Praying and Acting in Liminal Space

Following Session 6: Praying and Acting in Liminal Space

March 10, 2026 — April 14, 2026

Synthesis Statement

While Witnessing and Grieving felt like foundational work, the quiet, behind the scenes efforts that make change possible, Praying and Acting feel a bit more engaged. But they are not really. To actively Witness, and to actively Grieve are critical, and it takes conscious effort. I want to be clear about that. Yet, somehow, Prayer feels more outward facing, as does Acting. This session, we dove into those. 

We open with an acknowledgment that there is something greater than ourselves. Something that connects us in witnessing, that opens our hearts in grief. That something, that invisible means of support, is always there, waiting for us, ready to shine forth. 

Prayer is one way we access that something. And we discover four types of, or approaches to, prayer: 

• Prayer as a Primal and Primitive Cry for Help. This is when we experience something and somewhat involuntarily cry out, ‘Oh My God’. 

• Prayer as Supplication - often a prayer for others in profound need. Can be for people, planet, species. 

• Prayer as Praise and Thanksgiving - expressing gratitude or recognition for something beautiful, no matter how simple or astonishing. 

• Prayer as Giving to Spirit - Perhaps the most paradoxical of the four. What can we give to Spirit? Only that which Spirit does not have on its own. Our Need. Our Fears. Our Worry. Our Doubt. 

We then discussed acting in the world and how hate cannot fix hate; violence cannot fix violence. Only kindness and love can fix what is broken. Thus, we should practice acts of kindness and love, for one another, and for the planet at large. Further, we must recognize that some acts will be challenging. Standing in the face of insult and injury, standing in the face of humility. These all may occur. And the oppressor, the agitator, the offender may not be learning a lesson at that moment, but we pray now and always that our act of nonviolence, of passive resistance, of loving kindness, of compassion serves to help others see light, love, and a (even if only a small) glimpse of a better future, of a New Story. 

Report on Practice

As I reflect on the different types of prayer, Cry for help, supplication, gratitude, giving to spirit, I see that they are at once inclusive of both witnessing and grieving as well as praying and acting. Prayer itself is an act, and the contents of that prayer are to acknowledge what you are or have witnessed, and to share in the grief. 

When the prayer is a cry for help or supplication, we are facing a challenge or a need directly. That is witnessing. 

The fact that we can feel the inherent pain, that is grieving. 

We are, at that moment praying, which is an act. We are giving ourselves in that moment to the space to shift who we are in the world related to that event about which we are praying. 

This is no less true when we offer prayer as praise and thanksgiving. For when we find beauty, when we rejoice in the wonders of nature, of humanity, of the simple or the incredible, we are then too, witnessing. 

Our hearts are opening, as they do in grief. We may or may not be grieving per se. We may be ‘sad’ for others who do not have the opportunity to experience this same joy, this same gratitude for this moment as we are right now, so the grief may not be explicit, but our hearts are still opening, widening, and becoming more welcoming. 

And here too, we are in a moment of prayer, we are acting, standing in this moment, allowing the light of Spirit, of the Something that is bigger than ourselves, of the something that is here rather than nothing, to shine forth. 

And here again, that act allows light in at that moment and also allows us to become just a bit better attuned to allowing that light in at any given time. 

With Prayer as ‘Giving to Spirit’, this is another approach to emptying ourselves, to making ourselves fully open and available as a channel of light. When our fears, worries, and doubts get in our way, distract us, we cut ourselves off from experiencing a direct connection. We cut ourselves off from the gratitude we can feel when we are offering a prayer of praise, or experiencing a connection of beauty. And so, this last prayer, of giving to Spirit, is a vehicle to help us return to that direct connection. 

They all are, just from different places. All roads lead to Spirit. They start at different places. They start from different areas of the human experience, and then take us back to where we need to go. Different kinds of prayer for different starting points. 

A Reflection on Passover and Easter

As I reflect on Passover and Easter, I cannot help but find my own story in them. Yes, I am egopomorphizing, but that’s what we do, right? This is not a theological reading, but a personal reflection on what these stories stir in me.

Passover reflects upon the arduous journey of a people who have suffered: enslavement, wandering, hunger, tragedy, and loss. And for some, the loss of their firstborn child. All of this as a kind of death of the old, a letting go of what had held them in bondage. Not until they were able to free themselves from this could they move toward the promised land. This is not to say they had to forget the old. Jews still today remember this story as part of the Passover tradition. Not to erase what came before, but to carry it forward in a new way.

