Hi friend,

I’ve settled back at the farm for the week, watching the leaves shift in color, the air growing crisp. It’s the kind of cozy that invites you to nest, to start making soups and take comfort in the changing rhythms of life. But lately, the heaviness in my chest has been harder to shake. The news out of Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria feels like a steady drumbeat of sorrow. It’s that particular kind of heartache that comes when your homeland is under siege. There’s something visceral about watching from a distance as the land that holds your roots gets torn apart—like a part of you is unraveling, too.

There’s an undeniable connection between land, blood, and spirit, a connection that feels frayed in moments like this. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to belong to a place, especially when that place is in crisis. It’s the weight of displacement, the ache of witnessing destruction without being able to intervene. My people’s pain is mine, even from across the ocean.

But as my therapist and my spiritual mentor, Thich Nhat Hanh, have both reminded me, pain isn’t something to escape. It’s something we must learn to sit with, to face head-on with love and compassion. So instead of turning away, I’ve been trying to befriend it. And in this process, I’ve been turning to poetry.

Poetry has this way of capturing what feels impossible to articulate. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote: “I do not know who sold the homeland, but I know who paid the price.” His words linger with me, encapsulating the frustration of knowing that wars are often fueled by ego, by power, while the innocent bear the brunt of the consequences.

Recently, I’ve found myself returning to Hala Alyan’s The Moon That Turns You Back, where she delicately explores the many layers of loss—miscarriage, the quiet yearning of living in diaspora, the sense of being untethered from home. She writes, “You can’t put a corpse back together. One bomb dives into the sky like a rose. If I don’t say rose, you’ll skip ahead to the end.” The imagery is haunting, a reminder of how easily we rush past the details of destruction, how quickly we try to move on without sitting in the discomfort of what’s been lost.

These voices remind me that grief is both personal and collective. The pain of displacement, of watching your homeland crumble, is part of a broader human experience of loss and survival. And yet, in their words, I find a thread of connection—something that binds us together even in our darkest hours.

That’s why I felt compelled to add my own voice to this conversation. My debut poetry collection, Echoes of Migration, is now available on Amazon. It’s a collection that grapples with themes of joy, loss, identity, and belonging, shaped by my own experiences of grief, heartbreak, and the complexities of living in a world so often on the brink. Poetry has become a form of healing for me, a way to sit with the emotions that are too heavy to carry alone—friendship breakups, eco-anxiety, the general malaise of existential dread.

I hope my words can offer some comfort to you, too. Poetry has this beautiful way of allowing us to meet ourselves, wherever we are—no matter how uncomfortable the feelings might be. And in that meeting, maybe we can find a little bit of peace.

Thank you for being in my community and for making time for reading my words and engaging with me, especially through this difficult time. I'm so grateful and glad you're here.

Elite Panic and the Truth About Disasters:

I’ve been following the heartbreaking news of Hurricane Helene (and now Milton), watching as people struggle to escape the storm’s devastation. But what stopped me cold was an image of police officers standing guard at a grocery store—a company, it seems, would rather let its food rot than share it with people in desperate need. The absurdity of it left me furious. How could this be the priority during a disaster?

Turns out, this isn’t an isolated incident; it’s a phenomenon known as Elite Panic. First identified in 2008 by two sociologists, Elite Panic describes how, in the wake of disasters, the focus of those in power shifts from providing relief to maintaining control. This isn’t about rescuing people or helping communities recover. It’s about preventing civil disorder, as if the people suffering from the disaster are somehow the enemy. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina, when government resources were poured into policing so-called looters instead of coordinating life-saving efforts like search and rescue.

What’s most frustrating is that decades of research show something remarkable: in times of crisis, people generally come together. They share food, shelter, and resources. The instinct, for most, is to help—not to riot. Sociologists studying the aftermath of disasters have consistently found that volunteer-led initiatives—whether it's coordinating rescues or rebuilding communities—often emerge as a natural response. For instance, after the 1964 earthquake in Alaska, scientists expected to find mass panic and looting. Instead, they discovered people helping one another, organizing recovery efforts, and rebuilding their communities from the ground up.

This makes Elite Panic even more maddening. When authorities assume that citizens will become dangerous, they direct their energy toward controlling the public rather than addressing the disaster itself. They clamp down on information, restrict freedom of movement, and deploy resources to enforce laws they fear are about to be broken. Not only is this a colossal waste of time and energy, but it actually undermines the public’s natural capacity for resilience. One study pointed out that nervous officials can actively get in the way of people trying to help themselves and their neighbors.

We’re seeing this play out now with Hurricane Helene and Milton. People who are trying to help evacuate others are being threatened with arrest. Let that sink in for a moment: authorities are criminalizing rescue efforts from ordinary citizens. WTF.

I also came across a horrifying story about a plastics company in Tennessee that threatened to fire workers if they didn’t come into work during the storm. Eleven people were swept away by floodwaters. Two are confirmed dead, and four are still missing. All because their CEO, who stayed safe and dry at home, decided that profits were more important than human lives. No job is worth your life—this is your reminder of that. And frankly, this CEO should be in jail for what he’s done.

