Don't Get Too Comfortable, It's Time to Save Our Country

This Substack is for those of us who know we’re either beyond our midlife years—or standing right at the edge of them. I think many of us imagined these chapters as a gentle downshift: years, or if we were lucky, decades of leisure. A well-earned rest.

I know I did. I daydreamed about my later years as a long stretch of travel, time with family and friends, and finally giving myself permission to return to the interests and hobbies I set aside while life was busy and demanding.

Photo by Sandra Seitamaa on Unsplash

What I didn’t imagine, what none of us planned for, was that these years would become years of activism. That instead of settling in, we’d be called to stand up.

So it’s time that I put the cover back on the sewing machine and pick up a poster for a protest.

We have to save our country—and we have to do it now.

And if I’m being honest, we owe this to the generations coming up behind us. We are partly responsible for where we are now. If we had been paying closer attention, if we had pushed harder, we might not be here.

We wouldn’t be living in a country where brown and black people can go missing without questions being asked. Where immigrants are feared instead of respected—despite having proven, over years, decades, and centuries, that they give more than they take, that they are often the very best of us.

We wouldn’t be in a place where mothers have to talk to their daughters about whether this is still a country they can safely build a life in. We wouldn’t lie awake worrying about justice, about whether the rule of law still matters, about whether common sense will prevail in the face of national and global challenges.

So what do we do? This isn’t rocket science. Show up. Attend a protest or a rally. Speak up when your uncle goes off on immigrants at the dinner table. Take up space, real space, wherever you are, and don’t let racism, bigotry, or sheer idiocy have the last word.

The people of Minneapolis have shown us what action looks like. Now it’s on us to back them up. Get off the couch. Use your voice. Support organizations that actively push back against racism, misogyny, and ignorance.

It’s your country.

Make it better.