Similarly, Jesus lived a life where his way of seeing the world was more embracing than that of his peers, and for that, he was persecuted, executed. But in that death, something of the old, sin, separation, the weight of the past, was carried through and released. And what was able to be born was something fresh, pure, and new. A new story, a new way of being, a more direct connection to God.

On Passover and Easter, we can, if we so choose, celebrate that when we let go of the past, accept the present, and stand in love with our brother, sister, and neighbor, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is here for us, always and already. It is up to us, all of us, to open our hearts together and embrace honesty, truth, love, healing, and one another, now, in this moment, always.

Hard. And remember to embrace that, says Pema. 

This period has been hard. I got excited about an opportunity/engagement that would have moved me closer to environmental stewardship with a good portion of my time. I was really excited about that. I find in myself both a primal connection to the earth and an intellectual desire to act in alignment with that. I don’t doubt that we all have it, but it seems to move me more than I see it moving others. In my excitement, I had numerous conversations (in my head) about this opportunity. I was thinking about it out loud, on paper, and in my mind, in all different ways. I was giving it many hours a week. Some of this was preparation. And some of it was perhaps my not being present. It’s hard to tell the difference. 

Well, the opportunity came and went, and did not, ultimately, include me. This was hard for me for a number of reasons. In part, I was let down. I had been, as I may have mentioned before, excited. I was envisioning a new story for myself. I could see how this involvement would bring new sources of inspiration, engagement, contribution, and revenue. All of that was positive. On the other hand, I was nervous. I have been managing some vestibular symptoms that limit my engagement. My ability to control my schedule has proven highly valuable, and any new engagement opens the door to more controlled chaos, more time for others, etc. So, I was worried about how to balance that in. 

Financially, the last two months have been a crunch for me as well. My consulting practice works well for me, generally speaking. However, one of my clients recently required a significant increase in support, though we have a set monthly fee structure. Normally, we just amortize the costs over the year. They have some busier periods and some lighter periods, and we have been working together long enough that we have it pretty well calibrated. However, they have had some significant changes recently. They acquired another company overseas, which is leading to all sorts of operational, structural, and messaging changes. So, I have been working from high-level strategy to tactical level execution across marketing and operational needs on multiple continents. That meant working with much more of the team within a much more condensed period of time than typical. Over the course of the year, it's fine. But over the last two months, my expenses have exceeded my income, which is stressful. I know many people live paycheck to paycheck, and often at a deficit. I have lived that way on and off throughout my life. For years, as I started businesses, I ran on debt to get up and running. Fortunately, now I am overall cash positive and have enough savings that these two months are not going to destroy me, but still, having to ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ is really stressful. 

I once had a tarot reading where we were walking through my life’s journey. I was at the end of high school or possibly early college at the time. The reader turned over the second-to-last card, which showed a man pierced through with swords. He said, ‘...and your journey will be painful.’ The next card suggested I would make it through. I remember how stark that sequence felt. Pain, then continuation. It’s a pattern that shows up again and again, certainly in my life anyway. People who don’t make good on promises, people who steal from you, my wife’s rather serious health issues, my own health issues, my daughter’s death. I keep thinking this is hopefully the last round of pain, and then I finally get to live the good part, but man, I just don’t quite get there.

I saw a video with a Buddhist Nun, Pema Chödrön. She said when we truly let go, we are always falling. There is no ground. But it is our growing comfort with that ungroundedness that we truly seek. Our great opportunity is to recognize that when we feel that discomfort, that contraction, that queasiness, it is an opportunity to practice once more becoming comfortable with that which is uncomfortable. We should keep finding that edge and practicing. I’ll be honest, between my vestibular symptoms, my financial concerns, my wife’s health, my daughter’s passing, etc., the last few years of my life have been full of uneasiness. Lots of opportunities to practice. I found in that stewardship opportunity a possible new story, and I got excited because I saw that maybe I was going to walk through a door that would change everything. But in retrospect, I realize that was unrealistic.

Standing as Space

Finally, this period we were to write about what it means to us to stand as space. For me, when I think of this, my inclination is to envision a clearing, an open channel. We are an entry point into the world for divinity, for Spirit to come through and help deliver what is needed here, now, in this place, in this time. We have to be careful though. The more we think this is us, the more we get in the way of that energy coming through. The more formless, the more emptiness, the more true. 

This does not mean say nothing, do nothing. No, we will still be out and about. We will still encounter. And we will still be moved to speak, to take action. In some cases that action will be a powerful move, a powerful voice, and in others, it will be to stand quietly, and powerfully still. An article I wrote this month, My Heart Doesn’t Fit in a Box, feels a little like that. It was an output that came as a result of the movements from liminal space, witnessing > grieving > praying > acting. And as I wrote it, I was trying to remain as open as I could to allow the right words, the right points to come. And it was an offering to the world, to those who needed to find that piece. 

