to personally deliver this revered bottle, I began to reconsider how hasty we had written off these potential new friends.

Moments later, my mouth still agape at the wine spectacle, the Belgium brothers offered all of us a taste of the wine. Annie began to wave a “no thank you,” but I held down that hand I’d been kissing just moments before, and nodded eagerly. While the pour was small - the experience was otherworldly. If our wine had tasted like young love, theirs tasted like lustful rapture.

Over the decades, that night has become one of the stories we often pour out along with the table wine at our weekly Shabbat dinners. Every so often, I’ve looked into buying that coveted 1985 Margaux, hoping the years had made it reachable. It never was. Now, that bottle is long past its prime, a vintage that exists more in memory than in any cellar.

I have been thinking about that a lot these days as next week Ann and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. We decided to mark it with something chill - renting out our favorite neighborhood bar and gathering close friends and family for tacos and karaoke.

But then last week while I was at a wine store, I found and bought a 2001 Saint Emillion - a vintage from the same year we were married. While it did not cost much more than that 1985 Margaux did back in the day, it still was far more than I have spent on a bottle before. I justified it to myself - and my wife - that 25 years married deserved something to be enjoyed by just the two of us.

To be clear, the wedding anniversary we will celebrate on Wednesday isn’t the anniversary of when we became legally married. We don’t actually know that date, as that was simply the day the government finally caught up with our vows.

The one we honor is the anniversary of the day our fathers walked us down the aisle to meet under a chuppah. The day my mom cried, finally recognizing not only the realness of our relationship, but also the wholeness I had found with Ann. The day 150 friends and family surrounded us, their presence a lifelong commitment to support our union.

I bought that special bottle for us to toast the anniversary of the day we signed a ketubah - where we promised each other a life filled with things that had already become staples of joy - like, “dancing in the living room, mornings in Maine” – as well as things we could only imagine then: like, “kids, and cats and dogs, and chaos.”

To date, that future we created - which has somehow morphed into the current and past - has indeed honored those promises. And, if we are lucky, that future we hoped for is still less than half over.

The Paris we envisioned before we lost all our parents and became parents ourselves - when we were just wide-eyed thirtysomethings hungry for one stolen night - doesn’t exist anymore. That restaurant closed years ago, its two-tops and cozy lean-in tables replaced by a four-story apartment building. Even the hotel we snuck away to has changed hands, new owners, updated rooms with far less charm.

What has emerged, though, is something - like our relationship - that is entirely our own. We no long measured time in stolen nights, but rather often in reflective time togehter. We still go back to Paris often where do not stay with family on Rue de Paradis, or carve out a single romantic dinner between obligations. Now the whole trip is ours, days that stretch without a schedule to negotiate around. Just us.

And while we likely will open that 2001 bottle just the two of us as well - I’ve doubt it will feel as if we are toasting alone. We’ll be toasting almost three decades together, twenty-five of them with the same wedding bands on our now-aging hands. And in a fitting twist - we’ll probably do so in our Wildfang short-sleeve button-ups, a staple of our wardrobe now, and something our two Belgian dinner companions would surely approve of - wherever they are, undoubtedly drinking something far more expensive than what’s in our glasses.

I was the Midwest Director of Human Rights Watch - and at the time it was the most money and the best title I’d had to date. I’d heard from people I trusted that the organization had a much “tougher” (read: toxic) culture than anywhere I’d worked before, but I was still young enough to believe in my own terminal uniqueness… the thought that I was too special for something like that to impact me. Up til then, I’d never had a bad work experience, and I believed once people saw how charming I was, they’d be smitten.

Needless to say, I was wrong. Instead of walking into a work environment that felt like some warm, funny workplace sitcom, I ended up on the set of Mean Girls.

So I did what I thought best: I channeled my inner Lindsay Lohan and decided if I couldn’t beat them, I’d join them. That worked, for a minute or two. Until it didn’t.

At some point, in utter frustration, I went out for a drink with someone I trusted - someone who ran in the same circles as the people I felt had treated me so badly - but always managed to keep a healthy distance from it all. That night she gave me an incredible compliment. She said no one she knew, except her husband (who she absolutely adored), took feedback and worked to incorporate it as well as I did.

As the night and wine went on, I wrapped myself in the warm embrace of that acknowledgment. But the next morning, harsh reality hit: I could incorporate every piece of feedback I received, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Because the core issue wasn’t the feedback. It was that I was trying to fit into a culture that didn’t want what I actually had to offer. Which meant I wasn’t being my authentic self, or honest with myself and the people I worked with.

So I left. At the time, I felt I was doing so because I was being pushed out. And for a long time, my story about that place was simple. They were bad. I was wronged. So much so that I fanticized about the exposé I would write. The ironic tale of a human rights organization that allowed such unbecoming conduct within its own hallowed halls - a place that ran on an underlying belief that the ends (usually measured by how much money was raised) always justified the means. I could already see Kate McKinnon starring as me in the mini-series.

But the harder truth, one that took me about a year to admit, was even though I felt treated unfairly, I needed to own that in the process I became a different type of mean girls myself. I was petty when I felt threatened. I protected myself in ways that hurt other people. And while I could try to defend myself by listing every reason the environment was unhealthy, none of it changes the fact that I let it bring out the worst in me.

It has been almost a decade since then and in that time I’ve tried to make amends to all the people who didn’t deserve to get pulled into the web of madness I created to save myself.

In addition, I’ve often gone back to that compliment about taking feedback well. And am grateful to have heard it many times since then. Staying open instead of defensive is a real skill. But over time, I’ve come to understand it’s not the whole equation.

We can be endlessly adaptable and still never actually change, if we never own what we did with what we heard. Adapting without accountability is just performance. It took me years to understand that the two only add up to something real, something like actual bravery, when they’re coupled together.

That’s the part of my Grover piece I wrote a few weeks ago that I keep coming back to: the monster at the end isn’t scary once you finally turn the page and look. But turning the page isn’t the brave part. Looking honestly at what’s actually there, and admitting it out loud, is.

The one word most often used to describe me, both personally and professionally, is connector. I hope funny, passionate, committed, and most important, grateful, rank high on that list too. But a word I rarely expected people to use is brave, and yet it’s come up so often lately that it’s the impetus for this piece.

Nothing prepared me for the outpouring of calls, texts, and notes of admiration after my Facebook and LinkedIn posts, simply owning that I’d made a mistake in endorsing Graham Platner.

My connection to Graham, and my hopes for his candidacy, has come up before in my Substack. What I focused on each time was less about him and more about a collective challenge to readers: join me in believing in redemption and hope.

I’d like those words to show up on my values list too.

But in hindsight, the one value that may matter most - the one I try to inhabit and model - and the one I believe most people are reacting to and equating with bravery - is accountability.

That word is far less sexy than the ones above. It doesn’t show up in the center of cool-looking word clouds of interesting people. Or in the obituary of the rich and famous. But I’ve learned it’s far more closely related to humility and humanity than it is to regret or mistake.

And perhaps most important, there is no authentic relationship in my life without it.

That was one of the first of many hard lessons Ann and I learned when we started couples counseling, early in our relationship. While we haven’t gone together in two decades, the tools and insight we picked up side by side on that couch still resonate daily. Case in point: we celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary - and 28 years together - next month.

The thing about accountability is, like a meaningful apology, the only one you really have to answer to is yourself. The simple difference between “you made me feel sad” and “I felt sad when that thing happened between us” is light years wide. And yet that muscle of ownership - is something most people shy away from ever exercising, let alone building.

I’d like to believe I carry those lessons into every relationship I have, not just the one with my wife. But as is the way with human beings, I sometimes fall back into old behavior, shaped by what I saw modeled growing up.

I was raised in a generation where parents’ most common answer was “because I said so.” My parents never apologized. Never. My theory: beyond simply not being something parents did back then - my parents were also immigrants who believed admitting vulnerability was admitting weakness. And weakness was the last thing someone already marginalized would, or frankly could, allow themselves to show.

Which made the concept of accountability unimaginable. The truth is mastering the accountability skill isn’t easy for anyone. I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at it because I practice it. But any practice, like Pilates (which my abs and ass are feeling today), can be painful. And because the results aren’t immediate, it’s easy to question whether it’s worth it.

Rarely do accountability or fallibility offer instant gratification. Couple that with the fact that in this day and age, so few leaders, from the President on down, admit mistakes or not knowing, and we’ve raised an entire generation paralyzed by the thought of acknowledging fault.

Which makes it easiest for people fall back on a binary: there is right and wrong. A victim and villain. And it’s not just world leaders. It shows up in friend breakups, where we feel we have to pick a side. A teacher who doesn’t give your kid a good grade must be bad at their job. Or the deep seeded fear that giving someone else grace or credit will somehow take away from how others see you.

Even some of my dearest friends, the ones who held me up through the toughest times at HRW, found it hard to let me admit my own fault. They kept going back to “but they were so bad to you.” Both can bet true. The multiple truths of that toxicity having been my experience and owning what my role was within it.

It is that learning that I have tried to incorporate most this past decade. In doing so, in showing up as my authentic self - I’ve been called brave more and more often. Which made me terribly uncomfortable. Until recently.

Because if being accountable makes me brave - I’ll take it. And if admitting mistakes, apologizing and changing course as a result makes me courageous, then bring it on!

In the end, I know my kid, and all our kids, are watching. The next generation is looking closely to see whether their parents, their elders, their bosses and their community leaders can acknowledge being wrong out loud, and change their behavior, without collapsing and without deflecting.

So, moving forward, I embrace my newer superpower, one that’s quieter and less visible than connection: accountability. Leaning into that is what has given me the courage to speak up when others didn’t feel they had the power, or the willingness to spend the social capital, to do the same.

I still hold dear that compliment I received all those years ago. Especially because it came at a time I needed it - when I was looking desperately for validation from someone else.

Without it, I may not have found my way so fully to accountability, which is now a compliment I give myself when I look in the mirror.

Every time I look at it, I can conjure what I was feeling instantly. I was on top of the world that day as I remember believing for the first time that I knew exactly where I belonged. We had just finished marching, and I can still feel the buzzing energy every time we passed a cluster of spectators and the crowd went wild. Jan had been a rockstar to the LGBT community long before all the letters in our queer alphabet were even recognized. And I - her out lesbian finance director - was a rockstar by association. Or at least her most recognizable groupie.

What makes that day remain so vivid was the stark contrast to the year before. Just a few years prior, I came out to myself when I officially had my first girlfriend. I told a few close friends and family members, but I was firmly in the don’t-ask-don’t-tell chapter of my life - identifying as bisexual at a time when most gay people said “bi is just for people who aren’t ready to be out yet.” For me, that was spot on.

I used to joke that I had a habit of sleeping with women but couldn’t possibly be a lesbian because I didn’t like camping or softball. Turns out there is a whole queer world whose favorite sport is politics and whose ass has never touched an air mattress. And lucky for me - I was asked to join their team!

When I began my coming out journey - I was living only a few blocks from where the parade ended - very close to where that picture would eventually be taken. The June before I began to work for Jan, I heard the Pride Parade revelry from my apartment. I convinced myself that while I had no interest in what was happening outside, that seemed as good a day as any to pick up that novel I’d been meaning to read. Which is how I ended up at the bookstore smack on the parade route.

Once inside the store, I spotted Outlines, the local lesbian paper, in the free newspaper rack. I looked to make sure no one was around before I quickly grabbed a copy and tucked it inside my copy of the Chicago Reader. I had no idea then how many times my friend - and another personal hero - Tracy Baim would feature me, my wife and family, in its pages (and in Windy City Times, which she published as well.)

I caught the tail end of the parade from the sidewalk outside the store. It was still an era when Pride was far more about community than corporations. People who marched by looked defiant, determined, and celebratory. There was Horizons Community Services - the small organization that would eventually become the Center on Halsted, where two years later I would meet my wife Ann on the board. There was the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association, which Ann co-founded and where, unbeknownst to me, she was marching that very day.

Also there - among only a small handful of elected officials willing to be seen supporting “the gays” was a state representative named Jan Schakowsky.

Perhaps no elected official has done more to shape my life. The life of my family. The life of my entire community. It would take far more than one Substack to capture how her bravery paved the way: not just for marriage equality, not just as an early advocate for trans rights, not just as a fighter for equitable health care. Beyond all of that, Jan made me - and so many others - feel more than okay to be exactly who we were. She celebrated all of it. All of us. She gave us room to live our lives out and proud. She made us feel like we had a home.

There is no time we honored all that more than the last Sunday in June. For the past 29 years, the Pride Parade has been one of the most celebrated holidays for me and the family Ann and I created with our son David. And Jan was always at the center of it.

David came home from Russia in May 2003, and by June he was marching at his first Pride parade with his very own custom-made Jan Fan t-shirt. Through the years. We watched him grow from a baby into a full-grown adult - measured as much by the changing sizes of his I ♥ My Moms shirts as by how far he had grown past his moms.

We can mark the small and big moments that make up a life, a family, a community through those Pride parade pictures. What shirts we were wearing, how long (or how gray) our hair was. “That was just after my mom died.”Or “That was after we failed to pass marriage equality in Illinois.” “That was just after we did.”

Many elected officials came and went in those photos. As did corporations that loved us when it was safe and abandoned us the moment they were challenged. But one anchor held: Jan. And some grouping of our family marching alongside her. Handing out her Jan Fans. Reveling in the crowd’s response to the person who we stood next to and who stood beside all of us since the beginning.

While most politicians spent the parade in the comfort of a float or a convertible, up until she was almost 80 years old, Jan ran from side to side along the route, working that crowd like the energy of every person cheering was what kept her going. She stopped for every hug, every photo, every outstretched hand, and you could tell she was getting back exactly what she gave.

