There’s a mesa behind our house where I go to run, think, recharge and listen. Recently, I looked down at my watch to find my pace a full minute faster than usual. “Wow, I’m getting so much faster and I don’t even feel like I’m trying that hard!” I thought. I ran with that feeling for about a half mile, then I noticed. Tall grass on either side of me sat doubled over by the force of the wind: my tailwind. I scolded myself for not paying attention to the surroundings and felt inwardly embarrassed by how obtuse I'd been while reveling in my own accomplishment.

I remember hearing a few years ago about a virtual doctor being the one to deliver the news to a patient that there was nothing they could do to further her treatment and she would most likely not live until the end of the week (he was correct). The family was quite upset about this. One of my favorite Christian writers and pastors has a big tattoo of Mary Magdalene on her, and she calls her “The Patron Saint of Showing Up.”

People had told me the lines in Manhattan to vote early were long, but I never expected to see a line this long. It wound around a city block two times, but the tail end stretched across two more. As I got in the line, a poll volunteer told me it could be a four hour wait.

I considered leaving and trying another time - really early one morning right when they opened. But I had a hunch this line was going to be long no matter what. Also to my surprise, no one else was getting out of line, or walking away once they heard how long the wait would be. People just kinda said, “oh gosh, okay” and accepted the future for their next few hours.

Running is a big part of my life and I Iove to race. I was especially looking forward to it this year since I had just joined a team in New York city, but COVID caused my plans to change - suddenly the five races I had scheduled and was training for this year were cancelled.

Then Steve called - what do you think about running across the Grand Canyon with a small group of people instead?

I know some people that determine a word of the year as a sort of new year's resolution – they pick a word they want to focus on for that year, a word they want to strive towards. Can I pick a word of the year almost ten months into it?

I want my word of the year to be grace.

To me, grace means seeing others for where they are at. No questions. Respecting needs or desires with no judgement. It is both internal and external.

There is a word I really don’t like – “closure.” I used to like this word I think. I would use it as justification to spend an inordinate amount of time to replay past experiences and ask, “what went wrong?” I would open up old wounds or go back to people who weren’t good for me – or let people back into my life who were not good to me – in the name of “closure.”

Last week, we released a piece Corey wrote about being in the "bardo,” or the term Buddhists use to describe being between two states. Our sense of time and what we consider the “future” has been fundamentally changed this year. How can I think about what my life will look like in a year from now when I don’t even really know what it could look like two weeks from now?

Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has an idea he calls “getting proximate” in order to really understand the experiences of people who are marginalized or who have experienced systemic disadvantages. Stevenson believes that “if you are willing to get closer to people who are suffering, you will find the power to change the world.”


This seems rather intuitive – but it is definitely more challenging than just reading a book like Just Mercy and saying that is enough. I know I have certainly been guilty of that line of thinking at times.

The other week, you may have seen protests starting to spring up in some parts of the United States. Adults and children marched despite state orders to social distance and remain at home, saying their liberty had been taken away from them because of the restrictions – sometimes drastic – the stop the spread of COVID-19. They were angry because they felt as if too much was being done at the expense of the economy and people’s well-being. I have spoken to people too recently who are angry, even filled with hatred, because they do not feel like our leaders are doing enough.

In preparation for writing about the Community for Change and Instagram, Pip asked me to think about perhaps my own first Instagram post. I remember it very clearly, actually. It was back in 2012 when my older, cooler cousin told me about this app called Instagram where you could post photos. I downloaded it, and my first photo was of bouquets of sunflowers I had hung upside down with twine – with a very heavy, color-saturated filter, of course.

The CFC Writer’s Circle has perhaps inadvertently become a place to share the wisdom of loved ones who have passed away. I have really enjoyed hearing about Pip and the Posa sisters' respective fathers, Pip’s coach, as well as Amanda’s former boss in Florida. I am sure there have been others too. I lost a friend a year ago very unexpectedly, and as we come up to the one-year anniversary of her passing, I have been wanting to put into words some of the things she taught me.

I work remotely a majority of the time, and last week I decided to do a free trial with KettleSpace, a group that partners with restaurants in New York that are only open for dinner, transforming them into a coworking space during the day. Anyone can try them out for free for 7 days, so I thought why not?

The location closest to my apartment is a pretty unassuming restaurant that shares a building with the Czech Consulate on 73rd street. When I arrived, I was pleased to find only about seven people spread out around the room, either working silently on their laptops or in small groups. A KettleSpace employee greeted me when I walked in, gave me a short tour, and then I sat down with a black coffee to get to work.

I've become hyperaware recently of the voice in my head.. and I've happily gotten a bit better at managing it in a healthier way. But what I have seen that stays more stagnant is its tendency to quickly jump to a judgement after something even a bit discouraging has happened. I've noticed though that after some time has passed, and I am less tied to a negative emotion, my orientation is more objective and I can re-shape my mindset to become a place for greater motivation and resoluteness. Lauren's blog brings me back to this, sometimes challenging, practice of actively reframing perspective. Thank you Lauren.

-Amanda

I am aware that I struggle to truly believe things. While it may be easy to visualize what Christmas will look like for my family in ten years, it’s much harder for me to think through what a world without poverty, racism, or human trafficking would look like — even though I believe in movements working to eradicate these things. 

But if you don’t believe in something you are fighting for, then what is keeping you going?

I really had to ask myself when I was in college and fell into a grassroots campaign to bring a level-one trauma center for the South Side of Chicago. It connected students, young and old South Siders, and faith leaders from across the city demanding that the University of Chicago play a role in funding, planning, and building a trauma center. 