But I want to be careful here, and this is territory that I think can easily be muddled and confused. Many wars are started in the name of the divine or out of a sense of righteousness. So, it is easy to elevate your sense of self and believe what you are doing is holy, morally superior, etc. So, I don’t want to claim that. 

I started training in energy medicine in the late 90’s and have learned a handful of techniques since then. I am not a heavy practitioner, yet I do feel the movement of energy and occasionally I’ll work on myself or someone else. What I know from this practice is that while I can certainly sense the energy moving through me, and I can feel where it might be flowing or somewhat blocked on someone else, and while I have some techniques to help release/rebalance, and restore a more natural flow, those are just techniques. The energy is not mine, it is that of the universe. It is not my will that decides if it is going to work or not. It may or may not be up to the other person how much they are willing to accept that energy/spirit/prana/flow/divinity to work within them. But the source of that energy is more primal, more fundamental than all of us. It ties us all together, connects all people, plants, animals, the earth as a whole. 

For me, standing as space is offering a moment, however small, for the world to heal. But it’s a big world and needs a lot of healing, so it’s way more than any one person is going to be able to do. All we can do is our part. 

With love, 

Adam

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My Heart Doesn’t Fit in a Box

A reflection on trans lives, human complexity, and the limits of our labels

It’s not uncommon these days that I involuntarily offer primitive prayers, crying out Oh My God. I am deeply saddened, and have been for years, but increasingly so, for the ongoing progress in the assault on the trans community. From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. I am sorry you are living in a time when so many people are either afraid, ignorant, or have ulterior motives and using you as a scapegoat.

But let me step back for a moment.

At the highest level, we are all people. We all have hopes, fears, and lives shaped by both biology and experience. Human variation is real and worth appreciating. The problem is not that this variation exists. The problem is what we do in response to it.

But this is not abstract. Right now, a specific group of people is being targeted through policy and public discourse in ways that have real, immediate consequences for their safety and dignity.

However, out of fear, out of ignorance, out of a desire to hold certain things fixed, out of distraction, many have chosen to scapegoat this community, who, through no fault of their own, do not fit within what some have decided are our social “norms”, and now are a source of significant problem in our society. Though this community makes up (estimates vary but let’s say) <1-5% of the population, many legislative bodies are spending a disproportionate amount of time actively making the lives of these individuals significantly harder. As I recall, the role of government, at least in the US, is of the people, by people, and FOR the people, and in order to form a more perfect union. Union as in coming together, not as in eradicating diversity. Yet, in the last month or so I have seen:

Kansas retroactively canceling driver’s licenses if they did not match one’s designated gender at birth. So, if someone had a then canceled license, they would be driving illegally if they were driving to get the ‘legal’ license. Moreover, the Kansas law also established what amounted to a bounty – a private right of action allowing anyone who suspects someone is transgender to sue them for $1,000 in damages for using the "wrong" restroom in government buildings.

Ohio lawmakers passed a bill in the House (not a law yet at the time of writing this article) that wearing makeup while performing that is inconsistent with your designated gender at birth is a crime. That seems highly discretionary and problematic in terms of enforcement. Many men wear makeup, particularly on camera. Some just anyway. Many women don’t. Maybe ‘Big Makeup’ will step in and fight this one. Further, who’s to say what performing means. If a woman who presents more masculine is playing guitar in the park, is she breaking the law? This is a pretty open door to the erosion of civil liberties, but that is a bigger picture and I don’t want to take away from the clear and present assault on trans people here and now. 

Idaho passed a law that one must use the bathroom associated with the gender that was designated at birth. So, now someone in Idaho, designated at birth to be female, but presenting with broad shoulders, large biceps, and a full beard, must use the women's bathroom. That makes everyone uncomfortable. It may cause a fight. It may cause a call to the police resulting in wasted time for law enforcement since that person should be using the women’s room by law. Alternatively, if the person uses the men’s room, they are now breaking the law and could end up in jail. Nikson Mathews, a trans man with a beard and chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, recently testified: "Every single day when I'm out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked."

Again, the operative concept here is ‘designated gender at birth’, and that is inherently problematic. Regardless of how we explain any of this, no one should have to justify their existence in order to be treated with dignity and basic rights. It’s also worth acknowledging something we often oversimplify when we talk about sex and gender. The reality is far more complex than two clean categories suggest.

