He passed before that distance was ever repaired. I did not have the tools in time. I kept wondering why this happened so easily, to families and friendships and people who had once known how to be in the same room together.

Then I went to graduate school at Colorado State University. I became a graduate teaching assistant and facilitator for the Center for Public Deliberation (CPD), which became the most fulfilling part of my time in graduate school.

Part of what drew me to this work was my experience with my father, though our story is one many people will recognize. In recent years, political division has worked its way into kitchens and living rooms across the country, coming between people and making once-ordinary conversations hard to have. You may have felt it at your own table.

When I found the CPD, I found the tools I had needed so desperately and had not known existed. These were not techniques for winning an argument or even holding your ground. They were ways of reaching the “why” underneath another person’s perspective, the experiences and stories and information that had built it.

The goal, I discovered, should never have been agreement. It was understanding, the point where someone’s view makes sense to you as something a person could reasonably arrive at, even when reaching that point is hard. That was exactly what my father and I had never had a way to give each other. It showed me the path I wanted to take in life.

Even beliefs that look irrational on the surface usually trace back to a real concern or value underneath. Understanding that root does not mean every belief holds up equally against facts. Some do not. What it means is that curiosity about the person’s underlying concern is what makes deep value-based conversation possible. You can respect where someone is coming from and still hold the line on what is true.

The CPD is hired by cities and local organizations across Northern Colorado to bring community members together around shared challenges. Rather than holding traditional town halls, where people often talk past one another, the CPD designs events that foster collective wisdom: the recognition that the knowledge of a group is far more powerful than any single person’s alone.

What I loved most was who filled the room. A retiree and a college student, a small business owner and a recent arrival, people from across the political spectrum and from neighborhoods that may rarely interact. The issues were as varied as the people: housing, how communities care for their aging members, student mental health, and, with the local newspaper, misinformation and political polarization. Whatever the topic, the aim was the same: to give a group what it needs to work through a shared problem, together.

As a facilitator, my role was to help people, using techniques like uncovering the value tensions underneath their disagreements. This is more delicate than it sounds.

When people argue, they tend to argue about conclusions, but conclusions are not always where the real disagreement lives. More often we hold many of the same values and simply weigh, rank, and apply them differently, shaped by what our own lives have taught us.

Take accessory dwelling units (ADUs), small additional homes built on existing properties. One neighbor might prioritize privacy, worried that an ADU next door changes the quiet street or brings people they don’t know closer to their daily life. Another might prioritize freedom, believing homeowners should have the right to build on their own land as they see fit. Both values can be held by reasonable people. Neither is wrong. The disagreement isn’t really about ADUs. Instead, disagreement lives in which value, privacy or freedom, someone weighs more heavily when the two come into tension.

Naming the value underneath a position does two things at once: It shows the group where the actual tension sits, and it makes the other person’s view legible as something a reasonable person could hold. Once you can see that, movement becomes possible. We were not necessarily searching for common ground that already existed. But, rather, we were building it together.

At some point, tools stopped being something I reached for and became something I embodied in everyday life. I noticed it less as a single moment and more as a pattern showing up everywhere. I found myself curious in interactions that used to pass by unnoticed, wanting to know more about people for no reason other than wanting to know them. When someone said something I disagreed with, my first instinct stopped being to argue. It became asking what shaped that belief, what experience or value sits underneath it, digging past the kind of surface-level exchange most conversations settle for.

Curiosity tends to be contagious. When I show someone true interest, they often show it back. What started as one person asking questions turns into two people learning from one another. That only works, though, if it stays voluntary. Some people are private, and that is their right. I am not asking anyone to disclose more than they want to. If someone wants to share, I listen. I ask. I learn. It stopped being a skill I used and became a way I move through the world.

Long after the events ended, I would catch myself in a heated debate at a dinner or with friends, reaching for the why underneath what someone had said instead of what I deemed to be disagreeable or flawed. I stopped needing to win. I started assuming the person across from me knew something I did not, and that searching to discover their reasoning was the most respectful thing to do.