As some other electeds started to show up in and out with their rainbow logoed t-shirts when it became politically advantageous for them - and the corporate takeover of Pride crept in - there was always Jan. Drawing the loudest applause - second only to PFLAG. And for god sake, Jesus himself would not get as big an applause as PFLAG.

I did not fully understand until recently how much of my own sense of belonging was wrapped up in our traditions of that single Sunday in June. I am now older than Jan was in that picture on my desk. When she was already so brave, already so certain, already helping people like me figure out who we were and decide it was worth celebrating. I have spent most of my adult life marching alongside her, absorbing those lessons, watching David do the same as he grew up in her orbit, watching Ann and I grow old in those parade pictures.

Jan announced her retirement from Congress last year. This weekend, for the first time, she will not be marching. And I find myself more emotional about that than I expected. Not just because I will miss her, but because of what her presence has always meant. Whether to those of us who have fought the fight for decades - or those of us who do not yet know who we are. Jan marching was reassurance that we are seen. That we are worth showing up for. That someone with power chose us, again and again and again.

So this year, I will sit it out as well. Not in protest. Not even in solidarity. But because some endings deserve to be fully felt rather than marched through

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The Gospel of Grover

The piece of literature I refer back to most often is not a poem by Mary Oliver, self help section of Brene Brown or even life lessons of Andrea Gibson. Rather, it is the children’s book There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, “written” by the fuzzy, blue sage: Grover from Sesame Street.

If you have not studied the text, the Cliff’s Notes version (I am that old) is this: when Grover learns the title of the book he is in, he panics. He does not want to reach the end. He does not want to meet the monster. So, he spends the entire book pleading with the reader not to turn the page. He builds walls. He ties things shut. He begs. He bargains. He grows more desperate with each turn.

When we finally get to the very end, Grover sees a mirror. The monster at the end of the book is him. Everything he had been running from was merely a reflection of himself.

Two recent experiences have me thinking about Grover a lot lately.

The first is connected to the Substack piece I wrote a few months ago asking people to give Maine Senate Candidate, Graham Platner, some grace. Since then more stories about him have emerged. About volatility and erratic behavior at best. About misogyny and predatory behavior at worst. So many people have reached out to ask me how I feel. Whether I regret hosting him in our home and lending him my name and my credibility.

The short answer is I am disappointed. Deeply. Because I hope Graham to be something akin to a light in a very dark place. To serve as a reminder that unlikely people can still do remarkable things. I put my name behind him because I believed that and because I believe in redemption. I ask for it myself. I try to offer it to others. That is not something I am willing to stop doing, even when it temporarily costs me.

Believing in redemption also means accepting that I will sometimes be wrong. That the grace I extend will not always be met with the growth I hoped for. And that sitting with that is part of the deal I made when I decided to lead with trust rather than cynicism. As for Graham, I am hopeful his story is not yet finished. I do hope he earns the trust of the people of Maine. That his growth and change are real and that he proves himself worthy of the position he seeks. Yet, I genuinely do not know.

What I do know however is that the outsized faith I invest in any one fallible human being is as much on me as it is on them.

I keep coming back to the CS Lewis quote: “I sat with anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.” Because what shows up as rage when someone disappoints or disagrees with us is so often is grief in disguise. We are living in a world that has lost its tolerance for gray. For the nuance that allows for deeper emotion and harder conversations. And so we reach for the easier thing - the crown or the match.

As a society we are as quick to annoint someone as burn them down. For Graham that binary looks like this: is he the Democratic Party’s unlikely savior, the outsider who speaks across divides? Or is he the villain, a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

What we rarely allow for now is the more uncomfortable and often painful truth: that another human being can be flawed and complicated and capable of both good work and real harm. Because if we did, we would have to turn that same lens on ourselves. To grieve the distance between who we are and who we hoped we would be by now. And reckon with the reality that no movement, and no meaningful personal growth, has ever been carried by any one person.

A few weeks ago, I found myself inside this very tension again, in a way I could not have anticipated and could not look away from when I went to a psilocybin retreat.

That experience, my reasoning, my self-discovery, is not something I will not share in a public forum like Subtack. But why I bring this up in this context is because of the person at the heart of that experience. This was my first time with this type of work and I chose this particular retreat because the facilitator was someone people I trust had worked with deeply and frequently.

When I arrived, I knew no one. Which turned out to be such a gift. There were no titles in that room. No LinkedIn profiles, no carefully curated first impressions, no armor built from years of professional identity or expectations that come from personal histories. We had all agreed, simply by showing up, to an immediate and radical trust. We were going to bear witness to each other in an open and vulnerable way - and that was the unspoken contract we all honored.

Before attending, I joined a larger online group chat with 1000+ people interested in this type of alternative medicine. Which was - needless to say - quite enlightening. And a bit frightening at times. I was most concerned when people held this particular facilitator up as some sort of guru.

But that all quickly faded once I met the people in my group as a vast majority had a deep history with the facilitator. She was not a stranger to them. She had earned her place in their lives through showing up and helping them through the darkness of depression and anxiety, or through loss and other challenging life transitions.

The more I talked to my fellow participants, the more I heard the same thing - the facilitator saw herself not as a guru but as a conduit - a bridge between something spiritual and the people who needed it. That resonated with me deeply. I believe each of us is a conduit of something greater, and the way we make the world better is by sharing that particular gift. For some it is music. For others art. Or cooking. Or connection. Or the courage to stand in a room and speak an uncomfortable truth.

Later that day, when I finally met the facilitator, I was quite sad that we did not connect instantly. Something felt off. She did not match the person I had heard so much about. But when I looked around at the people beside me - these lovely people who knew her, who trusted her - I chalked my feelings up to nerves and never having been in the presence of a shaman-like figure before and moved ahead.

Throughout the entire weekend, I felt very safe. Mostly because of who surrounded me more than because of who led us. We each took care of one another without ego or question. One woman tucked a blanket around me when I was curled up on the couch. I sat with another as we breathed through difficult embodied trauma together. We hugged goodnight, and sat beside each other in the beauty of our surroundings, often not speaking, just reaching out a hand periodically to say I am here. You are not alone.

Behind the scenes however, things were slowly unraveling as the disconnect I had felt from the facilitator upon meeting her turned out to be something the whole room had been quietly holding.

What no one knew was that she had invited her new partner into the space - whose presence had not been disclosed and whose dynamic with her was, to put it plainly, deeply disturbing and dysfunctional. What should have been a safe container for our healing became, in part, a stage for their circus of chaos. She breached the trust of the group not once but in layers: first by concealing the relationship, then by allowing their unresolved dynamic to overtake her commitment to the people in her care.

The last night, elements of their destructive relationship hit a fevered pitch when the facilitator began lashing out at him and others. I looked around the room and I saw the shaken faces of people who had cracked themselves open - to themselves, to each other, to something bigger - in part because of this woman. And now she was tearing through that fragile, sacred space like it was hers to destroy.

Something inside me shifted. And, I did something I did not expect to do. I stood up. I demanded the floor and I spoke my truth directly to the facilitator, in front of everyone.

I began with my voice cracking and said: “I know that after I say this, I will not be invited back into your space. And that has to be okay.”

The rest is a blur of adrenalin. While I cannot remember my exact words, it was mostly about her behavior being unacceptable. That she had violated trust and abdicated her responsibility to the people who had shown up vulnerable and open. And, in the end, what was needed was not a closing ceremony with herself at the center, but rather accountability and apology to each person she had let down.

No one moved. Faces stared back at me in a way that for just a moment made me feel exposed and very alone. Until I felt a hand on my back. Then a hug. Then a chorus of people thanking me for naming what was in the room. Appreciation which has continued since I returned home.

It has taken me a bit to understand that speaking that truth in that moment was me being a conduit to something bigger. That was me sharing my gift. I also recognize I could do that - in part - because I had no prior relationship with the facilitator. She had not guided me through the devastating loss of a child, through addiction, or through the darkness of suicidal grief. For the people in that room who had trusted her with those things, the betrayal cut so much deeper.

As a result, my experience remained powerful and profound not despite what happened, but because the work I did there belonged only to me. While the facilitator had been a conduit to my experience, she was not the experience itself.

The more time passes, the more I am clear on one thing. All of our work, our connections, individually and collectively - was real. The facilitator’s extraordinary fallibility did not erase it. If anything, what happened next proved that. As she fell apart, the group held each other together. The community became the medicine and healing the retreat had promised to deliver.

Which is why I keep coming back to Grover. We all have to keep turning the page because reckoning with those we place our faith or fear in - our heroes, our villains, and ultimately ourselves - requires it.

What we find at the end is never what or who we thought it would be. It is always, only, our own reflection. The question is whether we are finally ready to look

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This month we honor the revolutionaries. What began as a protest outside of Stonewall led by our trans elders has now turned into a full blown cultural moment - part resistance, part party, part marketing opportunity, depending on who you ask.

For many people, Pride is represented by rainbow-filled parades, where disco music blasts through the air and everyone seems to be having the time of their lives.

For many older queers, like me, we watched the parade go from a Sunday afternoon where we felt free to fully be ourselves - to a never-ending line of corporate floats - with straight people danced on top of a multi-colored logo - throwing out candy to those of us below - as if we were hungry animals at a gay zoo.

As annoying as the corporatization of Pride had become, I admit to a little snarky moment of joy each year when some guy tries to show how straight he is that by holding his girlfriend’s hand in a vice grip. Dude….. don’t worry. Your cargo shorts say everything.

With all the cuts the Trump administration has made, the parade is back to being filled with real allies and advocates. To a few key companies who pulled all their Pride funding, let me say this:

Toyota, you never could be as cool as Subaru. One of you has been a gay icon since before it was profitable. The other one is you.

Pepsi who hurt you? You are like Coke’s middle sibling who had to try twice as hard to get half the attention.

And Harley Davidson, may every Dyke on a Bike come haunt you in your dreams. The wet kind. You earned it for pulling out of Pride. Word choices made purposefully.

For the past three decades, Pride in our house has been treated like any other family holiday. One I share with my wife and most years, our son.

Our son is now 25 years old and has a life of his own and cannot always make Pride with us. One year he was out of town, another one he had to work, but when he can, he will be found marching in the parade, wearing his I heart my Moms t-shirt (that he has in multiple sizes from 3T to a men’s Large) along side Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky - one of our truest and longest standing advocates, who was instrumental in my own comfort in being out.

This year, Ann and I celebrate 28 years together and our 25th wedding anniversary. Not the day our government finally recognized us, rather the day our fathers walked us down the aisle - where we exchanged rings, signed our ketubah filled with a life time of promises, and were blessed by our Rabbi and said Congresswoman - all while surrounded by family and friends from across this country and beyond.

Since that day, August 5, 2001, I have called Ann my wife. Not my partner. My wife. Or if you prefer - my spouse, my ball and chain, the little mrs. But not partner.

My Pride month confession: I feel like every time a married, straight person says “partner” instead of husband, wife, or spouse, somewhere a unicorn becomes a horse.

I know, I know. Partner is meant to be neutral. An equalizer. And, I so appreciate that effort to be supportive. But for some reason it has the opposite effect on me. I realize this may be generational and deeply personal. I straddle a generation of elders who believed every bisexual is just someone too afraid to pick a side - and a younger generation that identifies as queer because they once kissed a girl on Mountain Day at Smith College.

Neither is entirely wrong. Neither is entirely right. But I know what I am. And I know who Ann is. Ann Kaplan-Perkins is my WIFE.

We have a friend who used to make fun of us because we had so many anniversaries. But that is what happens when you have to fight for every one. The first official commitment Ann and I made was our wedding in 2001. The second was October 2003 when we became the first lesbian couple to be “domestically partnered” in Chicago.

The next was on our 10th wedding anniversary when we entered into a (separate and unequal) civil union. Then, we were finally legally married in the state of Maine some time in the fall of 2013. But it was not recognized federally. Only a few years later, in 2015, the then sane and just United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges - and all of us in the rainbow alphabet were finally granted full legal marital status.

What I realize in hindsight - is how much all of that strengthened our resolve as a couple. Because each and every time, Ann and I had to recommit. To each other. To continue building a future together. To yet another new legal status.

Yet, even with all those recommitments - until 2015, I still had to fill out “single” on every legal paperwork. I still had to pay separate taxes. I still had to check boxes that erased who Ann was to me entirely.

Often I filled out “married” on a document because it was my truth. And frankly, because I was pissed to be thought of as anything other than that. But eventually a teller, clerk, or nurse would ask for my husband’s name. When I would respond “my wife is Ann,” I would watch them scratch it out and mark me “single.” Still, I never stopped trying until their truth caught up with mine.

I know many people do not believe in the institution of marriage. Many LGBT people think those of us who chose the married path are betraying the queerness of those who came before us. I respect that opinion. In some ways I even agree with it. Marriage is, let’s be honest, so straight.

But here is what I keep coming back to. My parents sacrificed everything so that I could have a life they never had. They had their own dreams for me. And, I don’t think they could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, the actual life I live that their sacrifice made possible.

My queer ancestors did the same. The drag queens and butches and femmes who threw the first punches at Stonewall were not fighting so that we would all end up in the same place. They were fighting for a world they could not yet imagine. One with all of it - the marriage and the chosen family - the mundane and the unconventional - and sometimes the completely unclassifiable. Every version of a life lived honestly. Out and proud and without apology.

I know I have what I do because of my elders - the ones who raised me and the ones who threw the punches. They paid the price, and never got to see or have what we get to have.

Three decades later, I feel my role as an elder now. This life, this family, this love - it is one answer to everything they fought for. And for me - it will always be my greatest source of pride.

Happy Pride.

Post script: Three years ago, Ann and I were honored by the Center on Halsted (formerly Horizons). Part of that introduction was a short video below on our family.