There are well-documented biological variations that complicate the idea of a strict binary:

• Some individuals are born with XY chromosomes but develop typically female bodies due to androgen insensitivity

• Others are born with XX chromosomes but develop typically male characteristics due to hormonal conditions

• Some people have variations like XXY chromosomes or chimerism, where multiple genetic patterns exist in one body

These are not edge cases in theory. They are part of the natural variation of human biology.

There is something worth naming about what is happening underneath all of this. We label things in order to understand them. Classification is the foundation of science, of knowledge, of how we make sense of a complicated world. That impulse is not wrong. But labels have a shadow side. When we draw a hard line and say this is one thing and that is another, we sometimes mistake the line for reality. The line is ours. Nature does not always agree.

Light does not stop being blue before it becomes green. A person with autism does not flip a switch between functional and not. These things exist on spectrums, and the spectrums are real even when our categories are not. The same is true of sex and gender. As the biology above demonstrates, the variation is far greater than two clean boxes would suggest. When we force a spectrum into a box, we do not eliminate the spectrum. We just make it harder for people to live safely within it, and in some cases, we make it illegal.

I am writing this for a few reasons, and I want to be honest about all of them.

First, for those who are suffering, you deserve to know you are not invisible. Many of us see what is happening. Many of us are angry. Many of us are grieving alongside you, even if we are not living it the way you are.

Second, for those who are still finding their way to understanding. Those who sense that something is wrong but haven’t quite landed on why, or who have been handed a narrative about trans people that doesn’t quite sit right. I hope the specifics here help. Not to argue, but to illuminate. The more clearly we can see what is actually happening to actual people, the harder it becomes to look away.

And third, I want to be careful here, because this is not a moment that calls for easy optimism, and I don’t want this to sound like cold comfort or a reason to wait. But I do see something unexpectedly hopeful buried inside all of this cruelty. Not enough to make today okay. But enough to hold onto. Bear with me.

What I find somewhat ironic about this urgency to say no, trans is not real. It is a social construct. If you are a boy, you are a boy. If you are a girl, you are a girl. Well, then to that I say fine, but you must then refine your understanding of what a boy or girl is. Girls can have beards and boys can have breasts. Girls can have broad shoulders and play rough while boys can enjoy makeup and wear dresses. If you drop the rules for what makes a gender a gender, then trans people don’t have to fight to be another gender. Perhaps conservatives are actually paving a way toward a warmer embrace somewhat in spite of themselves.

But that is way down the road and may or may never happen. Today, we have brothers and sisters, friends, family, neighbors who are being targeted, disenfranchised, attacked physically, verbally, and legislatively. As of March 20, 2026, there are 500 anti LGBTQ bills in the US. 500 bills targeting less than 10% of the population. We have so much more significant issues than what makeup people are wearing or what bathrooms people are using. In my role, I’m continuing to think about what it means to show up in ways that protect dignity and belonging at the local level, even when the broader environment feels uncertain.

To all of you who are suffering, you are not alone. Many of us see you. Many of us hear your cries. Many of us are trying to help where we can. I am deeply sorry, and I hope our society at large can change faster than it will.

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Learning to Live in Liminal Space

Synthesis Statement: Sessions 1-5

October 2025 — February 2026

Recognizing the Polycrisis

This program is available to anyone, but it will likely resonate most with those who feel a calling — people deeply troubled by the polycrisis unfolding in the world and wondering how they might help. Not merely to observe or cope, or simply optimize what sits within their own circle of influence, but to help steward something genuinely better. That sense of calling becomes the entry point. It is also, in many ways, the first practice: saying yes to a path whose destination is not yet visible.

The world we are asked to face is real, and in many ways it is dire. Ecocide. The human-driven disruption of the climate. An unstable and concentrating global economy. The erosion of civility. The weakening of democratic institutions and the rise of autocracy. These are not distant abstractions. They are the living conditions of our moment. The uncertainty circles not around whether the Old Story is ending, but around how it will unravel and over what time.

What does the world look like 10, 25, 50, or 100 years from now? As artificial intelligence displaces entire categories of work, as climate change reshapes the face of the planet, as wealth and power consolidate in new and intensifying ways, these questions are not rhetorical. They hang in the air. They are the reason this work matters.

The complexity of these problems exceeds our capacity to solve them on our own. We must admit that hubris helped bring us to where we are and allow humility to guide us forward. While science works hard to find solutions, will it reverse climate change quickly enough? Will we find a way to halt species loss? Will our concern for ourselves individually allow us to see past ourselves and care for others? For marginalized communities? The world’s poor? 

Yet, the deepest truths of the world's mystical traditions remain the same. Stay humble. Stay open. Rumi writes: Be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no. Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up…When we are able to make friends with that beauty, we shall become a mighty kindness. Jesus pointed out the difficulty for the self-sufficient man getting into paradise being comparable to a camel threading the eye of a needle. We need to be open, to be humble, and to be willing to receive help. 