Watching all of this unfold in real-time has left me thinking about the importance of community resilience. Knowing your neighbors, building trust, and creating support systems are essential—not just for weathering literal storms but for surviving the broader crises of our time. There’s a cynical part of me that wonders if governments and corporations are afraid of us realizing just how capable we are when we rely on each other. Maybe they fear that if we shift away from the hyper-individualism that props up their systems and toward more collective, community-driven solutions, we’d start to see through the cracks in the façade.

It’s something to keep in mind as we face the ongoing realities of climate catastrophe. The lessons are there: community and collaboration, not command and control, are what save lives.

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Web Round Up: Conspiracies, Climate and Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Lately, even Beyoncé—our untouchable queen of the Bey Hive—has been pulled into the storm of controversy surrounding Sean Combs, aka P-Diddy. The allegations against him, which include abuse, trafficking, and fraud, are horrifying enough, but now the ripple effects are reaching all of his so-called friends, including Beyoncé. I’ll spare you the more disturbing details, but what’s really caught my attention is the conspiracy theory gaining traction: the idea that P-Diddy and Jay-Z systematically ruined anyone who competed with Beyoncé’s rise. (It even spawned a meme where people "thank" Beyoncé for good things in their lives, lol. Here's another one.)

Normally, I’d dismiss something like this. But then I noticed how far it’s spread—across Reddit threads, Twitter, even in the comment sections of Beyoncé’s Instagram posts. Some point to Adele offering to share her Grammy as part of this “plot.” Others are retrofitting Kanye’s infamous interruption of Taylor Swift as an attempt to “protect” Taylor from Beyoncé’s wrath. What’s unsettling is that, given how tightly controlled Beyoncé’s image has always been, this probably isn’t going unnoticed by her team. And while these theories are ridiculous, they speak to a broader cultural fascination with how power and fame intertwine, and how, when cracks appear, people are quick to connect dots that might not even exist.

This case could end up touching many in Hollywood, from Leonardo DiCaprio to J-Lo to Kim Kardashian, sending shockwaves through the entertainment industry as more people start questioning who knew what and when. It’s another example of how quickly conspiracy theories can jump from the fringes to mainstream culture, reshaping public narratives in ways that feel inevitable.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, I’ve noticed a similar dynamic playing out in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. While watching disaster footage online, I couldn’t help but scroll through the comments—and what I saw was frustrating. There’s a growing narrative claiming that these storms are “man-made” weapons, specifically targeting red states for political reasons. This isn’t a new idea—it first popped up during Hurricane Isaac—but the fact that it’s resurfacing during every major disaster says something about our collective willingness to believe in far-fetched explanations, rather than confronting the inconvenient truths of climate change.

There is also a real danger. FEMA had to suspend operations in storm-ravaged areas after receiving threats. In fact, consider that FEMA has a whole "rumor" page dedicated to debunk misinformation. Now, we also have generated AI images that further confuse people.

On Telegram, Russian channels used an AI generated image of a flooded Disney World that was picked up by both Russian and English-speaking news outlets.

What’s really disheartening is that the real issue is staring us in the face: fossil fuel emissions, amplified by ongoing military conflicts that dump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Every bomb dropped in Ukraine, every oil field burned in the Middle East—it’s all accelerating the climate crisis. Yet, instead of addressing the real causes, people are latching onto these absurd conspiracy theories. It’s easier, I guess, to imagine that a shadowy cabal is controlling the weather than to grapple with the fact that our addiction to fossil fuels is destroying the planet.

And finally, a story that I can only categorize under “this is why we can’t have nice things”. A viral trend recently made the rounds where women were tucking cash into baby food jars and diaper packages at grocery stores—just a small, random act of kindness meant to brighten a mother’s day. It was called #shedeservesthepurse, a quiet nod to the fact that caregiving, especially for young children, is an often invisible and under-appreciated labor.​

But, as with all good things, it didn’t take long for someone to ruin it. A group of men, apparently upset at the idea of not being the recipients of this generosity, started going to stores specifically to search for and destroy these hidden gifts. The whole effort quickly spiraled, with some stores even having to remove baby products from shelves due to the damage.

It’s a frustrating example of how even the most innocent gestures can be warped by attention-seeking or entitlement. And it makes me wonder—did we accelerate the trend’s downfall by publicizing it? In a world where good deeds often come with an expectation of likes, shares, and clicks, maybe the magic of movements like this is lost once they become too visible. Could we have kept it going longer if it hadn’t become an Instagram moment?

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On Polls & Community:

Well, it turns out 66% of you are Hoa Hoa Hoa people! Thank you for casting your votes and making me laugh—what a fun surprise. It’s got me thinking, though, about how I want to hear more from you—your thoughts, your opinions, your feedback. I don’t want this to just be a one-way conversation.

So, feel free to hit reply anytime. I’d love to start featuring a “comments from the community” section and really get to know you better. There’s something powerful about creating space for a real dialogue, especially in a world where we’re often shouting into the void of endless content. We’re all navigating so much right now, and your perspectives can add layers to the conversation that I might not have considered. Let’s make this more than just me talking at you—let’s turn it into something that feels more connected, more real.

I think there’s value in breaking down the walls between creator and community, especially when the lines between the two are already so blurred in digital spaces. So, what do you think? I’m ready to listen.