In a most unusual and fortuitous twist of fate - almost three decades ago I met my wife - a daughter of the American revolution who was an 18th generation Mainer. Our family histories and childhoods could not have been more different. Yet our shared values that brought us together and have been the foundation of the beautiful life and community we have created together.

If there is one thing I have learned from being married to a Mainer - it is there the people of that state divide you into one of two categories. You are either from Maine or you are “from away.” And needless to say, to Mainers, I am the latter.

But while Maine may never claim me as one of its own, I have forever been changed by the amount of time I have spent there. In all our time together, Ann and I have never missed a summer in Maine - and also shared a few fantastic Christmas family celebrations and beautiful fall hikes in Acadia. Over the years, Maine has become part of my and our family’s collective souls.

Which is why the upcoming election in Maine means something more to me than the importance of the Democrats taking back the Senate. Who is elected will impact my extended family that lives there. Family that includes a group of seventy and eighty something lesbians who live in Bar Harbor - on some of the most coveted and valuable real estate in the country - as well as nieces and nephews who are raising their love filled families in trailers in rural parts of Hancock and Lincoln counties.

For years my family in Maine has been represented by Susan Collins - a self described moderate - who has been anything but. She has voted with Donald Trump over 80% of the time - including her devastating acquiescence of voting for all his Supreme Court appointments.

In November of 2018, I ran into Senator Susan Collins in the bathroom at National Airport. It was just a few weeks after she gave a decisive vote to allow Brett Kavenaugh his seat on the Supreme Court. I was walking into my stall as she was coming out of hers - and I jumped on the chance to talk to her. I said “Senator Collins, my family is from Brooksville, my wife is an 18th generation Maine, and we could not be more disappointed in you.”

She shook her head and said to me in a most condescending tone, “I would think you and your wife would be grateful I support marriage equality.”

Without missing a beat, I replied, “thanks to your vote, my marriage will now be in jeopardy, as will our children’s access to reproductive health care, and my immigrant neighbors ability to live without fear.”

By this point we had blocked all traffic coming and going, and nothing will get you to move faster than the stares of weary and impatient travelers who need to pee. I walked into my stall. She went to wash her hands. Some things just cannot be compromised.

Like many people, the first thing I heard about Graham Platner was his “Nazi tattoo.” Like most people, I imagined a swastika. So I wrote him off.

Then several people I trusted, Jewish friends, Jewish leaders, called to say they’d met him and were impressed. So I went and did a little more research.

What I found were pictures of a tattoo of a badly drawn skull and crossbones. A version that I was unfamiliar with. I have studied the Holocaust extensively, watched nearly every film made about that period, and I have never seen this image used as a Nazi symbol.

Do I believe he didn’t know? Yes. For two reasons. First, during his time in service, Graham had two separate security clearance reviews, which includes among other things specifically examining tattoos for hate symbols. He passed both. U.S. government experts did not clock his tattoo as a Nazi related symbols. Another example of a very unfortunate tattoo mistake.

Second, is my case and point of a similar experience. Our own son got a tattoo a few years back from a very reputable tattoo studio. We all thought the artwork looked great - until a friend pointed out it strongly resembled a local gang symbol. Sometimes we do not know what we do not know.

Graham has since covered the tattoo and addressed it publicly and extensively. And perhaps most importantly, he has the support of a number of Jews who don’t just believe him, they believe in him. This includes many members of J Street. His Jewish family members. And me.

I know, the tattoo was not the only thing Graham has had to reckon with. There have been other remarks, other moments that were problematic. I have had the good fortune of spending many hours with Graham - welcoming him in my home, sharing drinks - speaking about them directly.

He has also addressed them publicly, spoken openly about therapy and growth, and apologized in ways that felt real rather than rehearsed. I believe him and choose to extend him the same grace I have extended to others.

Consider who a few of those others are. Almost every woman I know, myself included, supported Joe Biden. Yet, my first political memory of Biden was incredibly fraught. I had just started my job at the Chicago Foundation for Women and sat with my colleagues - all young women in our 20s and 30s - all who had experienced sexual harassment already in our lives.

And together we stood around a television in the office conference room to watch Biden, chairing the Clarence Thomas hearings. He presided over a panel of all-white male senators while Anita Hill gave brave and monumental testimony. Biden was not gracious or fair and impartial. Rather he was dismissive and at times downright disrespectful.

Had he handled that differently, we might not have Clarence Thomas - now the second longest-serving justice in the country - on the bench. Biden has since spoken often about his regret about his behavior and role in those hearings. We all accepted that acknowledgement and moved forward.

Closer to home, in 2003, I remember standing at a gay and lesbian political event, holding my almost three-year-old son, pleading with then-State Senator Barack Obama to support marriage equality. He told me he would not, that it wasn’t “politically prudent.” He then went further and stated publicly that he strongly believed marriage could only be between a man and a woman.

I and so many in my community felt betrayed by that. Our families were under attack and he was doing what was “politically prudent.” And yet, we still supported him. Believing if he won, we would hold him accountable. Help him change.

Last week, I walked through a preview of the Obama Center, much of it dedicated to what President Obama did for the LGBTQ community. Whe he said he “evolved” on this issue, we not only let him without questioning his sincerity, we celebrated him for doing so.

So can we offer some of that same grace to Graham Platner? I think the reason that is harder for many in my sphere is because he is so different from us. None of my close friends have served in the military or would be willing to let their sons go to war (myself included). As a result, we do not know people like Graham who have fought on behalf of ours and other countries or understand how those life altering experiences shaped their opinions. Which perhaps is what makes it easier to discount them.

Graham is definitely unlike most other electeds I have supported in the past. He is not a polished politician like Biden, not a Harvard-educated scholar like Obama. He is as foreign to many of us as I once was to Ann’s Maine family. We are all “from away” in some ways.

In the end - I support Graham for three key reasons. One, Graham speaks to Mainers. All of them. The women in Bar Harbor worried about conservation. My family in rural Hancock and Lincoln counties worried about how they are going to pay their bills. He doesn’t just code-switch between those worlds, he actually belongs to both. That is rare. That is everything in a state like Maine.

Two, Graham really connects with people in an authentic way. And at this time in the world, that feels more important than ever.

And three, I support Graham because he believes and wants to fight for a Democratic party more welcoming than we have become. One that focuses on the issues that impact our daily lives. It remains, as always, “the economy, stuipid.”

In the last 50 years this country has lost its middle class. The American dream my immigrant parents actually lived is now impossibly out of reach, yet the party still argues for who is most “moderate” and inoffesnsive - who won’t push “too much.”

A majority of the people in my life are in the top 10% of wealth in this country, including Ann and me. A number are in the top 1%. And yet we are paying less in taxes than the people who cut my lawn and cut my hair.

People fear a “revolution” - but what we fail to acknowledge is that we already lived through one this past decade. It was the MAGA revolution. And they won. They won the Republican party. The won the courts. They won the shaping of the economy.

And they did it by tapping into millions of people who felt left behind by a Democratic party that took those on the margins for granted.

The only way to a more just future for my son and his generation is to send more people to Congress who not only look like the rest of this country, but who are willing to stand up for it. Who are willing to fight, to organize others, to take risks and when they make mistakes, are willing to listen and learn and move forward.

I started this by saying I am the daughter of immigrants. It infuses every piece of me and how I experience the world. My parents knew what it is to be judged before being known. For many reasons, I know what that is like too. Which is why I have spent my life personally and professionally connecting as authentically as I can with others - and then asking people to look beyond the easy story. To be willing to adjust their narrative by learning more.

I hope people will do the same for Graham Platner.

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Ann and my first Mother’s Day took place on a plane. We were somewhere over the Atlantic, toasting with nervous, electric energy, on our way to Ekaterinburg, Russia, to pick up the child who would become ours. We didn’t know what we were doing. And yet we knew it was exactly what we were supposed to do

David came to us at almost three years old. He is almost 26 now. On May 16th we will celebrate our 23rd Gotcha Day, the day we became a family, the day that divided our lives into before and after.

The story of how we got to him is, in our family’s telling, legendary. It involves a life-sized hooked rug of Vladimir Putin, numerous bottles of vodka, and a man named Sexy Alexi who pursued me with alarming dedication. It deserves its own essay. Maybe its own Netflix series.

But before any of that, before the plane, before Russia, before even the paperwork, there was a nap.

July 3rd, 2000. It was a few months after we got engaged. Ann and I took a midday nap before heading out to watch fireworks from a friend’s boat. Each of us woke up strangely quiet. We had both had dreams, different stories with one similar theme: adoption. At that moment we knew how we were going to build our family. We didn’t talk about it much that evening. We just both acknowledged that sense of peace that comes over you when something is meant to be.

Two and a half years later, post wedding and not long after we moved into the home we would raise our son, we got a referral picture from our adoption agency of a little boy with soul-filling eyes, a scratch on his nose, and a birthdate of July 3, 2000.

That was the first moment we saw our son. The son who yesterday planned an EPIC Mother’s Day celebration that filled our house with balloons and individual cards and two separate flower vases based on our two moms with individual likes. We ate Chipotle, a bowl for Annie and a salad for me, and as always, all leftovers joyfully consumed by our kid.

The pinnacle of our day was a team building adventure for just the three of us. Three people, once strangers, now all wearing matching KP3 tattoos, running through laser mazes, knocking out video asteroids and sweating, laughing and high-fiving when we won enough points to get a KP family prize of a Chicago Sky colored basketball.

As I went to bed reveling in our incredible day, I thought about a recent interview I heard with Jennifer Aniston where she said: “I don’t want to adopt. I want my own DNA in a little person. And that’s the only way, selfish or not, whatever that is, I wanted it to come from me.”

All I could think was “wow, your loss.”

While I understand the desire to be a parent, what I have never understood is the need for a biological connection so fierce that people will go to extraordinary lengths and expense to manufacture one. Some may take issue with me saying that - but, if the goal is to be a parent, there are many ways to become one. Hard stop.

And if you think a biological connection means that you and your child will share a meaningful personal connection, to quote my beloved Brandi Carlile, "the joke's on you."

This may sound judgy. Maybe it is. But after 23 years of other people’s unsolicited, and often unkind, opinions on adoption, I’ve earned my turn.

To be clear, Annie and I did not adopt to “save” a child. We adopted because we wanted to be parents. And we can hold the multiple truths of how adoption helped each of the three of us in individual and collective ways.

So, every time someone explains to me why they can’t get a shelter dog, I hear the exact same reasons people gave us for why they couldn’t adopt. The idea of “you do not know what you get.” Or “they come with unknown baggage and trauma.” As if it’s a far lesser option. A compromise. A consolation prize.

Just as there is no such thing as a truly hypoallergenic dog (the inventor of the doodle has admitted it was his “life’s biggest regret”) there is no such thing as a perfect, predictable child. The doodle did not save you from the sneezing. Biology will not save you from uncertainty. It never does.

As someone born with a cranio-facial abnormality, here is what I also know about biology: it is all a crap shoot. Sure, I look like my father. I scratch my arm the way my mother did. That’s real. Genetics matter. But the thing we know most about genetics is this: children are born who they are.

I have friends with children who have ADHD, autism, all manner of magnificent and exhausting wiring that no one predicted and no amount of genetic planning could have prevented. There is no guaranteed child. There is only your child. And if I have learned anything in the past two and a half decades it is that the only role of a parent is to parent the child you have.

In hindsight, one of the things I valued about adoption was how queer it was. There was something about early LGBTQ families that I loved - because we built them sideways. Our kids often didn’t look like us, but they were of us, as we fought for them with a ferocity that was almost defiant. Adoption wasn’t plan B, it was the whole plan, and it was radical and beautiful.

Now, most queer families are having children the conventional way. IVF, surrogacy, the biological route. And, I get it. We have earned the right to do whatever we want with our bodies and our choices. But if I’m honest, I’m celebrating that alongside a quiet sadness that breaks my heart a little, for reasons I’m still working out.

What I know about our experience with adoption: twenty-three years in, it does not get easier to think about the time before David was ours. It actually gets harder. Because now I know him. His blood runs through me, not biologically, but in every way that actually counts. I know his smile. I know his smell. I know the way he twitches his toes just before he falls asleep.

I also know somewhere in Russia, there are people who move their toes the same way. That’s true. That’s real. I hold that truth gently, because his story, and our family story, belongs to them as well. There is no competition in honoring that. Only gratitude.

Every year on Gotcha Day we read the birth book we made him, filled with pictures and stories of his life before we became a family. We don’t erase the before. We make room for all of it.

We also make room for all the people who parent our child. The chosen godmothers and godfathers who see what we see in our kid and our family: that we have more than one origin story. And more than one predetermined destination.

So yes, Mother’s Day in our house is complicated and grief-touched and beautiful. It carries within it 23 years of losses and everyday moments - of Gotcha Days and birth books - and most importantly, it carries the love of this family. The one we created. By choice. With love. The KP3.

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In 2007, our next-door neighbor Frank built our son David a treehouse for his seventh birthday. David had talked to Frank for weeks about what he wanted, and Frank did his best to accommodate. Our small backyard didn’t quite allow for David’s grammar school dream of a slide that emptied directly into the above-ground pool - but Frank did manage to include a ladder leading up to a trap door, a climbing wall connecting to a secret side entrance, and enough interior space for a kid-sized table, chairs, and plenty of floor space for sleepovers.

We knew from the start that David and his friends would love it. That it would become their fort, their hideout, a safe place just out of earshot of the adults. That was the point. What we didn’t fully anticipate was the breadth of people who would climb those eight rungs, or the number of stories those wooden walls would hold over the years.

The first summer we had the Treehouse, we made a sign at one of those “do it yourself” shops at Navy Pier. David designed it to look like something you would see on a construction site, with a red emblem that said “Warning” and then in thick, black block letters: David’s Treehouse. No Adults Allowed.