Practice as Foundation

And so, in this program we practice. Daily. We commit to some sort of spiritual engagement. Prayer. Meditation. We find music that inspires. We find and create poetry and art. We write. We create community. We transmit and receive transmission. These practices are not decorative. They are the means by which we shift our interior space so that we can better face and serve the exterior world.

Through this work we begin to recognize something uncomfortable: the Old Story is not only out there, in governments and corporations and markets. It is deeply entrenched in our way of life. It is the story most of us were raised inside. It shapes our instincts about time, productivity, sufficiency, and control. The interior reckoning and the exterior reckoning are inseparable.

To move away from the Old Story we must begin, slowly, to detach from it. Not through rejection or rage, but through a conscious stepping away. We ground ourselves in a space that allows us to see the dying old clearly, to live among its institutions, and yet not be enveloped by it. We give it no heart. Only our witness, our grief for those harmed by it, and our energy directed toward what may come next.

The New Story and Its Seven Qualities

If the Old Story is ending, what replaces it?

The program suggests that the New Story cannot be built simply by opposing the old. The more we focus our attention on what is dying, the more power we inadvertently give it. Instead, we are invited to become a seedbed for what is emerging, placing our attention, imagination, and effort into what is life-giving.

Seven foundational qualities help orient that emerging story:

1. Respecting women and feminine principles

2. Respecting the land as sacred

3. Time no longer seen as linear

4. Non-hierarchical dynamics of power and control

5. Communities of all types

6. Oneness

7. Love

These qualities are not inventions. They represent the recovery of wisdom that has long existed in indigenous traditions, spiritual teachings, and the natural patterns of life itself. Their suppression has caused profound harm. Their recovery opens the possibility of healing.

As the program reminds us: Through it all will run the axis of love, from the center of the Earth to the center of the cosmos, present in every cell of creation.

Each of these qualities names both a place where the Old Story has failed us and a direction toward something more whole.

Stepping into Liminal Space

The program then turns toward one of its central teachings: liminal space.

Liminal space is the threshold, the space between what was and what will be. The terrain of transition. A sacred space. 

To enter liminal space is to consciously step away from the Old Story without yet having arrived in the New. This can feel disorienting. Our culture trains us to rush through uncertainty, to fill the unknown with activity and noise. This program asks something different: to dwell in the in-between.

From this vantage point we gain perspective.

When we make the subject the object, when we can look at the Old Story rather than only looking from inside it, its hold on us begins to loosen. We gain autonomy. We gain agency. We can live within the institutions of the old world without being captured by them.

Reflecting on this idea raises an interesting question:

Are we ever truly outside liminal space?

Once we loosen our attachment to certainty, life itself begins to appear as a continuous threshold, always unfolding between what has been and what may yet become.

To remain steady there requires practice. The simple orientation the program offers captures the posture well:

Witness
Grieve
Pray
Act

These four movements offer a way of orienting ourselves to the great challenges of the world. They describe a posture toward suffering and transformation. But they do not describe the texture of ordinary living.

For that, the practice of mindfulness, of stillness, of presence become essential. These allow us to inhabit each moment with awareness rather than reactivity. They are the ground from which witnessing becomes possible and from which compassionate action can emerge.

In some ways this is not unlike exercise or healthy eating. At first the effort can feel unnatural, even forced. But with time the body begins to recognize what is good for it. What once felt difficult begins to feel normal, even necessary. The longer we fall away from those practices, the harder it is to return. From the inside, though, it becomes clear that this way of being is simply the healthier place to live.

Witnessing, grieving, praying, and acting offer a way of responding to the world. Mindfulness and presence offer a way of inhabiting it.

Witnessing

Witnessing, we have seen, is a tool we use to allow ourselves to separate from the old. It allows us to recognize the pathologies, the hubris, the maladies, the corruption, the destruction — what the Buddha summarized simply as the suffering that emerges from the old story.

As we come into liminal space and allow ourselves to witness, we create that separation for ourselves. Not to dismiss reality, but to ground ourselves in a larger perspective.

Witnessing allows us to see and know much more, precisely because we realize we do not actually have to hold everything we see. We do not have to carry it. It is not ours. Or rather, it no longer needs to be.

And so the question arises: what do we do with what we witness? What do we do with tragedy?

We grieve.

Grieving

Grieving allows us to process the tragedy of the Old Story. It allows us to objectively see and understand it. It allows us to own our own participation in it and then let it go.

