I had planned to tell people on my own terms. I had a whole timeline. There would be a right moment, a considered conversation, perhaps a tasteful announcement. I would control the narrative.
Instead, my bladder did it for me.
Category: About Love
For several days, I lived inside the kind of pain that hollows you out. Not just physical pain, though that was real enough, but the accumulated weight of years of being managed into silence. Then one morning, steadied by rest and a small mercy of pharmacology, I made a decision. I reached out to my supervisor and contacted a VP directly. I handed them a log of everything that had happened since January 1984.
Could I be fired? Yes. Likely? Probably not. But something shifted the moment I sent that message: my supervisors no longer controlled the narrative. And with that shift came a question I could not stop turning over in my mind.
Would a spiritual person — a Buddhist, a Christian, a person genuinely trying to live with compassion — have done what I did? I have been sitting with that question. Here is what I have found.
Nicholas Kristof’s sobering column, “The $1.3-Million-a-Minute War,” forces a number into your conscience and refuses to let it go. At its peak, the war in Gaza was costing roughly $1.3 million every single minute. Not in lives — though those too — but in dollars. American dollars, mobilized with breathtaking speed and political unanimity, flow toward destruction while funding for the most basic human needs crawls through years of gridlock.
Kristof calls this a failure of “moral accounting.” He’s right. But the reckoning he demands doesn’t stop at Gaza’s border. It lands, uncomfortably, right here at home.
A Crisis We’re Choosing Not to See
While Washington debates the next defense supplemental, America is quietly sleepwalking toward one of the most predictable catastrophes in its history. By 2040, an estimated 11.2 million Americans will be living with Alzheimer’s disease. By 2050, that number approaches 13 million — and among Americans aged 85 and older, one in three already has the disease. A landmark NYU Langone study delivered perhaps the starkest finding of all: one in two Americans can expect to experience significant cognitive difficulties after the age of 55.
Read that again. One in two.
What a Hallmark actor’s breakdown taught me about my own silent crisis — and why Wednesday would never have come if I hadn’t made it to Sunday.
There are moments when leadership is revealed not by policy, but by instinct. Not by speeches, but by what is laughed at, shared, or dismissed as “no big deal.”
Recently, something ugly surfaced—an image rooted in one of the oldest and most dehumanizing racist tropes in American history. It was not subtle. It was not ambiguous. It was the kind of imagery that generations of Black Americans have known all too well: the stripping away of dignity, intellect, and humanity with a single cruel comparison.
The clip was removed after public outrage, but the damage lingered. Because removal without reflection is not accountability. And silence from the most powerful office in the country is not neutrality—it is permission.
Michael Steele stated, “Donald Trump is the Golden Calf; he is the thing that they come and bow before. And that they offer up their future political support.” After reading the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ nothing could be truer. The President said there would be no cuts to Medicaid. However, the House Republicans passed plans to cut roughly $716 billion from Medicaid, and program cuts will hit close to home for many residents, even as some welcome the prospect of tighter rules and less government spending. Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates more than 10 million people will likely lose Medicaid and CHIP insurance under the House Republican plan.
Most Americans have a connection to Medicaid. In 2024, Medicaid surged to 78 million recipients. In rural areas, where the share of people with disabilities is higher, residents have lower incomes, and communities are reliant on industries with skimpier health benefits. Overall, about two-thirds (65%) of the public say that someone close to them has received help from Medicaid at some point, including over half (53%) who say either the program has covered them themselves or a member of their family and an additional 13% who say a close friend has been covered. Substantial shares of Democrats (52%), independents (57%), and Republicans (44%) report that Medicaid has covered them or a family member. Nearly all adults (97%) say Medicaid is at least somewhat important for people in their local community, including about three in four (73%) who say it is “very important.”
Ignoring storm clouds on the horizon, voters support lawmakers who cut Medicaid. However, voters neglected a couple of details.
Breaking News: CNN’s ticker blared, “US military ordering thousands more troops to southern border.” Unnamed officials confirmed that thousands of additional active-duty troops are being deployed to the southern US border with Mexico. The stated purpose: to support Homeland Security and Border Patrol operations. Speculation is swirling about whether this move ties into Texas’ construction of an 80-acre facility outside Eagle Pass, rumored to be a deportation or detention camp. Official confirmation on the facility’s purpose remains elusive.
In an NPR interview, Eagle Pass resident Jessie Fuentes criticized Texas Governor Greg Abbott for creating what she called his own immigration force and court system. “Why are we allowing this to happen? Why are we allowing our governor to become a dictator and authoritarian in enforcing immigration policy?” Fuentes asked.
It was only a matter of time: The President issued a sweeping wave of commutations and a blanket pardon that absolved all the January 6 rioters, effectively undoing what many considered the most extensive criminal investigation in U.S. history. Defending his decision, Trump claimed the pardons were warranted, arguing that individuals committing violent crimes in other cities often go unpunished. He stated that he showed compassion to those whom authorities had improperly treated, insisting, “Their lives were destroyed.”
But what of the lives lost?