We always meant to hang that sign on the front of the treehouse. But never got around to doing so. Instead, it sat in the corner of our kitchen window that overlooked our well used yard, anchored by that wooden structure, for the next two decades.

It wasn’t just the boys who used the treehouse. In the early days, there was an episode involving a neighbor who was watching our house while we were out of town - who apparently used the treehouse to “entertain” one of his female friends. Unfortunately, his girlfriend was not very happy when she climbed the ladder and found them!

Even Annie and I snuck up there a few times with friends - or just ourselves - a glass of wine in hand, the sound of the neighborhood at night below us. We wanted to make a few memories of our own before it became entirely off limits.

That was before seasons of tree and animal debris littered the floor, random decorations from summers past rusted in the corner, and the walls were covered in spray-painted initials and badly drawn body parts.

In hindsight, no matter which adults - or squirrel families - visited the hallowed interior, the treehouse always belonged to the boys. And to that end they seemed to think the rules we laid down were more like…guidelines.

No matter how many times we said no jumping out the side door, and no climbing on the roof, and for the love of God - no peeing out the side door, there was inevitably a moment: a THUD, the silence, and then Nick, feet first on the ground, claiming he had “fallen.” Or Daniel, insisting he had no idea how those footprints got up on the garage, And I don’t even want to think about how they rarely came in to use the bathroom (and how grateful I am for rain).

By high school the treehouse had evolved into something else, a place to escape adults - and sometimes reality - where more teenage activities would take place. While they believed it was all covert, and what happened in the treehouse stayed in the treehouse, what was actually going on was quite obvious to those of us on the ground.

David knew that we would never lie to another adult about what was taking place inside. So, whenever a parent pulled me aside at a school event to share the rumors of what they’d heard took place in our yard, I’d have to gently break the news: if your kid climbed the ladder, they were part of it. And whenever a parent said “oh, my kid would never,” I would smile and say, “hmmm...” fully knowing that - yes. Yes, they did.

And yet. For all the shenanigans - including learning just yesterday that on David’s 16th birthday they fit over a dozen people into a structure built for six - they kept it together. Every time. Two decades, hundreds of kids inside and out, and not one phone call we didn’t want to get. Not one moment we had to walk across that yard and shut it down for good. Whatever unspoken code existed up in those rafters, they honored it. Stay inside. Keep it together. Look out for each other.

The treehouse survived far longer than we expected. Nineteen Chicago winters, a handful of tornadoes, and us going from parents of a young family to empty nesters. Over the years, that kids table remained in the center and at some point the tradition became to write your name on it. Looking at those scribbles along that plastic top was like looking at a weathered map through our family’s past. There were names of kids I saw just this past week to ones I had not seen since the days of little league.

There was Declan who spent so much time with us the year after his Mom died. The Owens who were high school regulars. And even a past girlfriend or two - all who have faded into distant memories since David has been with his serious girlfriend Grace for the past four years.

I guess the only thing David did not do in the treehouse was spend a full night inside. Every year on his birthday, he and his two best friends, Ben and Harry said they were going to do it and each year – just after midnight - I would hear them hustle back into the warmth - and spider and mosquito l free - peace of our basement.

This past weekend I watched David those same two friends - Ben and Harry, the guys who would have been co-owners had we ever set up a treehouse co-op - take it down. From a distance, there was something almost feral about it - the way they each were as seven-year-olds - attacking it with plastic axes and pure destruction. But when I looked more closely, these were grown men. Real axes. And they were careful. Methodical. Handing pieces down to each other, stacking the wood like it mattered. Until all that was left was a pile in the corner.

That treehouse was a sacred space for so many. It was a part of David’s life through grammar school to college graduation. It withstood a pandemic, and its time to come down coincided with David now being one of those adults who were no longer allowed. He and his friends are all old enough to do whatever they want inside our house, or their own apartments, like normal people!

After the dismantling - the boys - the men – sat around the yard for a bit before saying their goodbyes and headed to their respective homes. Annie and I stood alone outside assessing the now empty space. Ann went inside and got the sign from the kitchen window. The one designed when David was seven, that we had always meant to hang and never did. The red emblem. The thick black letters still as clear as when we made it. Warning. David’s Treehouse. No Adults Allowed. Then, she carried it outside and placed it against the pile of wood.

Tonight, we are having Shabbat dinner.

This is not unusual. In the KP household, Friday night is sacred. Not in the religious sense, but in that this weekly ritual has become the foundation in the architecture of our lives. We always light candles. We often eat or drink too much. And we almost never know where the conversation will lead us.

Tonight, I am excited to welcome a mix old and new friends. A couple of queer twenty-somethings who met during their time at AVODAH, a Jewish social justice organization where I once served as Chicago Director. Another “AVODAHnik,” who was part of the very first cohort of corps members, now seen as one of our city’s leaders in restorative justice. Old friends, who have long been our coconspirators in social justice, raising boys and loving cats. And, one of my dearest friends who I often describe as the gentlest people I know.

I rarely set the table thinking about something I want to discuss, but tonight is different. Something in me - something I can only describe as ancestral - will not let me stay quiet about it. And, I feel my ancestors not warning me, exactly, but whispering: speak your truth.

The truth is antisemitism is rising. Hate is rising. And I am scared.

I knew who Hitler was before I ever heard of George Washington. And Castro before Lincoln. Growing up, the Holocaust was not history in our house. It was last night’s dream.

My father was Cuban. Or more accurately, he was a Jewban.

His family’s story is not unusual for his generation. As a child I never questioned how he was born in Cuba, but his cousins in Uruguay and other family in Argentina. The answer, when I finally understood it, was simple and devastating: their Jewish grandparents had been terrorized, killed, and expelled from Poland. When the United States would not let them in, they scattered across Latin America - and built lives in small towns where the Jewish community was known, in code, as los polackos.

My mother’s story was quite different. Her immediate family fled Poland, so technically none of them were “in” the war. But they were all victims of it. Which is why I call my mother - who was sent away from her family as a toddler, to live with a non-Jewish family in another country - a Holocaust survivor.

I was twelve the first time my Mom was hospitalized for an extended stay. Eighteen when she had her first stroke, the first of more than a dozen, along with twice as many heart attacks, over the next two decades. Her death certificate listed the cause was “multiple organ failure.” But when people ask me what my mother died of, so young, I tell them: generational trauma. She had a broken heart - and a broken spirit - that was never given the resources nor a fair chance to heal.

This is why my family, like so many immigrant families, lived by a particular code: take care of your own first. Circle the wagons. Don’t trust them. They will come for us.

I felt grateful to have been able to experience a world that was so much more generous than the ones they encountered. To not live in fear and scarcity as much as gratitude and abundance. To build a home and share a value system with my wife where our Jewish identity was built more on tikkun olam - repair of the world. Not just the Jewish world. But the larger world. To embrace the belief, as the Torah commands, “love the stranger as yourself.”

Then, October 7th happened. And since that day, I have often felt that it is me who is now the stranger. That I must choose only one identity. One loyalty. Am I a Jew first? Or a woman? A mother? Or someone who has dedicated her life to justice? As if those things could ever be separate. As if they were ever supposed to be.

Some of my more conservative Jewish family and friends have allowed their grief to be so total, that they only allowed room for the hostages and Israelis, with nothing left for the horror being experienced simultaneously and continuously by Palestinians.

So many, including people I love dearly, talk about antisemitism but rarely acknowledge the part of what is feeding it now that includes the war, Trump, Netanyahu and decades of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. All of that has given oxygen to a hatred that was never really dormant. It was always right there, just below the surface, waiting.

Then there are my social justice communities – so many of whom failed, badly, in the immediate response to October 7th - when they could not hold Jewish generational trauma alongside the pain of others. For those of us whose families lived in the camps, or who grew up on bedtime stories like mine, the terrorist attacks did not feel like geopolitics – it felt like what we I had been warned about from an early age.

I found myself wondering how have we, people who work side by side - often inside organizations not coincidentally funded heavily by progressive Jews - allowed ourselves to treat Jewish pain as somehow less legible than other pain?

Trying to hold the multiple truths of all of this has been slowly chipping away at my spirit. And today, listening to reports of antisemitic attacks at a preschool in Michigan while looking at images of grieving mothers of the daughters killed in a US airstrike on their elementary school - just about broke me.

I will never fully understand how we got to this place. When we stopped seeing - or perhaps even more importantly - stopped feeling - how our communities are forever interconnected. Our fates and futures are bound together - now more than ever. And with the daily barrage of madness in our world - the only path I vision for us to move forward to justice - to sanity - to peace - is to make a conscious - and sometimes challenging - choice to see each other. To hold each other's humanity as carefully as we hold our own pain.

So, here I am. Speaking my truth. And wearing it as well.

One Friday afternoon in September 2023, I found myself stuck in Cubs game traffic. I looked over and saw a tattoo shop I had been to once before, and on a whim, pulled over.

I had been thinking for a bit about getting an addition to complement the Hebrew tattoo that already lived on my left forearm: a circle of letters spelling Hineni, “Here I Am.” A reminder to be present as well as a reminder of the presence of something larger than myself.

The new tattoo is an infinity symbol, also made of Hebrew letters, spelling: “Im lo achshav, eimatay?” Which translates to the final lines of Rabbi Hillel’s famous quote:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?

At the time, I got the tattoo as a reminder to be brave. To use my voice and actions to stand up for what is right and just. But recently, a dear friend helped me see it differently. If not now, when is also permission to take care. Of myself. To speak my own truth.

So tonight, with our motley and beloved crew of friends, I will practice just that. I will share my fear, my hope, and sit with the complexity of being together, sharing, and holding what is hard without letting go of each other.

Our family Shabbat table has always been a space where I show up fully as myself. Where I am enveloped by the rituals of prayer and feel the love of my ancestors in the candle lights. And where, by the end of dinner, each person leaves full of both food and the promise of creating something better for the week ahead.

Hineni. Shabbat Shalom

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I have never defined myself as a professional Jew. Nor have I been recognized as one.

If anything, I’m far more mistaken as being a professional lesbian even though I have never worked for an organization that exclusively focused on LGBTQ issues.

If you look at my LinkedIn, you’d see I position myself mostly as a professional political progressive. But the truth of the places I have worked has been far more complicated. Several of the organizations - and even candidates - I have been involved with were far more middle-of-the-road than one might expect.

Yesterday, as I removed the dripped wax of our multiple Hanukkah menorahs off our table - and packed them away until next year - I’ve thought about how rarely my Judaism shows up on my resume when so much of what I have done has been shaped by my Jewish values. The two Jewish organizations I have worked with are the least prominent in my professional narrative while in hindsight have had the largest impact on my life and my community.

The first is Project Kesher, an organization that was founded to expand Jewish women’s empowerment in the former Soviet Union. Almost thirty years ago, the executive director reached out to ask me to help them build a real development program and donor base. I remember my immediate reaction clearly: I don’t “do” Jewish organizations.

By the time I reached adulthood, I felt deeply alienated from organized Jewish life - especially as an out lesbian whose political and moral priorities centered on women’s rights and gender justice. At that point in my life, my exposure to Jewish institutions had been largely limited to conservative temples and the equally conservative Jewish Federation.

Coming from a family and extended family profoundly shaped by the Holocaust, my understanding of Judaism had long been rooted in survival. In circling the wagons. In protecting our own. And while that instinct made sense, it also left me feeling disconnected from a community that didn’t seem to care much about me - or the values that animated my life.

Then I met the women of Project Kesher who were the first to teach me about the concept of tikkun olam - repair of the world. And something in me fundamentally shifted. That my Judaism - my Jewish values - could be about repairing the world? My mind was blown and my life was changed.

Grounding my work in tikkun olam helped me realize that what I chose to do was both my calling and my prayer. Understanding that justice, dignity, and care for others could be sacred acts - filled in something that had been missing for me for a very long time. It gave me permission to bring my whole self, my politics, my queerness, and my moral compass into my Judaism rather than holding them apart.

And once that door opened, it never really closed.

The other door that opened because of Project Kesher was one that led me to Russia. I found a sisterhood of people who lived in the country and others who cared deeply about the beautiful, complicated place I had no idea at the time would be the birthplace of my son.

The moments of serenity and divine intervention that happened to make Ann, David and I a family is worth a Substack (or book) of its own. But for the sake of brevity, I just want to note the day I took a leap into Project Kesher - into beginning to leaning into embracing Judaism based on shared values - I was also then introduced to a Jewish community that would envelop me in many life transitions, including being instrumental in connecting us to David.

Bringing David home to Chicago involved mountains of paperwork, multiple trips to Russia, and navigating a language and culture very different from our own. Our agency was supportive, but we were one of many families they were serving. What carried us through was the presence of the Project Kesher women - people we trusted then and who are our family now - who met us when we were in their country, looked after us, and surrounded us with care, love, and an ample amount of some of the most memorable ice cream and vodka (served separately).

My gratitude for all of that has only deepened over the years - in ways that acts of true generosity integrate into your being when given the luxury of time.

The other organization whose impact only fully revealed itself to me in hindsight is AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. AVODAH Corps Members (lovingly called AVODAHniks) - ages 21 to 26 - live and learn together in intentional communal homes and each spend a year embedded in local organizations addressing critical social and economic justice issues.

By the time AVODAH entered my life, I was solidly mid-career and entering middle age. I was already a parent, and someone who had already lost one of my own parents. I knew working there would teach me a great deal about management, leadership, and perhaps most importantly, mentorship. What I did not know is what I would learn about how embracing my faith would be a part of that as well.

