Carriers of Hope
Transforming Grief into Revolutionary Action
Carriers of Hope: Transforming Grief into Revolutionary Action
In the background, over the sound of music playing in my headphones, I can hear fireworks exploding nearby. Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 expresses the mood of the moment. It echoes through my mind like slow, sweet memories wrapped in melancholy. It’s the Fourth of July in America, Independence Day—during a surreal moment in time. I can’t stop thinking about how history will replay this moment and how we will feel about what we did in this moment.
Can any of us do enough?
In my neighborhood, we can never be too certain that it is, in fact, fireworks we hear—and not someone firing off gunshots through the night. Of course, fireworks are meant to be a symbol for bombs exploding. Real gunshots or fantasized explosions in the sky—either way, are we great yet?
In Texas, this could describe any neighborhood. Damn, in most of America right now, this could describe any neighborhood. My dog jumps off the couch and barks at the door every five minutes on nights like these. She’s anxious. Maybe she can feel my anxiety too.
I feel worn out, friends. My soul is sad.
There’s a heaviness in this type of sadness that feels hard to lift, even onto this typed page. Half-formed words flutter away like decrepit butterflies—unable to land, too weak to stay. Perhaps this is the pain we are meant to feel as we wake up from the American dream—a mourning-after hangover.
The America I love has been blindfolded, gagged, held hostage, beaten, and bruised. We’re under duress and on our knees. Our gilded door slammed shut. Our torch stripped away. These are dark times, indeed.
A striking new mural in Roubaix, France shows the Statue of Liberty covering her face in shame. It was unveiled just one day before America’s Independence Day. Titled The Statue of Liberty’s Silent Protest, the piece was painted by Dutch artist Judith de Leeuw on the side of a building. “Freedom, hope, the right to be yourself—those values are lost for many,” de Leeuw said, pointing to Roubaix’s large migrant population living in hardship.
This art is powerful and important. Its meaning strikes into the hearts of all who view it. And free expression is essential. Yet this art may reveal something more about gendered social conditioning than it intended.
Why, once again, are women meant to feel shame for something men have done?
Of course, plenty of women should feel shame for mobilizing their internalized patriarchy and causing destruction. In fact, many women have participated in the devastation of our beloved country, our beloved communities—yet still, the perpetrators of this treason are mostly men—the policies, the kidnappings, the creation of concentration camps.
But the shame? In typical fashion, it belongs to women who have become symbols of our national pain.
It is a centuries-old pattern, isn’t it?
Women as the bearers of men’s sins. We are told to cover ourselves to avoid provoking violence. To hush our trauma and injustice to keep the family together. To carry the shame of rape or harassment. To clean up the emotional fallout of wars we did not start. It’s never the right time or place to use our voices. For us, it’s never appropriate to scream in pain or call out what is not right. It may be because of this social conditioning that we have, over time learned how to use our feelings intelligently.
Research has long shown that women tend to have higher emotional intelligence (EQ) than men on average—a capacity for empathy, self-awareness, and social responsibility. It’s no wonder society leans on us to do the emotional labor. But this is not a gift freely given—it is often a burden demanded.
The shame in that mural is too familiar. It is the grief women have carried for generations. And yet, even burdened with that grief, women continue to rise, to resist, to rebuild.
We must know and let it be known that we are not only carriers of shame.
We are carriers of hope.
Women around the world are leading change right now. Not perfectly—because perfection is not required to do good—but with determination and love.
Look to the women in Iran who removed their hijabs at the risk of prison or death—like Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has spent years behind bars fighting for human rights.
Look to U.S. politicians like Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, fighting for immigrant rights and health care access.
Look to artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, who wheat-pastes the truth on walls in her Stop Telling Women to Smile campaign, refusing the casual harassment that women face daily (video below).
Look to the activists of Black Lives Matter—like Opal Tometi and Alicia Garza—who built a global movement to demand that Black lives do matter.
Look to Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement, who gave language to a silence too many survivors were forced to keep.
Look to Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, who showed the world how compassion can be part of governance—whether comforting a nation after terror attacks or implementing policies for children’s well-being.