We must make peace with our shadow. We must make peace with our tragedy. We must make peace with our mistakes in order to move forward.

And so we grieve.

We grieve for the loss of what we love. We grieve for parts of ourselves and our communities that will never know full flourishing. We grieve for the losses and sorrows of the world. We grieve for what we expected but never received—for unconscious disappointment, loneliness, and a diminished experience of self. And we grieve for the unacknowledged and untended sorrow of those who came before us, for whom we can no longer help in any direct way.

Grieving opens the heart. If we allow it, it opens us to communion. One person’s grieving becomes everyone’s grieving. The more we allow for witnessing and grieving, the more we reconnect with our innocence and our deeper intentions, the more we allow ourselves to move toward love.

Operating from a place of love reshapes the world.

That is the basis of the New Story. A world created from love, from a sense of communion and oneness. From there hierarchy begins to soften. Time loosens its grip. The land is understood again as sacred. Masculine and feminine come back into balance. Communities begin to form around care rather than control.

Life begins to emerge in a more organic and unforced way.

And that emergence is seeded in liminal space, once we separate ourselves from the Old Story and choose to live differently.

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A Veil to Protect Community

When a veil of ignorance is better for connection

I had an interesting experience at a recent council meeting.

In the run up to the election, some residents were expressing discontent about government transparency. Similarly, there is a community issue now that some residents feel has not been appropriately publicized with enough time or opportunity for the public to affect change. Putting facts aside, both the Mayor and I have discussed improving community communication and transparency in our new terms, and I have no doubt other councilmembers feel the same way.

So, at a recent meeting, our City Administrator shared that she intended to start publishing a report following council meetings that would summarize meeting activities and decisions made. I don’t know if this was her idea, the Mayor’s, or someone else’s, but I thought it sounded great. It felt like a practical way to meet people where they are. Not everyone has the time—or frankly the inclination—to watch a two + hour meeting or dig through packet materials. A short recap is one small way to reduce friction between what happens inside Council Chambers and what community members experience outside it.

She followed that announcement with a question for council: would we be comfortable publishing how each councilmember voted on each item in those reports?

The question itself was reasonable. Our meetings are already open to the public. Community members attend in person, meetings are livestreamed, and recordings are available afterward. Anyone can go back at any time and see how any of us voted on any item. Still, there was something a bit awkward about the moment—not because of the question itself, but because we were being asked, publicly and in real time, to name our comfort level with a particular presentation of transparency.

I felt deeply conflicted.

At a fundamental level, I believe in truth. I believe that we are all entitled to the truth, and that the obfuscation of facts is what so often leads to mistrust and conflict. All of our votes are public record. Anyone can watch the meetings and hear the discussion that led to those votes. So why the inner turmoil?

The Mayor went around the room inviting each councilmember to share their thoughts. One raised a concern about personal safety, noting that attacks on political figures seem to be increasing nationally. Importantly, that councilmember also expressed support for transparency and suggested that we could try publishing names alongside votes and reassess later if it became a problem. Others largely agreed that transparency was good and that sharing names and votes was acceptable.

Then it was my turn.

This is where circumstance mattered — but not quite in the way I first thought. I happened to be attending the meeting remotely. I’d been fighting a bug and didn’t want to risk passing it along. What mattered most wasn’t that I couldn’t fully read the room — it was that I couldn’t feel how others were holding the moment as I prepared to speak.

I couldn’t sense whether other councilmembers tensed up, or relaxed, as the question made its way around the room. I couldn’t see whether anyone felt defensive as they answered, or relieved, or simply thoughtful. And when it came time for me to speak, that disconnection somehow left me more alone. I couldn’t see heads nodding in agreement — or in disbelief. I couldn’t tell whether people were looking at me like I was saying something obvious, something risky, or something strange. I was speaking without knowing whether what I was offering was landing as shared insight or solitary dissent.

That aloneness may have heightened my discomfort — or it may have grounded me more deeply in myself. I’m honestly not sure. Without the usual cues, I had less ability to adjust, soften, or reassure in real time. But I also had less temptation to perform. I couldn’t read the room, so I had to listen more closely inward. And perhaps that made it easier to speak honestly about the tension I was actually holding, rather than the position I thought I was supposed to defend.

I tried to quiet myself and speak from my heart. I wanted to be honest about both what I believe and where I felt conflict. I said, essentially, that I support transparency. I stand behind every vote I cast and am always willing to explain how I arrived at a decision. I would never hide from that.

And at the same time, I wasn’t sure it was wise to print names next to votes in a summary report.

Why?