The harder lesson was patience, and most of it was with myself. Some conversations made me frustrated. Some I simply got wrong. The discipline was never to pretend otherwise but to notice the mistake and repair it, and then to extend that same grace outward. Other people arrive carrying their own frustration and stumble in their own ways, and they need the room to learn that I needed, too.

Sometimes the best thing I had to offer was curiosity. It was a single conversation across difference that left someone feeling heard, which can feel rarer than it should.

That curiosity follows me well beyond any event, into encounters that have nothing to do with policy. In an old mining community in Wyoming that had largely emptied out, I stopped to talk with a man who made pottery. The town was the kind of place where the buildings tell the story before any person has to, where you can read the initial boom and the migration in the empty storefronts and homes.

We sat together while he told me what it had been like to watch his town change, the prosperity that came and went, the quiet the exodus left behind. He spoke about staying when others left, about his craft, about what it means to keep making something with your hands in a place that feels as though some had forgotten.

I was not there as a researcher and I had no agenda. I simply wanted to know, and so I asked, and he told me. I think about that conversation more than he would ever guess, and it gave me something no book could impart. This is what curiosity does. It lets you hear about other people’s lifetimes rather than just their opinions, and it asks something of you in return: the willingness to admit that your own understanding is incomplete, and that other people’s stories and experiences are part of what fills in the gaps. This requires us to choose curiosity over certainty, again and again, even when certainty would be easier.

I do similar work now at Unify America, helping design and support civic assemblies that bring everyday people together to address shared problems. The timeline is slightly longer than those evening events in graduate school, but the ethic is the same.

What moves me most still happens in the small moments of connection: people who would never have crossed paths in ordinary life, of different ages and neighborhoods and political realities, sitting down together over weeks and slowly getting to know one another. They share meals. They learn the names of each other’s kids. They discover, often to their own surprise, that a person they assumed was their opposite carries many of the same worries and hopes they do. I have been in the room while it happens, and you can feel the shift when it comes. The distance that seemed permanent reveals itself as circumstantial.

I don’t say this to suggest that dinner-table tension is the whole story. Many people are living through a period of real precarity right now, for reasons that differ sharply depending on who you ask and what news you consume. Some people are afraid for their safety. Some are afraid for their livelihoods. Some are afraid of being unheard or unseen in a country that no longer feels familiar to them. Whatever the reason, whether it belongs to you, your neighbor, or a stranger you pass on the street, it comes from the same place. We are all moved by our hopes, our dreams, our values, our experiences, our fears.

That’s part of what makes this work harder than it looks from the outside. You cannot ask someone to be curious about a neighbor’s perspective while pretending the stakes are small. The fear is real, even when two people in the same room are concerned about two completely different things. Deliberation does not erase that concern or resolve it. But it does something else that matters as much. It reminds people that they are not just living alongside one another, they are co-creating the communities they share. That means everyone has a seat at the table, not to win an argument, but to build something together that helps all of us navigate life the best way we know how and become a little more of the people we hope to become. Belonging grows out of that kind of collaboration. It is hard to build when we default to blaming our neighbors for our differences, and it gets easier when we choose curiosity instead, again and again, until it becomes a way of being with each other rather than a technique we reach for.

The same attitudes carry weight beyond any single conversation. When people practice curiosity and patience with each other, they build the capacity to do something bigger together: to take part in shaping the decisions that govern their shared life. Civic processes work best when the people inside them can actually hear one another, weigh trade-offs, and hold a disagreement without needing to end it in conquest. That capacity does not appear on its own. It is built the same way any skill is built, through patience, in rooms like the ones I have described, and in the ordinary conversations that happen everywhere else. The more of us who carry these attitudes in public life, the more capable we become, together, of building a collective vision of what it means to participate in a shared civic life.

This is why I do this work. Not because I am trying to solve polarization as an abstract problem, but because I know what it feels like when understanding breaks down between people you care about, and what it feels like when it can be repaired. Every assembly, every conversation, every moment of curiosity is a chance to help others experience what I am still learning myself: that we do not have to choose between our perspectives and our relationships. We can seek to understand one another not out of self-interest, but because human experience is rich beyond measure, and we are all a little incomplete without each other’s stories.