Look to all the unnamed women organizing mutual aid networks, protecting abortion access, running for local school boards to keep education honest, showing up for neighbors in crisis.
Emotional intelligence is not hard to spot. It is tenderness where cruelty is expected. It is the quiet offer of assistance before the plea is made. And while women often display high EQ, they are not alone in this. There are men—beautiful men—who are born with, taught, or fought for the gift of deep emotional fluency.
“Look for the helpers.” ~ Fred Rogers
We are not just fighting patriarchy. We are fighting toxic masculinity, greed, and power dynamics rooted in fear. These dynamics are often expressed by men who believe that control and emotional detachment are signs of strength. Just as some women lack empathy, some men carry hearts expansive enough to change the world. Fred Rogers was one of them.
Fred Rogers always saw what many missed, that the greatest impact comes not from power or fame but from simple acts of compassion. In this quote, he reminds us that it's easy to turn away—to say, not my child, not my community, not my responsibility. That mindset creates a colder world. The people who pause, care, and act—those are the ones who truly create change.
Michael Long, in Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, explains that Fred Rogers was not just kind, but deliberately countercultural in his insistence on peace, empathy, and neighborliness in the face of a violent, divided society. He addressed the fears of children about war, racism, and death directly. Rogers taught that radical gentleness is not passivity, but resistance to cruelty in all forms.
We don’t have to fix everything but we can remember to do something.
Holding space for others, reaching out, offering help even when it’s inconvenient—that’s the kind of quiet heroism that keeps the world stitched together. These aren’t grand gestures, but they’re deeply human ones, and we need more of them.
We don’t have to pretend to be happy—especially when we can barely lift our spirits to keep going—but we can look to see who is doing the work of change and be grateful for their resistance. We can let it inspire us. Let their refusal to give up fuel our desire to do the same.
The fact is that this is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. We are not strong enough to overcome this hostile takeover alone. We must put down our digital devices—screens that pretend to connect us but often deepen our divides. We must learn to truly live in community, even if the thought of inviting our neighbors over for dinner drives us down into a panic spiral of introverted madness.
We must push ourselves to help our elderly neighbors mow their lawns or bring in their groceries. Through these small acts of kindness, we can pave pathways that do not currently exist.
For those of us who know no other way—justice for all breathes with us in our lungs, freedom rings in our ears, liberation lives in our skin—no false testimony of reality can penetrate our beliefs. No number of poisoned seeds can bear the fruit these perpetrators of injustice seek to bear.
We are the fertile soil of change. And in us, we must remain rooted, steadfast, and true. We must learn to heal ourselves and to love one another.
This is the only way our country will grow together and rise once again.
In love, we will reap what we sow.
Works Cited
Ardern, Jacinda. “Rt. Hon. Dame Jacinda Ardern.” Harvard Kennedy School, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/rt-hon-dame-jacinda-ardern.
Burke, Tarana. “Tarana Burke.” National Women’s History Museum, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/tarana-burke.
Fazlalizadeh, Tatyana. “Stop Telling Women to Smile.” The Guardian, 7 Aug. 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2013/aug/07/stop-telling-women-to-smile-tatyana-fazlalizadeh.
“Fred Rogers: Look for the Helpers.” YouTube, uploaded by CBC Docs, YouTube Video.
Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. “Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Opal Tometi on the Fight for Racial Justice in the US.” https://giwps.georgetown.edu/black-lives-matter-co-founder-opal-tometi-on-the-fight-for-racial-justice-in-the-us/.
Jayapal, Pramila. “Progressive Democrat Has Serious Concerns About Biden's Border Policies.” The Hill, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4404489-progressive-democrat-has-serious-concerns-about-bidens-heavy-handed-border-policies/.
Long, Michael. Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers. Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.
Mohammadi, Narges. “Jailed Iranian Women’s Rights Activist Wins 2023 Nobel Peace Prize.” NPR, 6 Oct. 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/10/06/1203858300/nobel-peace-prize-winner.
“Women’s Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace.” SAGE Journals, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017725796. Accessed 4 July 2025.
A beautiful reflection of your feelings on 7/4. Melancholy captures it well.
Very touching. Worth reading. Keep coming pls.