Because I think there’s a meaningful difference between accessibility of information and presentation of information. In the run up to the election, we saw how quickly debates can become contentious. I worry that a single vote — stripped of context and reduced to a line item — can start to function like a label. I would hate for a vote on one issue to cause people to feel that a councilmember is “on one side or the other,” and therefore not really representing them. I would hate for anyone to feel we are not accessible to them.

There’s also something about how we work as a council. Once we vote, we speak with one voice — the voice of the council. That doesn’t erase differences, and I’m not suggesting it should. But it does mean the action taken is collective. If a report starts to read like a scorecard — names next to votes, week after week — it may unintentionally train people to engage with us as fixed representatives of a camp rather than as neighbors trying to solve complex, evolving problems together.

So I suggested a middle path: publish the numerical outcome of votes, without names. “Council supported this measure unanimously,” or “This was a challenging 4–3 vote.” That information matters. A unanimous vote signals alignment. A narrow vote signals difficulty, deliberation, and real disagreement. The numbers tell a story without immediately personalizing it.

Keeping that thin veil between the numbers and the people might, in some cases, help preserve connection. Publishing names might just as easily deepen division.

This is where I find myself thinking about John Rawls, the American political philosopher who introduced the “veil of ignorance” in A Theory of Justice as a way of designing fair systems without knowing one’s own position within them — not in a strict philosophical sense, but in a way that feels relevant here.

That idea is usually about designing society without knowing where you personally will land in it. That’s not what we were doing. We weren’t designing society; we were deciding how to communicate decisions already made.

Still, the metaphor resonates for me. Sometimes a small, intentional veil can reduce the instinct to personalize and polarize. It can help people stay with the substance of an issue rather than immediately sorting the humans involved into categories. Not a thick veil. Not secrecy. Just enough to keep the focus where it belongs.

Importantly, the information would still be there. Anyone who wants to know how I voted can still find it. Nothing is hidden. The question is whether our summary should foreground individual names next to votes, or whether it should focus on outcomes and point those who want more detail back to the full meeting, where context lives.

Because context matters. A simple “yes” or “no” next to a name can mean very different things depending on the question. A vote against something can just as easily mean “not this version,” “not this timing,” or “I’m worried about unintended consequences.” A procedural vote — whether to advance a draft or bring something back — can get mistaken for a final position. Even in calm times, this happens. In polarized times, it happens faster.

When I finished, the Mayor acknowledged the perspective and emphasized that the meetings remain public and the recordings remain available. Anyone who wants to know how a specific councilmember voted can watch the meeting and see not just the vote, but the discussion that led to it. She then asked the council whether we were comfortable, for now, moving forward with publishing vote outcomes by numbers rather than by name. Council agreed.

It felt strange to voice something that felt slightly contrarian — even contrarian to my own instincts — and then see it accepted as our current approach. And it’s important to say this wasn’t about me persuading anyone. The City Administrator brought forward a good idea for improving communication. The Mayor facilitated the conversation thoughtfully. Other councilmembers raised valid points, including the idea that we could try full attribution and adjust later if needed. This was the council working through something together.

But sitting with it in the days and weeks since, it continues to feel right — at least for now, and at least in the context of a written summary report.

Sometimes hearing someone’s position on something creates division. And that position can be based on misunderstanding — either in your mind or theirs. That doesn’t mean the answer is less truth. It may mean more discernment in how truth is shared.

So it’s possible that this thin little veil — keeping the substance public while softening the personalization — will do more to protect the community than having everything out in everyone’s face at all times. The information remains accessible. Accountability remains intact. But the invitation stays open to see one another as neighbors doing difficult work together, rather than as avatars of a side.

And in a time when political division feels easy — and connection feels harder — maybe that veil is worth keeping.

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Grief as Learning: A reflection on The Grieving Brain

In the wake of a death—especially an unforeseen one—we search for answers. Why did this happen? How? What could have been different? Often the mind searches even when there are no answers to be found.

I didn't read The Grieving Brain until nearly two years after I lost my daughter. Even so, I found it deeply validating. It helped me make sense of experiences I had already lived through but didn't yet have language for. A friend recommended it after her own profound loss, and she too found it useful in navigating the disorienting territory that grief creates.

Mary-Frances O'Connor is a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, and professor at the University of Arizona. The book reflects that background—at times academic, but consistently humane. She distinguishes grief from depression, explains why yearning is not pathology, and shows how attachment is not merely emotional but physiological. We quite literally build our lives, and our nervous systems, around the people we love.

At the heart of the book is a deceptively simple idea: the brain is a learning machine. More specifically, it's a predictive machine, constantly anticipating what will happen next based on past experience. This works remarkably well—until it doesn't.