Having served on the Chicago board of Public Allies when I was just 24, I had long been drawn to programs focused on cultivating the next generation of leaders. AVODAH seemed like a natural extension of that - a chance to do for others what so many had once done for me: open doors and help build connections. So, I initially accepted the job at AVODAH far more because of its connection to social justice and leadership development than anything related to Judaism.

When I began my work there in 2008, the United States was in the midst of a national recession. Which meant the idea of spending a post college year working in a “domestic Peace Corps” - including AVODAH and similar programs - was gaining traction nationwide.

With that growing enthusiasm came increased scrutiny and wrestling with some hard questions. One, because Corps Members received only modest stipends for their work, there was a perception that the program primarily served young people who could rely on family support. To some extent, that critique held true - though AVODAHniks worked to expand resources and provide additional support, there was tension between their service to repair the world and the access one would have to have to participate in the program itself.

Two, there was also an equally important question of whether AVODAHniks displaced paid jobs that could have gone to people from the very communities being served - and whether service programs, even with the best intentions, might inadvertently reinforce privilege rather than dismantle it. Left unexamined, that risked feeding long-standing and harmful stereotypes about Jews, money, and power.

And last, until that point, much of what AVODAH tracked centered on the experience of Corps Members, not on the experience of the communities they served. Those unresolved questions came to a head one day when - over coffee one afternoon with a potential major funder (who happened to be a mentor of mine) - I was asked to grapple with them directly. She pressed me to define success. In essence, what tikkun olam actually looked like in practice.

I clearly remember my response: “If I believed this work was simply about giving already-privileged young people the privileged experience of serving in Chicago’s nonprofit sector, I would quit tomorrow.”

I went on to explain that success in the moment was fairly straightforward - that organizations would have greater capacity to serve their communities, and young people would gain a deeper understanding of lives and realities they might never otherwise encounter.

But that immediate impact was distinct from the transformational impact that I believed would emerge over time. I saw how my entire professional life - built on making connections and building networks - was impossible to measure. The truth is that sometimes it is decades before understanding the power of what could transpire because of any one specific relationship and experience.

Like memories, external connections and internal growth could not be measured in any meaningful way for many years, because they need time to develop. I asked my mentor for the gift of financial funding and a bit of patience to see if that assumption was correct. She agreed.

I had not thought about that exchange in years, until a few days ago, when I sat down for coffee with a former Corps member from fifteen years back. He’s now married, has a kid of his own, and is doing genuinely impressive work helping some of Chicago’s most essential organizations take a hard look at themselves and figure out how to do better.

One of the things that moved me most about the conversation was him thanking me for an introduction I had made for him all those years ago. He said that me doing so “launched the trajectory of his professional life.”

I was humbled. I shared with him that over the years, I’d followed him - and many others AVODAHniks - on social media and was awed by three things I had seen:

One, the vast majority stayed in Chicago. And not just stayed to live - but stayed to engage. Many are now leaders in community and social justice. Whether as doctors, lawyers, organizers, evaluators, people deep in the daily, unglamorous work of bending that arc.

Two, they remain connected to one another. Not the polite “we once lived together” kind of connected, but real, life-entangled connected. Shared homes. Weddings. Godparents. Collaborations. The kind of bonds you form when you’re young, idealistic, and figuring out how to be the change you want to see in the world.

And three, to me the most important thing, they were doing all this as Jews.

Not Jews who happened to care about justice, but people whose Jewish identity and values were the driving force in how they showed up in the world. Some were working in explicitly Jewish spaces; others were in communities where Jewish presence had once been fraught or distant and their being there quietly shifted that history.

They had grown into leaders. Jewish leaders. Leaders shaping sectors across this amazing city of Chicago.

Many of those AVODAHniks are now the people I look to when the world feels especially fractured. They are able to hold more complexity because they did not bifurcate themselves. They did not choose to lead - nor accept ever being asked to choose - being seen as a Jewish leader or a social justice one. Rather both are simply ingrained in their being.

As a result, their voices are often the ones that rise above the noise - clear, steady, and grounded, like that of a cantor leading a communal prayer.

For a long time, the version of Judaism I carried was shaped by a sense of contraction - a focus on “is it good for the Jews?” before asking if it was good, period. That posture made sense given our history, but it was not something I could fully reconcile with my professional purpose. So I kept my deep grounding in my faith at arms length from work that felt like a spiritual calling.

But over time these women and young leaders I got to work beside, modeled how to show up as Jews formed by memory and caution while being equally grounded in courage and moral imagination. And as a result, slowly, almost without my noticing - I found myself able to do the same.

My life and work have never been defined by one identity or one ideology, but rather by building and learning through connection. It is in those relationships that I have found both my strength and my deepest sense of purpose. And I now recognize, is my truest expression of Tikkun Olam

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A few months after graduating from college, I went to visit a friend who had moved to New York. As I walked down Broadway, taking in the sight of Times Square, the noise of the traffic, and the rush of people passing by me, I felt an emotion that from that moment on would become a lifelong companion: imposter syndrome.

I stopped to purchase a pretzel from the closest street cart, and tried to regain my composure. A group of young men stood next to me, taking a smoke break. They appeared about my age, all in matching dark blue suits and pale blue shirts and I wondered if they - like me - were also feeling both grown-up and playing adult make-believe simultaneously.

Before I left my friend’s apartment that morning, she gave me a list of “must-dos”:

• Get a pretzel. Check!

• Visit Strawberry Fields in Central Park. Done.

• And, go to TKTS to find a matinee and take myself.

Until that day I had done very few things alone. Not a movie, not a meal, and certainly not to see a play. But there I was, standing outside the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, with my solo ticket in hand, to see a preview of a new play called Six Degrees of Separation.

I found my seat and read the Playbill cover to cover twice, trying to look occupied so no one would notice I was by myself.Just before curtain, an older woman - who, in hindsight, was probably younger than I am now - sat beside me. We nodded politely, and I dove back into the Playbill for round three.

Ninety minutes later, I was part of an entire audience on its feet giving a standing ovation that I hoped would last for hours. My whole being was still trying to process Stockard Channing’s character Ouisa’s final monologue, that felt like she was speaking directly to me:

“How do we keep what happens to us - an experience - how do we fit it into life - without turning it into an anecdote and cocktail conversation?”

As the audience filed out, I stayed seated. Unable to move or speak. What Ouisa said was exactly what I was feeling. I had experienced something in the past hour that changed me. I was not prepared to leave the sacred space of that theater - of transformation - to go back into the world as if I were unchanged.

The woman next to me seemed to sense that and stayed seated until we were alone in the empty theater. When we finally spoke it was less about the play itself and more about the experience. Together we reveled in the moment - a moment of shared faith. In the holy act of being present.

ACT 2 - COLOR

I often think back on how afraid I was of being seen alone that day. How hard I struggled - as most do - with that early-twenty-something tension of trying to project confidence, while desperately worrying that everyone else had gotten the memo you somehow missed.

I now understand I was actually not afraid of being seen alone, rather I was terrified of being seen, period. Outwardly, I was the funny, caustic storyteller - the life of the party who made strangers feel like lifelong friends. But inside, I was a funny-faced, closeted young woman who could not imagine loving myself, let alone anyone loving me.

Which is why Gregory Maguire’s book Wicked, became another touchstone piece of art for me. While I enjoyed the play. And I adored the films (Just minutes ago I was listening to “No Good Deed” on full blast - much to the chagrin of every living creature in my home) - my love affair with Elphaba began with my initial reading of the novel - in 2000 - on my first visit to my then-girlfriend’s (now wife’s) family in rural Maine.

While that annual family pilgrimage is something I now cherish, that first trip was one of the hardest moments in our early relationship. As someone with a craniofacial difference, feeling “other” has always been a part of my day-to-day living. By that time, in my 30s, I had perfected all kinds of coping strategies and had become expert at either blending in or bringing people in. But to my surprise, none of my magic connection spells worked on my soon-to-be in-laws.

Nothing in my past prepared me for how alienating that experience would be. This daughter of Jewish immigrants from Chicago - whose idea of time in nature before that trip was my walk to the train - had no idea how to be in a cabin without running water or nightly dinners where your presence was expected but your feelings were not.

To escape, I sought refuge in this book, where a green woman with magical powers carried her outsiderness as both a burden and a quiet strength. And while it would take me years to learn to inhabit the grace Elphaba did, that character - much like my seat mate at the play - offered me a sense of belonging and a permission to feel.

Nothing captures that more beautifully to me than the scene in the first Wicked film when Elphaba jumps out the window and, mid-air, sees the little girl she once was. Realizing she can fly, she screams, “It’s me!” Allowing herself and the child inside her - the one who carried so much hurt - to finally embrace her whole self - and in doing so own her own power.

ACT 3 - LIGHT

There’s a word for that feeling: when something breaks your soul open in a way that lets pain leave and awe enter at the same time. Reverie? Awakening? God? Or perhaps, simply, life.

The film Come See Me in the Good Light is made entirely of those moments. The documentary follows the poet Andrea Gibson and their wife, Megan Falley, after a terminal diagnosis. Every scene unfolds like its own poem - something sacred, to savor, to sit with. The way they look at each other, each glance adding another layer of tenderness and recognition. At one point, I rewound three times just to hear Megan call Andrea “Gibby,” as if repeating it might keep her alive a little longer.

At the end of this heart-stoppingly beautiful film, I felt the same way I did in that theater all those years ago: quietly and irrevocably changed. I understand the irony of a movie about words and poets leaving me speechless. But I truly couldn’t take the full breath needed or find words to talk about it for days, not even with my wife. Rather I needed to linger in that soft electricity between them, and ultimately between us - the gift we as viewers received simply for the act of bearing witness.

The film is a reminder that while some of us are lucky enough to have more time in the world than others,not all of us choose to embrace the messiness of our moments. Yet, it takes unbridled courage to stay with the small things, the places where knowing and love take root. To let them grow inside us - even the painful times - so they become part of the holy fabric that shapes a life.

EPILOGUE

I’ve been trying to understand why I felt compelled to write all of this now. What thread weaves these three pieces of work - and these small vignettes together? And in the end, I think it may simply be the current season.

At a time when we’re all supposed to pause and offer thanks, it feels impossible to do so without acknowledging the weight of the past year. I know I’m not alone in feeling everything so acutely. The horror of news cycles where hate dominates the headlines makes it easy to turn away. But in doing so, we risk turning away from the pieces of beauty and belonging as well.

Now more than ever - I find a sense of urgency - a deep need - to breathe it all in. The heartbreaking, the soul-filling, the ordinary: our community’s collective acts of resilience against ICE. A neighbor showing up on the porch with a cocktail in hand. The quiet of my morning coffee in bed with Ann. Frida’s Frito-scented paws. Moxie’s relentless purr. These are the daily miracles that ground me again and again.

Because in the end, isn’t being present its own offering of thanks? And the lesson, the work, is in the practice of gratitude - in giving moments just enough space and deference to let them shape us, rather than trying to turn them into polished anecdotes, as Ouisa warned all those decades ago.

The highlight of the day is always the communal dinner. We line long tables down the middle of the street, and everyone brings a dish to share. By the time dessert arrives, almost a hundred of us are gathered - neighbors, friends, and extended families. This tradition is decades old; the faces shift, the menu evolves, but the spirit of community only deepens.

Many of our neighbors are immigrants - or, like me, the children of immigrants. So while most tables hummed with optimistic talk for the Cubs postseason, the quieter conversations were about something heavier: the rising fear of being seen, stopped, or taken. People shared how they now think twice before walking to work, riding the bus, or even sending their kids to school.

Yet, in the midst of all that, we paused to sing Happy Birthday to the newest member of our block, a one-year-old whose parents are from Afghanistan. There he was, perched in his Mom’s lap, a candle flickering in front of him, surrounded by neighbors from every part of the world - his face lit by cake and the warmth of a hundred voices. I went to bed that night with a feeling of hope. Believing that moment epitomized the promise of this country. That was what a welcoming democracy looks like.

Until it wasn’t.

Just days later, ICE tore into our block like a militarized storm. First, one whistle. Then another. By the time I got to the porch, a line of unmarked vans had rumbled onto the street - parked in the same spot where we’d sung to the baby just nights earlier.

Masked men jumped out, dressed in camouflage, heavy boots, Kevlar vests with fake POLICE patches, real guns, and all too real rage. It wasn’t clear what - or who - they were there for. The only thing that felt certain was the terror they intended to spread.

Within seconds, they focused their anger toward the moment’s unsung hero: a young white man on a bike, who blew the first whistle - alerting the block and giving the landscapers time to run and hide in neighbors’ homes and backyards. More whistles followed. More neighbors appeared. Shouting. Whistling. Filming. And just as quickly as they descended, the agents retreated to their vans. Our collective panic eased into shock, and then briefly relief. The kind of relief that tricks you into thinking you’ve won.

But unfortunately, like roaches, ICE doesn’t disappear. They just scattered.

A few hours later, as many of us walked together toward the neighborhood grammar and high schools to keep watch, a photo hit our phones. A ladder leaning against a house just two blocks away. A lawnmower left mid-line. Tools abandoned. Two workers, kidnapped in broad daylight, in front of schoolchildren - likely by the same agents we thought we’d chased off.

Since that day, stories and images like these have become our daily realities. Behind my house sits Rosehill Cemetery, one of Chicago’s largest and most historic burial grounds. It’s where industrial icons like Oscar Mayer, Richard Sears and Montgomery Ward are buried. Now, it’s where ICE stages its raids - using a place of mourning as a launching pad for fear.

I recently spoke to the cemetery manager, a kind man of Middle Eastern descent. He told me their legal team confirmed ICE has full access during public hours. I could hear the defeat in his voice as he explained their only recourse was, “to tell staff to carry their passports and a whistle” to keep from being kidnapped in broad daylight, among the graves.

