05/30/2026
I recently read something my friend Chad Sabora wrote, and it got me thinking about things I’ve seen play out in a very real way over time.
He was talking about how movements don’t usually lose themselves all at once. It happens slowly. People start out talking about solidarity, mutual aid, lived experience, all of it. And over time it shifts. It turns into protecting institutions, protecting funding, protecting access, protecting relationships.
That part hit me because I’ve watched it happen in real spaces I’ve been in.
In my experience, many people adapt to what the system rewards, and over time they become the system itself. That’s the point where things can get dangerous. And sometimes, people do become bad actors in their own right.
I’ve been in those rooms. I’ve gone toe-to-toe with some of the biggest organizations involved in this work. I don’t say that lightly.
When my son died, I wasn’t held by my county. I didn’t get support from those systems. I was left to deal with all of it on my own while still trying to survive it. These institutions did not support me. They left me for dead. So I built what I needed to build by myself because there was no other option.
And what that taught me is this: you don’t need permission to speak the truth about what you’ve lived through. I don’t need a seat at a table if the price is silence. I know exactly what I bring into those spaces.
I’ve never been funded by them. I’ve never been protected by them. I’ve never needed their approval to speak. So I don’t carry that pressure when I walk into a room. I just say what’s true.
And I’ve learned that movements don’t usually fall apart in one moment. They erode when protecting the system starts to matter more than protecting the people it was built to serve.
And I also want to say something about language in these spaces.
There’s this idea that you have to speak in soft, overly polished, institutional language to be taken seriously. Like if you don’t soften everything or package it the “right” way, you lose credibility.
I don’t believe that.
You can speak in plain language. You can speak directly. You can speak like a human being talking to other human beings. That doesn’t make it less valid. It makes it real.
Sometimes that polished language isn’t clarity. It’s distance. It’s people learning how to fit into systems instead of telling the truth about them.
I don’t need to speak their language to be understood. I can. Sometimes I do. But I’m not required to. And I’m not going to pretend that sterile language is the same thing as honesty.
