Witnessing the World, Holding the Future
There is something unsettling about living in a world that feels like it’s unraveling. The seasons no longer follow their expected rhythms. Rain falls too much or not at all. Heat lingers in places it never used to, and the earth itself seems to pulse with an uneasy knowing. We are living through times of uncertainty, growing violence, and deepening division under authoritarian regimes, while climate catastrophe barrels toward us, overwhelming and unrelenting.
We bear witness to these shifts, feeling them in our bodies, in our breath, in the way the air changes, in the way the ground holds water…or doesn’t. And yet, what does it mean to see and feel these truths so deeply, when the structures around us pretend not to notice?
There is an eerie awareness, a quiet knowing that some of us carry: we are living in the last era of certain landscapes. Coastal towns, forests, and cities built without thought for rising tides. San Francisco, with its steep hills and impermeable surfaces, already flooding in ways it was never designed to withstand. North Carolina, swinging between sweltering heat and bitter cold, mosquitoes thriving in places they shouldn’t. Fires swallowing whole towns, schools, cemeteries, futures.
The world is on fire. Our hearts are on fire.
To name this awareness is not just about fear; it’s about witnessing. It’s about holding history and the future in the same breath. There may not be a clear answer, but there is an undeniable pull toward action.
Even if the action is simply paying attention.
Even if it is writing it down.
Even if it is using art to make others see.
What Can a Poem Do?
One of my clients once questioned the power of poetry. She wondered if her voice mattered, if bringing her words into the world had meaning in times like these. It is easy to doubt the impact of art when the world is burning. Can a poem stop a flood? Can an essay rebuild a city?
No. But the thing about words about poetry, about storytelling is that they outlive us. They become records of what was seen, what was felt, what refused to be forgotten. These times demand that we bear witness. That we document, archive, and tell the stories of our communities, of our lives, of what it means to be here, now. Because as journalism and free press continue to be attacked, each of us is called to become the keeper of truth.
A poem may not stop the rain from flooding the streets, but it can hold a truth that otherwise might have been erased. A book may not change the temperature of the earth, but it can shift the temperature of a conversation, opening space for new ways of thinking, of seeing, of being in relationship with the world.
And isn’t that where change begins?
In an age of quick takes and rigid categories, we are constantly asked to simplify ourselves. Identity. Race. History. We are told to fit neatly into boxes that were never meant to hold us. For those who move through the world with a foot in two places, between cultures, between races, between ways of knowing, this flattening is suffocating. The world asks for an easy answer: Pick a side. Define yourself in a way that is legible to us.
But what if the answer is both?
What if the answer is all?
What if the work is not to contort ourselves to fit someone else’s understanding, but to expand the very definition of belonging?
Carrying the Past, Creating the Future
Every act of creation is an act of defiance.
A refusal to be erased.
A declaration that we were here.
That we saw. That we felt. That we made meaning from the madness.
To write is to witness.
To speak is to shift energy.
To tell a story is to create a portal, an opening for someone else to see themselves, to feel less alone, to imagine something different.
And so the work is not small. It is not insignificant.
It is necessary.
It is urgent.
And in this time of unraveling, it is one of the few things that might still hold us together.
What Are You Here to Witness? What Are You Here to Create?
Wherever you are, whatever you are carrying, let this be a reminder:
Your voice matters.
Your art matters.
Your presence in this world is a ripple.
What you create now, what you say, what you name, what you refuse to let be forgotten becomes part of what sustains us.
Are you ready to step deeper into that calling?
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