Last week the cousin of my Mexican-American friend, a U.S. citizen, was pulled over while driving home. He showed his passport, only to have ICE agents tear it in half, declare it “fake” based on his thick accent. They detained him anyway, ;eaving his empty car running in the middle of an intersection. It took days for him to be released.

And unlike the common narrative about my beloved Chicago - that violence is confined to so-called “bad” neighborhoods or only within city boundaries - this brutality isn’t isolated. Friends in suburban communities like Winnetka and Kenilworth have had babysitters and caretakers seized from playgrounds - in full view of the children they were caring for.

Whenever we share these stories, someone - usually an attorney - inevitably pipes up with righteous indignation yelling, “But that’s illegal!” As if laws still matter or suddenly now protect many who were never meant to be protected by them in the first place.

It is almost impossible in this moment to not to feel the echo of history.

My mother grew up in Europe during World War II. She was young, but the memories she carried were unshakeable: the sound of sirens, the hurried walk to the bomb shelter in the park behind her house, and eventually, her being sent away as a toddler to live with strangers in another country as the only option for safety. These days - decades later, I often think of my Mom when I wake to the buzz of helicopters circling above, the nonstop bings of texts reporting ICE sightings and watch neighbors teach each other’s children how to run and hide in the basement if their parents are taken.

But there is a huge difference between my mother’s experience and mine. She was alone and vulnerable and had to be hidden, while I am part of a powerful community standing in the open. My mother’s generation saw people forced to wear yellow stars - symbols designed to isolate and dehumanize. Today, we wear bright orange whistles around our necks. Not as badges of fear, but as tools of solidarity. They say: We’re here. We see you. We will warn. We will resist.

(Pictured below, my block party vs a few days later when ICE stormed our block)

A quick reminder of its origin: the hat was a reaction to the 2016 recording of Donald Trump bragging that he was so powerful he could “grab women by the pussy.” And yet, two months after that tape was released, he still got elected (thanks in part to almost 50% of the white suburban women’s vote).

In the months that followed, millions of people - mostly women, many who had never been engaged in political action - or had rarely paid close attention to politics or the possibilities of a Trump presidency - grabbed knitting needles and pink yarn and made themselves, their partners, their kids, colleagues, and even pets a beanie that resembled cat ears.

Then, donning them in solidarity with roughly five million of their fellow Americans in marches across the country, there were declarations of:

“Women’s rights are human rights.”
“This is what democracy looks like.”
“We are the resistance.”
“We will not back down.”

And then… we backed down. Again.

Which was why I did not like the hat. Because if we’re being honest, history has shown us an uncomfortable truth: we are often great at public acts of protest - a hat, a hashtag. We’re even good at standing up, but not always at staying up - day in, day out, together, for the long haul needed to make the change we seek.

Case in point: when I started my career at the Chicago Foundation for Women in the early 1990s, women made up 51% of the population—but the percentage of philanthropic support directed toward women and girls was just under 4%. Today, it’s under 2%. And that’s after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

A similar number of people who marched at the Women’s Marches march in or attend Pride parades each year. Yet for LGBTQ+ causes, the numbers are worse: less than 0.5% of philanthropic dollars go to support this - my - community. That means the amount of money spent on political ads last year attacking our trans siblings’ right to exist was exponentially higher than the money going toward ensuring access to mental and physical healthcare or safe shelter. (For context: about one-third of youth experiencing homelessness identify as part of the queer community.)

For immigrants—those under frightening attacks in Chicago and across the country right now—who make up roughly 16% of our population (or did, before these horrific ICE raids began), the amount of philanthropic funding is less than 1%.

So that’s where we are—and where we have been. But it doesn’t have to dictate where we’re going.

The good news is we don’t need a majority to shift history. Research shows it takes roughly 4% of a population engaged in sustained, peaceful protest to create real, systemic change. Four percent. That’s about four times the number of people who turn out for Pride or the Women’s March. Imagine that energy—not once a year, but day after day, shoulder to shoulder, in defense of democracy itself.

Just think—if every person who ever wore a pink beanie or draped themselves in rainbow gear gave just $10 a month to support one of these communities (or $10 to each), we could raise billions more dollars -

and quite possibly save millions of lives.

Or if everyone who has ever posted on social media about a political issue they care about showed up at the No Kings Rally on October 18th - which I’d argue is the most important demonstration this country has ever seen.

Because the endgame for Trump, ICE, and their enablers is simple: to make us choose the wrong kind of silence. Across the country, ICE agents are operating with open lawlessness, terrorizing families under the guise of “enforcing the law.” Let’s be clear: this isn’t law. It’s the slow-motion normalization of authoritarianism.

If we stay home out of fear, they win by inertia. If we’re provoked into violence, they win by force—declaring martial law, canceling elections, and crowning themselves victors. Either way, they win if we splinter.

History shows it takes about 12 to 18 months for authoritarian regimes to cement themselves. We are right in that window. What can stop it isn’t a single hero or one more viral speech—it’s us. Ordinary people refusing to fracture, refusing to look away, refusing to give in to fatigue or fear.

After such a fractured election - where, almost a year later, Democrats are still blaming each other - we lost because people were “too pro-Gaza” or “too pro-Israel”; or we were “too moderate” or “too far left”; because we cared “too much about trans people” or democracy, and so on. We’ve heard it all. But right now, we must pull together, to save the soul of our country and each other.

I see no other answer than to stand together: calmly, courageously, relentlessly. To keep showing up, not in rage, but in resolve. Democracy dies in chaos; it survives in community. And that’s something we know how to build.

Since ICE has landed in my beautiful city of Chicago, I have been both more fearful than I can remember. I am also understanding now, more than ever, what is meant when we say joy is an act of resistance.

Last weekend, we had some of our dearest friends over for Shabbat. Two are the men we consider David’s “Guncles,” and the other two men are friends we’ve raised our children alongside - each couple people who have opened their homes and businesses to thousands over the years, hosting everything from political events with current (and hopefully future) presidents to friends’ birthday parties and their own anniversaries.

Midway through dinner, one of our friends got a call: someone who worked with them was in danger of being deported. Within minutes, two more neighbors - a couple - were at our table. One is an attorney specializing in immigration and asylum; the other is a community organizer who has helped, housed, and led the charge for immigrant justice and safety. Over Annie’s homemade pie and a little “only-for-special-guests” rum, the group caught up, compared notes, and made a plan to help the person in peril.

The following day was our block party. We live on a block with forty single-family homes, and we have the keys to at least a dozen of them. We all know each other’s kids and dogs, and we show up for one another when someone needs anything—from a spare onion to a babysitter to a buddy to walk with and clear their head.

The best part of the evening is the communal dinner. We put long tables down the middle of the street, and everyone brings a dish to share. Often, people invite their extended families, so by the time dessert hits, there may be a hundred of us sitting together. We’ve done this for decades, and though the faces have aged and changed, the feeling of community has never been stronger.

Many of our neighbors are immigrants - or, like me, the children of immigrants. In one-on-one conversations around the table, we heard how many had been afraid to even leave their homes, to walk to the grocery store, ride the bus, or take their kids to school. And yet, in the midst of all of this, we all stopped to sing Happy Birthday to the newest member of our block - a one-year-old child whose parents are from Afghanistan. There he was - surrounded by the love of neighbors from every corner of the world, celebrating his life between bites of homemade cake and veggie chili.

It was the kind of night that reminds you: this is what democracy actually looks like.

We can change the future. We don’t need everyone to do everything - we just need everyone to do something. To give some time and some money. To link arms in collective action. The kind of solidarity that may start with pink yarn - but must continue, day in and day out, in the small acts of caring for our neighbors and building, as Dr. King said, a “beloved community.”

I would love to credit my decades-long commitment to the health club or Annie’s years as an avid hockey player as the reason we caught up with him. But no, we were reunited with our runaway son only because, at some point, he paused to look back for us.

And so it began: the most painful lesson in parenting: that the whole job is about learning to let go and trusting they will know when to stop, when to turn back, and when to keep going.

Yesterday, we moved David into his first apartment. To be clear, we’ve moved him into places before: a dorm room, a frat house, even a college apartment he shared with friends. But this time is different. This time, if all goes as we hope, David’s mailing address is officially somewhere other than our home on Summerdale Avenue - the place Annie and I bought during our adoption process. At the time, buying the house was a real stretch for us. So to keep costs down, we asked friends to help us paint it and thanked them with pizza, beer, and a bottle or two of Russian vodka to honor our soon-to-arrive Kazakh son.

Yesterday, we watched history repeat itself as David’s friends helped him move in. Five young men - some of whom we have known since they were toddlers themselves - spent part of their day hauling hand-me-down couches and a thrifted kitchen table up four flights of stairs into his little studio apartment. Once again, we bought pizza and beer. But the similarities of our experiences ended there. This was not our place. It is most definitely his.

While packing for his impending move, I stumbled upon David’s high school basketball jersey, which immediately transported me back to another moment of letting go. When David was a freshman, he began dating his first girlfriend. I first saw her at one of his games, sitting cross-legged on the gym floor with her friends - who nudged and teased her each time one of David’s shots went in.

It was my night to drive carpool, so when that game ended, I was eager to leave quickly for the numerous stop-filled-drive home. But I couldn’t find David. As I made my way toward the locker room, I spotted him - or shall I say them - David and his girlfriend, standing close, talking quietly. Their friends lingered a few feet behind, in two small groups separated by genders, circling the couple and each other like awkward planets.

Before I could call out that it was time to go, one of the friends yelled something. David’s girlfriend glared back, held up a single finger to say “wait a minute,” and turned toward David. She put her hand gently on his cheek and kissed him, quickly and sweetly, on the lips.

The moment took my breath away. Not because the kiss was passionate or inappropriate, quite the opposite. It was brief and tender. But what stopped me in my tracks was the double wave of emotion that hit me: first, being moved by how gently and with such care she touched my son. And second, the primal mama-bear thought that shot through me: “Bitch, get your hands off my boy!”

My reaction to David’s affection for others has definitely mellowed in the decade since that basketball game. But my surprise - and ultimately feeling of gratitude and humility - of each stage of letting go has not. These moments sneak up on you: one carpool, one heartbreak, one milestone at a time.

It’s hard to pause long enough, let alone find a meaningful way, to honor each of those milestones along the way. Before David left for college, we decided to mark this one with something lasting: matching-ish tattoos with the letters KP3. A simple acknowledgment of our little family unit - the three Kaplan-Perkinses - and a nod to the truth that one day David’s world would grow beyond us - his family of origin.

The tattoos were also a quiet tribute to Ann and me. We started this as a team of two, always joking that any couple who got matching tattoos was destined to break up - or at least that was the excuse Annie always gave me for not wanting to get a matching Bert to go with Ernie tattoo I had put on my backside before we met!

But the matching KP3 tattoo made sense. It wasn’t just a nod to our little family; it was a marker of what we had built together to make that family possible.

As we prepared for David’s departure to college, we began to look forward to empty nesting and to rediscovering ourselves as a couple and our own individual interests. We got our first taste of that reality when we dropped David off at college on a Thursday for freshman orientation. But by Sunday night, the day before his first official class, David had broken his foot and needed immediate surgery. Just like that, we were all back together again, holed up in a hotel suite near the hospital, falling back into our familiar full-parent mode.

A few months later, just as we’d all found our literal and metaphorical footing, the pandemic hit. Suddenly, it was the KP3 all over again. And while I hesitate to say it, because I know how hard those years were for so many, for us, it was an incredible gift. It felt like we got some of the time back we’d missed with David. Only instead of sleepless nights and diapers, we got to enjoy him as a fully formed, hilarious young adult - hanging out, cooking new recipes, experimenting with craft cocktails, and marathon games of Monopoly or our family’s fiercest competition: Sorry.

And maybe that’s why this transition hits differently. In the last 48 hours, as we wrapped our old dishes in newspapers and shopped for paper towel holders, my phone kept buzzing with reminders of the wider world. A call about the sudden and shocking passing of a dear colleague. Another about escalating violence at the Broadview detention center. A handful of texts from friends running for office with urgent fundraising deadlines. I have tried to respond to all of it: to grieve, to worry, to write checks - all while figuring out how to put together an IKEA bedframe and set the clock timer on David’s new microwave.

And maybe that’s the point: life doesn’t pause to give you a quiet moment to honor the milestones. You just do it in real time, with one foot in the personal, one in the political, both planted in the messy, complicated and painfully beautiful present. And if you’re lucky, your kid will still look back now and then, just long enough to make sure you’re keeping up.

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In 2018, I had a full-blown midlife crisis (see Legacy Lessons, Part 1).

In 2019, I learned to choose my soul rather than my ego (see Legacy Lessons, Part 2).

And in 2025, for the first time since I was in college, I took the entire summer off.

I am so grateful that my colleagues at Movement Voter Project and my wife Annie, supported me in taking some time and space to check-out, reflect and recharge.

Today, my final day before checking back in fully to work, I find myself thinking about the final scene of the TV show Six Feet Under. That moment when the character Clare, in her early 20s, is leaving her childhood home in California to start the next chapter of her life in NYC. Just before she is drives away, she gathers her family on the porch for one last picture. As she is about to click the shutter on her (pre–cell phone) camera, the ghost of her brother Nate appears and whispers in her ear: “You cannot take a picture of this, it is already gone.”

A few moments this summer pulled me back to that scene. The first was when our son David signed a lease for his first “adult” apartment. Like Clare, he too will be moving out to begin the next chapter. While he is only moving a few miles - not across the country - if all goes as we hope it does, he won’t be moving back with us. Rather he will move forward creating other spaces to call home.

The second was when I realized it may be time for me to think about my own next chapter. Unlike in 2018, when I held on so tightly in fear of change due to everything happening in my life in which I had no control, this time I feel peace and gratitude in being able to let go. I feel now like Clare felt in that moment: while my heart may resist the change, my head knows it is time to let go and trust in what comes next.