After visiting the nonprofit Starfire in Cincinnati the other week for a series of workshops on disability and inclusion, I debriefed with Founder Tim Vogt, his wife, and a new friend in the car as we drove to the airport. We got talking about how our society tends to “value” people, and how to push back against our habit of valuing those people who are physically and mentally able-bodied more.

Tim offered one way: he will always ask when he walks into a room “who is the most vulnerable person here?” and then try to orient his actions so that person is put first. For example, he told the story of earlier that day deciding where to sit for lunch. While there were many people he could have caught up with, he noticed a girl who was nonverbal and who was sitting alone – he immediately knew he should sit and talk with her.

If you were to walk out onto the court of Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open, you would pass a plaque with a quote from the tennis legend Billie Jean King: “Pressure is a privilege.”

This is what I told my sister the other week over the phone: pressure is a privilege. She recently started a new operations role at a big financial services company and has been feeling extremely anxious about the job. One small mistake could have ripple effects for her boss, her coworkers, or clients. Even though she is not necessarily “high up” in the company, she holds a lot of power over choices that need to be made.

Last week I watched a long-awaited matchup between two of the world’s most promising young female players in the US Open: Coco Gauff (a 15-year-old fans adore) and Naomi Osaka (the 21-year-old defending 2018 champion).

Last year, Osaka played Serena Williams in a very controversial final match. Serena - who is currently only two majors away from holding the record for most ever held - was given a warning by the umpire that was a pretty iffy. She struggled to mentally tough it out and ended up losing her confidence and her game spiraled very emotionally. Osaka ended up winning the tournament, but not without tears holding as the crowd booed, believing Serena should have won and the umpire was not fair. An awful way to win your first major tournament at the age of 20.

The other week, I found myself saying “I am so terrified about the gap between what is in my head and what is true in reality.”

I just wrapped up my masters dissertation that focused on some research that has exploded in the last couple of years about how women’s mental health can really suffer due to sanitation concerns in developing countries. Even if they have access to a toilet that, by standards set by the WHO, are considered “improved” and therefore report as great progress towards achieving the global goals, women won’t use them if they don’t feel safe doing so. This doesn’t show up in the metrics.

I've been wanting to write a CFC blog post for weeks now, but I have struggled to know what to write about. I try to write a good amount outside of CFC too - and outside of my school papers - but have had a bad bout of writer's block recently. It's not that I don't have thoughts, I just don't have...ideas.

I love Christmas music.

Most years, I am pretty disciplined when it comes to waiting to listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving. I don't want to spoil the specialness of holiday songs and listen to them out of the context of the holiday season.

But this year feels different and I have shamelessly listened to "O Holy Night," "Joy to the World," and (of course) "All I Want For Christmas Is You" a lot recently.

When I was a teenager, my favorite movie was Into the Wild - the true story of Chris McCandless who cuts all ties from society, changes his name, and hitchhikes to Alaska. Fed up with what he saw as a world that couldn't change, made only of people who disappoint, he slips away without telling his friends or family where he has gone.

I just started my masters in International Development last week and other than almost getting hit by a few cars flying in a direction I am not used to, secretly Googling very specific questions about Brexit under a few dinner tables, and deeply missing New York, it’s been going great!

I tell people movies make me cry all the time, but in reality only three movies actually make me cry: 

1. Les Miserables (as everyone at Restore unfortunately found out one day) 
2. Beginners (my all-time favorite movie) 
3. Big Fish 

Not long ago, I went to a bouldering gym in New York with two friends. One of my favorite things about climbing is how communal it is, and on this particular day a group of people had gathered around one course, lining up to try it and cheering strangers on. It was very simple, consisting of only four holds – one large one near the group with a flat top, two smaller holds on the sides of it, and then a larger ledge straight above almost reaching the top of the wall. The only way to finish the course was to step on the one below with one foot while grabbing the smaller holds, swinging your body towards and away from the wall, and then jumping up to grab ahold of the top ledge with both hands. The only way to finish was to psych yourself up, believe that you could do it, and jump with the momentum with both arms straight up.

After a series of personally testing events my sophomore year of college, I found myself up late one night in my dorm room ignoring homework and researching schools I could potentially transfer to. When I emailed my old admissions counselor for the small college that was a close second choice to my current university, she immediately called my cell phone the next day and highly encouraged me to apply as a transfer student. Within two weeks, I received an email saying that I had been accepted. 

I started running when I was a freshman in college. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. 

When I moved to Chicago for school, I started running along Lake Michigan as a substitute for the competitive tennis I once played, but soon began to appreciate the solitude. Being an introvert on a social campus exhausted me and running became my surefire way to get some alone time with my music every morning. I quickly became addicted. 

As a fiction writing minor in college, I learned to withstand criticism against something I had produced. But while a Quentin-Tarantino-esque bloodbath is typical in just about any undergraduate writing workshop, one my senior year was different due to one big mistake: I based the main character too much on myself. 

The biggest issue, my classmates said, was that the main character was too passive. In fact, they said, she did not actively make a single decision in the entire story. She had zero agency. Everything happened to her. It didn’t feel like they were critiquing the story, it felt like they were critiquing me.  

The power inside every single human being never ceases to amaze me. And despite a world that appears increasingly divided and argumentative, every Monday night my hope that people lean towards good and not evil is strengthened.

A few weeks ago, I accidentally left my iPhone in an Uber on a trip to Philadelphia. After frantically calling it a number of times, the kindhearted driver eventually picked up and offered to ship it back to New York. Once I had the assurance that I wouldn’t scrap together money for a new one, I settled into a new rhythm of daily life. Those few days without my phone, I felt more clear-headed, creative, and self-assured than normal.