How the Brain Maps Relationships

O'Connor explains that when we form deep attachments, our brains learn that certain people exist here, now, and close. Even when a loved one is not physically present—at work, traveling, living across the country—we still carry a stable internal map of their existence. They are part of the world our brain expects to encounter.

That map does not update instantly when someone dies.

A familiar example helps. If you always place your keys in the same spot when you come home, your hand reaches there automatically. One day, distracted, you put them in your coat pocket and hang the coat in the closet. The next morning, your hand still reaches for the old place. The brain is not broken—it's doing what it has learned to do.

Grief works the same way, only the discrepancy is far more painful.

The brain continues to predict the presence of the person who has died. Each time reality contradicts that prediction, it hurts. Not metaphorically—neurologically. O'Connor frames grief as the repeated correction of a deeply learned expectation. This is why grief can feel so disorienting, even when we consciously know what has happened. Knowledge and learning are not the same thing. Unlike depression, which flattens experience, grief is marked by yearning—the continued pull toward someone who is no longer there.

When my daughter died, I experienced this painfully and clearly. In the months before her death, she had been traveling across the country. We weren't in close proximity, and we communicated only intermittently. After she died, those surface conditions were the same: she wasn't physically with me, and we weren't texting or talking in any given moment. My brain's map had not yet caught up to the deeper truth—that she would never again be here, now, and close in the way it expected.

My conscious mind knew this immediately. My brain did not. Each time the discrepancy surfaced, it hurt.

The most important takeaway from this is simple, but not easy: the brain needs time. Time to unlearn an old map. Time to build a new one. The pain is not a failure of healing—it is the healing process itself.

O'Connor offers an image I found helpful. Imagine walking through your home in the dark, used to brushing past a table in a particular place. If the furniture is suddenly rearranged, you immediately notice the absence. You may even question whether you're in the right room. Eventually, though, you learn the new layout. The room still works. Life still works. But the learning takes time.

For me, part of that learning involved realizing that my relationship with my daughter had to change—not end, but change.

Discovering the Scripts

I knew rationally that she was gone. I knew I would never again exchange looks, jokes, or hugs, or watch her become the person she was so beautifully becoming. But I also knew I would never forget her. Which meant the relationship itself was not disappearing—it was transforming. I just didn't know what that meant yet.

I noticed that most nights, as I was falling asleep, I was running the same internal script: I love you. I miss you. I'm so sorry. Over and over. The words were sincere. They were also static. I realized that if I kept repeating the same script, my brain had no new information with which to learn. I was reinforcing longing without offering a path forward.

So I made a conscious decision to interrupt the script.

Instead of speaking only from sadness, I began to invite different forms of connection. I intentionally recalled memories. I noticed moments in the present that she would have found funny or beautiful. I tried to experience joy with her, rather than only grief for her. This did not erase the loss—but it did allow my brain to begin building a new map, one that was less constantly jarring.

This, I think, is where agency quietly enters the grieving process. Not in forcing ourselves to "move on," but in gently offering the brain new experiences to learn from.

The Role of Mindfulness

The other major lesson I took from the book—one that reinforced practices already present in my life—was the importance of mindfulness. I've meditated on and off for more than twenty years, and I believe this helped me notice the scripts I was running in the first place. Mindfulness didn't make the grief go away. It changed my relationship to it.

One of the most painful patterns in grief is the endless chain of what-ifs. What if I had done this. What if I had said that. What if, what if, what if. These thoughts arise without warning, and early on they can feel inescapable. But they don't lead anywhere except deeper pain.

Mindfulness offers a different option. Not suppression, and not avoidance, but recognition. When a thought arises, we can notice it. Feel it. And then, if we choose, not follow it. Over time, this becomes a capacity. The thoughts still come—but they no longer carry us away from the present moment every time they appear.

The goal is not to stop thinking. The goal is to avoid being endlessly dragged by thought. Meditation, as unglamorous as it may seem, is a kind of medicine. And like most medicine, it works best when practiced before we're desperate for it.

What the Book Offers

There is far more in The Grieving Brain than I've captured here, and I would recommend it to anyone—whether grieving now, supporting someone who is, or simply wanting to understand how deeply human attachment really is. The book does not promise relief. What it offers instead is orientation.

Grief is not a malfunction. It's the brain doing its best to learn a world that has been irrevocably changed. Understanding that doesn't remove the pain—but it can make the pain feel less lonely, less frightening, and less wrong.

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If this reflection has been of value, you’re welcome to support the time and care that go into this work.

→ Contribute

Substack

While most of my writing lives on this website, I do share occasional writing on Substack for those who prefer to receive it there. You can find me on Substack here.