I began to learn how to do that in April of 2019, when Billy Wimsatt - the founder of Movement Voter Project - first called me. I was hosting Shabbat dinner at my house when he rang and almost did not answer. But my fairy godmother (a progressive leader herself) told me to take the call. She knew Billy and she knew me and she believed something magical might happen if we connected. She was right. What has unfolded over the past six years has indeed felt like alchemy.

Back then, none of us knew what MVP could become. When Billy said on that initial call that he hoped we could move $30M in 2020, I laughed and thought, “This guy might be smoking something, but I’ll take a hit or two.”

That night, Billy asked me what I wanted to do next. My answer: “Blow this shit up.”

I also told him I’d never be a fundraiser again, because after 30+ years I had come to believe the traditional model of raising money was not changing the systems we were fighting against and, perhaps unintentionallly, perpetuating them.

That’s why the model Billy envisioned for MVP: where I could be a “free donor advisor,” felt revolutionary. I could talk to donors I’d built trust with over decades, not to ask for money, but to ask how they wanted to fit into this work and then help them find a way. I could push donors, challenge assumptions, and even say “thanks, but no thanks” when core values were compromised—like when I refused to bring a DACA colleague into a country club that had once excluded Jews and people of color. That moment, choosing values over access, moved another donor so deeply that they gave more than we would have raised at the event itself.

In those early days, we may not have blown the system up, but we certainly set off a few impactful explosions. There’s even the now-legendary story of the Chicago donor who said MVP could never move $30M with Billy in his zip-up hoodie instead of a collared shirt. After the 2020 election and runoffs, when that small, fierce, MVP team tallied $120M moved, I called that donor and said: “You were right. We didn’t move $30M with Billy in a zip-up. We moved four times that.”

The MVP of 2025 is not the same organization I joined in 2019. Nor should it be. It has evolved. So have I. As the organization grew, it inevitably changed—bringing real strengths and also real trade-offs. The shift from scrappy startup to national institution meant new infrastructure, more layers, more systems. Which broke my heart a little, because frankly, I am built to be part of start-ups. I flourish when I get to roll up my sleeves, grab my cheerleader pom-poms, and be part of a team of dreamers and schemers who says, “yes, and…”

Since November’s election, I’ve become more certain than ever that we cannot “dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.” I’ve doubled down on my belief that traditional fundraising—the fixation on “science,” “best practices,” “optimization systems,” and “strategic operations input”—are exactly those tools.

In acknowledging all of this change - much like with my son- I know it also means my role has shifted. I am no longer neeeded to shape decisions, but rather to trust that I’ve left an imprint and that my legacy lives within. In both cases, I fully believe that to be true.

My legacy will not be measured simply in dollars raised, but in relationships deepened and connections forged. I believe the potential for real change lives in the connective tissue of authentic relationships — in those pieces that link individual people to networks and those networks to movements.

I am not sure when I will officially leave the MVP staff (definitely not before year-end). What I do know is that I will always feel part of this team—and that I will continue working with this extraordinary community, and with others in my broader network, on sparking new ideas, deepening trust, and creating the kinds of connections and bonds that hold us together and carry us forward into what’s possible.

While I’ve given many speeches and performed at storytelling events, this was my first time giving a D’var Torah. What made the moment even more meaningful was the chance to connect this week’s parsha, Re’eh, with the life and work of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who JRC honored during the service.

My remarks are below:

This week’s Torah portion, Re’eh which translates to “See” - does not take a slow gentle arc to make its point. Rather, it puts it all out there in the first sentence. It begins with Moses giving the Israelites a stark choice. “See,” he says, “I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.” A blessing, if you follow God’s commandments. A curse, if you turn away.

And that, my friends, sums it up. One of the most unequivocal truths in Torah and in life - is that every day we are presented with choices. And those choices carry consequences - not just for ourselves, but for the communities around us.

Or more simply put: Choose wisely.

From there, Re’eh lays out the commandments, many of which are familiar: the dietary laws of kashrut, the observance of pilgrimage festivals like Passover and Sukkot. And then, the one I want to focus on most tonight: the warning against worshiping false gods and idols.

When I heard the words, “false idols,” it immediately conjured up that dramatic scene from The Ten Commandments: where the Israelites, having lost their faith and patience during Moses’ absence, craft a golden calf - then proceed to dance around it and shower it with sacrifices. All this happens as Ceclie B. Demille’s gives his deliciously 50s-style-cheesy-voiceover that warns us about something we already anticipate: Moses is going to be pissed!

As Moses descends from Mount Sinai and sees the idol and debauchery of the Jews, he gets so angry that he smashes the commandment tablets, and delivers punishments that include killing a few thousands of his own people.

Up until recently I always found this section of the Torah - and the movie - more reminiscent of a Grimm Fairy Tale than reality. I no longer feel that way. Today, the warning about false gods feels truer and timelier than ever. While we may no longer dance around statues, today idolatry remains alive and well. The most glaring example being how the MAGA movement elevated not a golden calf but rather an orange monster to be the one they worship.

But as someone who spends so much of my time thinking about how to change our current political realities, I do not want to spend another minute this week talking about Trump. Especially not on Shabbat.

Instead, tonight, I want to focus on - and perhaps challenge us - to see the false idols we on the left, myself included, have created. The Torah is clear: we’re not supposed to build up others as gods. Period. Yet, time and again, we elevate people, institutions or ideas to unimaginable heights - hailing them as the next savior of our movement. Only to quickly lose our patience – and ever worse, our faith - the moment they do not do exactly what we demand of them in the unrealistic timeframe in which we expect it.

And here is the problem with that pattern: usually we don’t dismantle those we exalted because we have learned our lesson not to build up idols. Rather we lose our faith when they fail our unreasonable purity tests. When we are unable to acknowledge others fallibility as humans, we also lose our compassion for their humanity as well.

Re’eh reminds us: faith without compassion is hollow. And the painful truth is that what we may initially believe is righteous anger is frequently more an inability to acknowledge nuanced difference or tolerate misguided disagreements. In that refusal, we end up wounding our own allies, just as Moses did centuries ago.

A few examples from communities I am deeply connected to. After Pete Buttigieg did so well in the 2020 primary, some in the LGBTQ community began to tear him down as “not queer enough,” criticizing him for being too “heteronormative.” Insisting he work harder for liberation than assimilation without acknowledging the unprecedented nature of his candidacy and the impact it made so many.

Or in the Democratic Party, of which I am very much a part, has spent years talking about how we are the party of young people and change. Yet when David Hogg, a youth leader and survivor of Parkland shooting, stepped up as VP of DNC and called for replacing older, moderate incumbents with younger progressives, he was pushed out of leadership from within his own - my own - party.

And perhaps most important to speak on Shabbat is as a Jew, I’ve been most heartbroken watching how so many in our communities have turned Israel and Gaza into two distinct idols. Demanding that if you are a “real” Jews you must only worship on one side and if you are a “real” progressive, you must bow down to the other.

In each of these cases, the result is the same: when we lose sight of the humanity of others, we ultimately lose our own. Re’eh asks us to “see compassion,” because that compassion opens the door to possibility and allows us to hold the complexity in our community instead of punishing it.

Today false idols are anything that distracts us from compassion. And when we give in to those distracti

ons, we forget the actual work, the blessing, of building a just community.

Re’eh is ultimately about choosing to be a blessing, by choosing compassion and justice, even – or perhaps especially - when it’s hard. Which is an easy segue to speaking about our honored guest, Jan Schakowsky.

There’s no easy way to describe who Jan is to me. She is a friend, a hero, and someone I’ve often jokingly referred to as my “first wife” - because when I worked on her campaign 30 years ago, we spent so much time together that some people thought we were a couple! (I could do worse…) Jan is someone I deeply admire, idolize, really, but only in the truest, most heartfelt and full heart sense.

I met Jan when she was still in the Illinois House. It was late 1996 - just a few months after the Illinois legislature had voted that marriage was between one woman and one man. Jan was one of only 11 legislators to vote against it — and one of only five to rise on the floor to speak out. When I read the transcript of her remarks from that day, it was the first time I ever heard the phrase “the right side of history.” Jan implored her colleagues to join her on that side. Most did not.

Today we know Jan wasn’t just on the right side of history, but her courage had ripple effects that even she never could have imagined. That vote was one of many that paid it forward for generations of families like Annie, David and me, Rabbi Rachel, Julia and their girls, and so many here tonight - as well as to her four queer grandchildren, none of whom existed when she stood alone on that house floor all those years ago.

As most here tonight are Jan constituents, I do not have to tell you what a badass Jan has been in Congress. In addition to being a champion of LGBTQ rights, she has been an agitator when needed - and an advocate always - for protecting women, consumers, seniors, immigrants and for peace. Jan was one one of only a handful to vote against the Iraq War to boycotting a congressional speech by Benjamin Netanyahu.

By refusing to bow to the idol of political convenience, Jan modeled what courage looks like. Her choices weren’t always perfect and certainly not painless, but they were rooted in compassion and justice and most important - in never losing her faith in her community and our collective future.

And those choices didn’t just shape policy — they shaped lives - including those of all of us here tonight.

That is Re’eh in action.

I end by saying there is one commandment of Re’eh that I’m not going to spend a lot of time on, but I would be remiss in not mentioning, is the commandment to tithe and give. For anyone who knows me, you know it’s impossible for me to stand in front of a group and not ask for money. But Annie reminded me that is a no-no on Shabbat, and so I’ll begrudgingly restrain myself.

Instead, I leave you with a Torah inspired math equation. The Torah commands us to take a tenth of what we produce and dedicate it. Think about that number for a moment: ten percent of your household’s income? Have you yet or can you now commit to giving that much to causes, candidates, communities you care about?

It’s a challenging question, and the answer is different for each of us. How we spend our resources of our time and money is another choice - among many of our daily choices - that gets to the heart of what this parsha is asking of us.

“See,” Moses says. “See the choices before you. See the idols we are tempted to follow. See the call to compassion. See the courage it takes to stand apart, to stand for justice.”

For the sake of our children and grandchildren - may we, like our ancestors, and like Jan, model what it means to be – to see – and to choose - the blessings.

Shabbat Shalom.

As I emerged from such a transformative year, I began to see how much of my life had been shaped by the story I told myself about who I was. I was—and in many ways still am—that funny-faced, closeted-even-to-myself kid from Rogers Park who didn’t check the boxes I once believed defined success.

I didn’t marry a “nice Jewish doctor” (or a man, for that matter), but I did marry the most amazing lawyer, who converted to Judaism, and together we’ve built a home grounded in Jewish values. I didn’t give birth to my child, but I’ve had the privilege of raising one of the best humans I know. And while we never earned enough for one of us to be a stay-at-home mom, we’ve built a kind of wealth rooted in the deep community we’ve cultivated.

So if doing things differently in my personal life turned out better than I could have imagined, why was I still afraid that doing things differently in my professional life might unravel it all?

The answer came to me in the last week of that fateful 2018 year when my friend Kim offered to read my cards. Growing up with a Jewban (Cuban Jewish) father meant card readings were a regular part of my childhood, but it had been many years since my last one. I don’t remember most of what Kim told me that day except the first thing she said after looking at the cards I had chosen and spread out on my kitchen table: “Your next chapter is about feeding your soul, not your ego.”

It landed with the force of a truth I already knew but had not named. Until then, I thought “success” meant working for marquee organizations with shiny titles. Like so many of us, I had tied too much of my worth to how I answered the question, “So, what do you do?”

Some of that comes from being a child of immigrants. My parents and elders never sat us down to tell their stories, to detail the wars and coups that had imploded their lives. They didn’t need to. I absorbed it without words: the ever-present fear that nothing is permanent, that you never get too comfortable, because everything you cherish can disappear in a moment.

Because of that, I spent much of my career in awe of how I’d gotten where I was, paired with a constant fear of being found out—of someone deciding I didn’t belong. Working at Human Rights Watch only amplified that feeling. It was as if the mismatch I felt inside had finally been exposed.

Nothing shifted that feeling as much as a conversation with my friend Sarah that took place not long after my old friend Lori Lightfoot had won for Mayor of Chicago. It was a tough race. And although I chaired Lori's political action committee, there had been moments I wasn’t sure she could win in such a crowded field of lifelong politicians with far deeper pockets.

Once Lori was in office, Sarah asked me how I was feeling. “Great!” I said, “I am happy to have helped ensure someone like Lori—a powerful, smart, Black lesbian - has a seat at the table.”

Sarah paused, then said, “Lori isn’t just at the table. She’s at the head of it. And you realize—you’re at the table too, right?”

Me? Until that moment I has not thought of myself that way. I guess all those times others invited me into the room - and the years I spent building deep, rooted relationships with the people I met - earned me a seat. And not just a temporary folding chair either, but one with a cushion and armrests.

I was not at the table because of a job title or the organization on my business card, but because I was a trusted connector whose perspective was valued. That seat gave me something I hadn’t really thought I would ever have: actual power. The kind that allowed me to speak truth to others in power too.

As a fundraiser, I had never thought that was my role. My job, as I understood it, was to make donors feel appreciated and comfortable - whether with the cause itself or simply with me representing it - to give with confidence that their money would be well spent.

I did that job knowing that no matter how many letters I closed with “thank you for being a partner in this work,” that sentiment was never quite genuine. Because true partners could call each other out when actions caused harm or call each other in for deeper dialogue. But up to that point, that was not often my experience. I rarely talked honestly about the root causes of inequality or the power imbalance between us, even - or perhaps especially - when some of those people had become close friends.

So, what would building a real partnership look like? Enter: Movement Voter Project.

