Julie explores life with curiosity, creativity, and connection. I share observations with humor, offering perspective on the world and how it shapes us—lightening life’s complexities along the way.
Black History Fact: After Reconstruction, Southern states used “Black Codes” to criminalize everyday behavior, forcing Black men into prison labor that closely resembled slavery. Mass incarceration did not emerge spontaneously. Black history shows us that criminalization has long been used to maintain racial control when other methods became politically inconvenient.
Some truths sit quietly in the background of our national story, shaping lives without ever being spoken aloud. They show up in neighborhoods that look very different from one another, in retirement accounts that grow for some families but not others, in opportunities that appear effortless for one generation and
Black History Fact: In many Southern states, it was illegal for enslaved people to learn to read. Punishments included beatings, imprisonment, and death. Ignorance has always been enforced. Black history makes clear that education threatens oppression because it reveals alternatives. It teaches people to imagine themselves differently—and systems depend
Some mornings, the fatigue settles in before the coffee has time to work. Not the physical kind. The deeper weariness that comes from knowing that telling the truth, again and again, will cost something. That resisting what is wrong will never be efficient, tidy, or rewarded on a reasonable timeline.
Hello readers! Some truths take a long time to land, not because they are complicated, but because they are inconvenient. Black History Month invites us to sit with those truths without rushing to soften them. It asks us to remember that history is not a story we tell about the
Black History Fact: In 1619, enslaved Africans were brought to what would become the United States—before the country existed, before democracy, before the Constitution. Black history does not enter America as a footnote. It enters at the beginning. Before there was a United States, there was forced labor. Before
I don’t know about you, but January felt both fast and endless. Like we were holding our breath while still being asked to keep moving. That’s a strange way to begin a year. So I want to pause for a moment and ask a real question, not a
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” That line has been floating around for decades now, often quoted, often shared, often reduced to a pretty little Instagram square. But it is not a pretty thought. It is a
There’s a phrase people like to throw around when they’re uncomfortable: “Just move on.” Move on from what, exactly? From the things that shaped us? From the wounds that taught our bodies to flinch before our minds could think? From the decisions—personal and political—that still echo
There is a sentence we offer each other the way we offer a tissue at a funeral: Time heals all wounds. It sounds kind. It sounds wise. It sounds like something carved into a soft-focus Hallmark plaque with a bird and a branch and a reassuring serif font. It is
There is a peculiar ritual in American politics that repeats itself with the reliability of a bad flu season. A demagogue reveals exactly who he is. He says it out loud. He does it in public. He builds a movement around it. And then—when the consequences become too ugly
Let’s just start there. Clear the table. Confess early. Yes. I am a hypocrite. A card-carrying member of the human race who has strong opinions about how people should behave in a crisis and then, under enough stress, occasionally does the exact opposite. There are two things that absolutely