In early 2019, just weeks after that soul-versus-ego conversation, Billy Wimsatt, founder of MVP, called me. He laid out this idea he’d been building—a kind of guerrilla donor advising. The premise was fairly simple with a dash of chutzpah: a handful of big donors had stepped up to give Billy the money needed to hire a few of “the most connected people he could find” in key regions. Our job? Connect with philanthropists we knew and make the case for putting serious money into community organizing—especially in communities of color in swing states.

The most immediate goal was to win elections. The longer term goal was to shift power so communities could build and hold it for themselves. And the most radical piece from my perspective? If we did this right, it could alleviate the divide between donors and organizations. It could chip away at the belief that those with money are either clueless or possessed with near-magical insight into communities they’ve never set foot in, and that those living in communities should be eternally grateful, or capable of fixing centuries of injustice armed with nothing but grit and a bake-sale.

What also made it different from anything I had done before: we didn’t care if donors gave directly to the groups we suggested or ran it through MVP. We weren’t chasing credit - we were chasing change. Suddenly, I had a way to use my web of trusted connections to talk less about checks and more about collaboration.

Which was exactly the kind of “blow shit up” or at least “stir shit up” moment I’d been looking for. While it was not smashing the philanthropy model to pieces, perhaps we could together - with real, trusted partnership - bend it hard enough to open new doors. This was the type of legacy I was looking to create.

That January, I turned 50. In April, my father, my “Papi, died - leaving me parentless and far more unmoored than I expected as a full-blown adult with a family of my own. In July, my son turned 18 and began to pull away in the ways kids do as he prepared to leave for college. Then that August, our beloved family dog Floyd - who had shepherded our family from its literal infancy to adolescence - passed away as well.

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention - Trump was President and my wife and I were both going through menopause at the same time. (One of the few downsides of a same-sex relationship with someone your own age.)

In short: I was a mess.

The cherry on the top of the 2018 shit sundae came at the end of that year when for the first time ever—my professional side of life also fell apart.

At the time, I was the Midwest Director at Human Rights Watch: a role that, in hindsight, was never right for me. From the beginning, being at HRW felt like wearing someone else's clothes—figuratively, and occasionally literally. There was an unspoken (and sometimes explicit) expectation to conform to a mold that didn’t reflect who I was. My casual, story-driven, and humor-infused approach didn’t land well. My public remarks were rewritten to be more formal. I was even told I should “dress more feminine.”

Even with all the success I’d had up to that point, and the fact that we were meeting fundraising goals - imposter syndrome was never far behind—always just one critical comment away from taking up prime real estate in my brain.

I started to adapt in ways that chipped away at my authenticity. I told myself I was “doing the best I could” for me and my team—but in doing so, I abandoned the kind of leader I wanted to be. I told myself I was too overwhelmed, too out of place—but the truth is, I let fear and self-protection win out over integrity.

I made choices I now regret. I became complicit in recreating the very culture I found so painful. I expected the same performative loyalty from “my” staff that I was expected to show to senior leadership. I enforced unspoken rules I didn’t believe in like when I knew the development department—over 100 people strong—had almost no people of color. Yet, when I had the opportunity to hire, I chose people who looked like everyone else. When colleagues were struggling, I stayed silent when I should have spoken up.

So in 2018—after a nonstop barrage of personal transitions: from becoming parentless while preparing to launch our son into his next stage, to saying goodbye to our dog, all while navigating hot flashes and hot-headedness—when it became clear that HRW was not the place for me- I was left raw and forced to reckon with who I had become, and who I still wanted to be.

I began to think seriously about legacy. How would I want to be remembered—personally and professionally? What would make my son proud? It would not be about how much money I raised or how many powerful people I knew. It was that I lived my values of connection, equity, and courage. Which I felt like I had begun to lose sight of the more successful a fundraiser I became.

I asked myself that with all the money I had helped to raise, what had I actually done to make a lasting impact. In a world more unjust than ever, had I spent too much of my time giving privileged people extraordinary experiences, without truly challenging them - and myself - to address the root causes of the problems we were supposed to be solving?

Few moments captured that tension more than a donor trip I helped staff in Kyoto, Japan. The main event unfolded in a lavish private garden, surrounded by VIPs and careful choreography. The evening culminated in a sake ceremony, where the CEO was invited to gently crack open a ceremonial barrel of vintage sake. That sake was unlike anything I’d tasted before—delicate, crisp, impossibly refined. For a moment, I was completely swept up in it all: the ritual, the reverence, the wealth. And honestly, the shock that I was even in that room.

The following month, while visiting my in-laws in rural Maine, I shared the story over dinner. After a long pause, my brother-in-law - a house painter who rarely gets out of his state let alone to foreign country - gave me a confused look and shook his head. I am not sure if he said anything. But I clearly remember his blank expression that felt like he was thinking: “How exactly did drinking sake help those people in need?”

Or perhaps the voice I heard asking that question loud and clear in my head that day was my own.

That moment has played in my head again and again—one of many that exemplified the exclusionary, white supremacy-based culture at the heart of traditional fundraising. What echoes just as loudly is my own complicity in upholding it.

When I think about the hours I spent meticulously juggling seating charts to ensure the wealthiest donors had the best views—or the moments I failed colleagues of color by allowing their voices and stories to be used as tools to evoke just enough pity to unlock a donation—or how often we relied on what’s now recognized as “poverty porn” - I feel a sense of remorse. A knowing that for me could have only come with age and experience: that no matter how much money was raised - the end (how it was done) does not always justify the means.

That was the start of a deeper reckoning—the moment I think I truly understood what Audre Lorde meant when she said, “you cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.” I had been using those tools for years. They were shiny, efficient, and got results—real financial results. But they rarely built anything newer or better in the process.

As I’ve moved through this past decade, I’ve started to define what I hope my legacy will be—not as someone who raised the most money or knew all the right people, but as someone who built real relationships, and used those connections to not just to build power or critique the system, but to help shift it all for a common good?

What if there’s another way to move resources? More collectively. With more honesty. More equity. More humanity. What if, as I said in my first conversation with Billy Wimsatt, founder of Movement Voter Project back in early 2019, we could actually blow this shit up?

Recently, I was asked to recommend candidates for a new, well-funded leadership initiative. At first I was excited to learn about it as it seemed like it had a solid team, a thoughtful design and a more than adequate ability to fund its budget. But then I learned about the eligibility criteria and my heart sank. The narrow slice of political perspectives and professional profiles they sought left little room for the kind of tension, growth, and unexpected alchemy that can only happen when people with divergent lived experiences share space and build trust.

Unfortunately, this is not an exception—it’s a pattern. In moments like this, when we’re grappling with the state of our democracy and the urgent need to rebuild something better, we claim to value diversity and cross-sector collaboration. But too often, it’s the same circles in business, philanthropy, government, and nonprofits having the same conversations—pulling up extra chairs only for people who already speak their language and share their worldview.

I care so deeply about this because I am what’s possible when someone who isn’t expected to be in the room not only gets a seat - but then pays it forward by building a longer table. I often say: I’m not supposed to be here. Me: a queer, funny-faced kid of immigrants—holding space, holding power, holding privilege. But I’m here because others opened doors. And I’ve spent my professional life trying to keep them open for others.

My journey wouldn’t have happened without a handful of transformative networks in my life. Two in particular stand out. The first was an informal network that began with the founding staff and board of the Chicago Foundation for Women. The second was a more formal network when I was part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership Fellowship.

Not long after graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1990, I applied for two jobs. One was at Blockbuster Video—because I’d grown up working in my family’s video and appliance store (which sadly went bankrupt when I was in college). The other was for a temporary role at the Chicago Foundation for Women. Fortunately, CFW called back first—otherwise, I might still be slinging Betamax copies of Dirty Dancing out of my trunk.

From the moment I walked through the doors at CFW, I was treated as a trusted part of the team. The women I met—on the board and the staff—introduced me to a Chicago I had never seen growing up in Rogers Park. These were leaders across communities I barely knew existed: from philanthropists whose names adorned the city’s buildings—Pritzker, Kipper, Harris—to executive directors of organizations like the Lesbian Community Cancer Project, APNA Ghar, and the Chicago Abortion Fund.

What made it so powerful was that I wasn’t just given a job—I was given access. I sat in rooms I didn’t even know existed. I attended black-tie galas with civic leaders, joined roundtable discussions on domestic violence with policy makers, and soaked in the language and rhythms of communities far beyond my own.

What started as a six-week temp role turned into six years of learning, listening, and connecting. I came to understand that my role wasn’t just about raising money, it was about bridging gaps. About being a conduit between people and spaces that needed to find one another. And when a direct connection wasn’t possible, I could at least serve as a translator—someone who could help people hear and understand each other across differences.

That experience was only magnified when I became part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership Fellowship (NGL) in 2002. I was 34. By then, I had helped grow the Chicago Foundation for Women from a scrappy start-up to a civic institution, was part of the team that got Jan Schakowsky elected to Congress, was married (not in the eyes of the law, but certainly in the eyes of our community) to my wife Ann, and deep in the adoption process for our son. I felt seasoned professionally and grounded personally. I thought I just needed this NGL experience as a resume builder to help me get to the next level in my professional life.

To be honest, my only reference point was the year before, when I’d participated in Leadership Greater Chicago (LGC). It remains one of the most prominent networks in Chicago and I am grateful for the relationships I built there. While a number of the individuals I met there remain dear friends, the program itself was uninspiring. We all knew we were chosen to “represent” a slice of Chicago—one cop, one priest, one city administrator, one exec from a top law firm, one corporate up-and-comer. It felt like the start of an old joke: “Three LGC fellows walk into a bar…”

There were also a few nonprofit folks in the midst. I remember joking with the other woman in the cohort with a background similar to mine that they must’ve picked two of the same person by accident. She laughed and explained her theory: they only wanted one lesbian -me - and one fast-talking Jewish woman in nonprofits - her. And during the program, there was not a great deal of opportunity or encouragement to share multiple identities and perspectives.

But NGL was different. From the outset, its mission wasn’t just to build a network—it was to strengthen U.S. democracy by fostering deep, strategic collaboration across diverse leaders and sectors. And the people designing it took every word of that mission seriously.

I was in the final of five cohorts. Like any youngest child, we were sure we were the favorite. By the time we arrived, most kinks had been worked out, starting with how they built the cohort.

I like to say they “Noah’s Arked” us - as no one in the group could claim to be the only one. LGBTQ folks? There were six of us. Muslim? Four. From Chicago? Three. West Wing experience? Two. Republicans? Yes, we even had a few of those too. For every geography, sector, race, class, and age experienced, there were others who also identified. There was someone else who got you. Or - even more unsettling - did not.

This was a room full of people who, like me, were used to being seen as leaders and experts in specific communities. But now, in our NGL cohort we were surrounded by peers who could challenge our assumptions. But it worked because they built in the time and trust to make it work: expert facilitators, hard conversations, group exercises and shared meals and plenty of time to decompress in often spectacular surroundings.

First, I learned to challenge my own assumptions of others. In one session we were discussing various issues before Congress including some tribal ones. Two cohort members were Native American, each lawyers, each community leaders. Having been around so few in that community prior to NGL, I was naive enough that I would have taken anything either one of them said as truth for their entire community. However, that did not happen because each had such different opinions: as one’s work focused on the reservation where she and her family still lived and she served in tribal leadership, and the other’s work focused on advocating for Native communities in the Supreme Court while living in D.C.

Most important however is NGL made me challenge my own perception of myself. Which honestly at times was the most humbling experience other than parenting.

I remember one discussion during our first days together where I said something flippant about wanting to “go beyond race.” I believed because I had spent years working alongside Black and Brown communities, I understood enough to focus on solutions instead of identity. My comment didn’t land well and I could feel it. Feeling embarrassed and misunderstood, I shut down.

During a break,a woman I did not know at all at this time, walked over to check in with me. It was the first time I truly heard her gentle, yet direct voice. I don’t remember her exact words, but I will never forget how gracefully and clearly she explained that people of color don’t get to “move beyond” race. Race moves with them—shaping every interaction, every institution, every day. If we truly want to work together, she told me, we have to acknowledge that.

At that moment, I got it. I heard her. She heard me. I checked back in to learn more. To be better. That woman is now one of my dearest friends and a part of my forever kitchen cabinet. I think back to that moment often as I have tried to play the same role to others who say something as misguided about race as I did.

These moments of assumed good will and shared vulnerability created something deeper than a network. They made space for real reckoning, real connection, and the kind of collaboration I couldn’t have imagined when we first began.

I know I was not alone in this transformation. Because of NGL, a man who started out as a stereotypical “wealthy, white guy, has become a champion for investing to end mass incarceration, advance gender equity, and support community-led food sovereignty. I personally have become deeply connected to Indigenous organizers and tribal leaders whose work I now support and have gotten to work within. And I’ve built lifelong friendships and collaborators across every imaginable divide.

I’ll take credit for one part: I’m relentless about keeping in touch. I nurture relationships the way some people tend gardens—with intention, consistency, and genuine care. As a result, today, my close circle includes former NGL fellows whose titles range from MacArthur “Genius”, Time 100, Ambassador, Philanthropist, Mayor, Author, Congressperson, Returning Citizen, and yes, even “The Apprentice” Winner.

But titles aren’t the point. The point is: We trust each other. We still turn to each other. We show up for each other. Because a long time ago someone designed a space that allowed us not just to meet, but to matter to one another. We weren’t brought together because we already agreed; we were brought together because we were different. And we wanted to learn from one another.

In a time when so many of us are siloed—by geography, by media bubbles, by social algorithms and even neighborhoods—we need to create spaces like NGL more than ever. Not more rooms where one must pass a litmus test before being allowed inside.

I am thinking about ways to make this happen. To build a longer table. Let me know if you are interested in hearing more.