“From my work with elders, I learned stories, games, and how to become a better person,” said a student named Mya. It even relieved despair for one resident, Jodi, who said, “I went from a daily dread that I was still alive and breathing . . . to anticipat[ing] an awesome day that was full of life and joy.”

Many extracurricular activities, sports, meetups, and other community programs bring people of similar ages together: children with children, teens with teens, adults with adults, seniors with seniors. But new research on an intergenerational program known as iGen suggests that these initiatives may be especially beneficial to our health and well-being.

Finding meaning in connection

For the study, the 25 participating students—as well as three elders and eight long-term care staff members—completed a variety of surveys. At the end of the day, they rated how meaningful their interactions with different groups of people were, how much fun and positive and negative emotions they had, and the quality of their physical health that day. They also reported how many kind and helpful actions they performed, and how strong their social connections and sense of belonging were.

Everyone completed surveys for 10 straight school days in late September and early October, and then again in June.

The results suggested that people were experiencing meaningful interactions between generations, and highly meaningful interactions with their peers of similar ages. While people didn’t become happier, healthier, or more kind overall over the course of the program, the researchers did observe changes on a daily basis.

On days when people had more meaningful interactions, they tended to feel better, more connected, healthier, and kinder. This was true for both interactions with people the same age (like students with students, or elders with elders) and intergenerational interactions—although the benefits seemed more pronounced between generations than with peers.

This link appeared even stronger toward the end of the program than near the beginning. In June, having meaningful interactions through iGen seemed to have an even bigger impact on people’s well-being than it did in the fall. The researchers, led by Jason D. E. Proulx, suggest this might be because students had deepened their relationships with elders by that point, or they were savoring their last few weeks together.

The length and depth of this program—spending whole days together over 10 months—may have contributed to how powerful it was, the researchers suggest.

Although this research only reflects one program, with a majority of white participants, it offers promising evidence that programs like this can help young and old alike, and comprise a valuable part of students’ education. Other research finds that interacting across generations can improve mental health and cognitive function in older people, and a sense of purpose for all of us.

“Programs like iGen may be one effective and scalable intervention to foster more inclusive, meaningfully connected, and happier communities,” write Proulx and his colleagues.

Mya’s mother Tanya said that she “built long-lasting friendships with the residents . . . but also learned the value and appreciation of life.”

“It took those sixth-grade kids to bring life back into focus for me,” said Jodi, who had thought her life was over and sometimes wanted it to be. “iGen saved me.”

We are beginning to expect a lot from these pre-teens, whether it’s keeping a promise, taking responsibility, or showing courage. But too often, we have not given them the language, structure, or time to think through how to make the right decision in those moments that matter.

Scientific research can help—believe it or not! There are a range of compelling studies that offer middle school educators a roadmap on what skills and mindsets students need to make the right decisions.
 
Self-determination theory emphasizes the importance of intrinsic motivation—and there are compelling data that middle school students are more likely to act consistently when their goals are personally meaningful, not externally imposed.

In addition, David Yeager’s work on adolescent motivation highlights that young people are deeply driven by a desire for status and respect from their peers and mentors. When students feel respected and see themselves as capable of contributing to others, their motivation and behavior improve.

More recently, research by Benjamin Rogers and his colleagues suggests that when individuals of all ages see their lives as part of a broader “hero’s journey,” they are more likely to act with purpose and be a force for good.

Overall, researchers point to a clear and compelling insight: Students need opportunities to define who they are, who they want to become, and how their everyday choices—guided by their values—align with that identity. This insight directly informed a curriculum we designed for middle school students titled Moments That Matter.
 
The Moments That Matter curriculum is a program of the Griffin Institute at the National Medal of Honor Museum, based in Arlington, Texas. For middle school students, a “moment that matters” could be when they’re being pressured to lie, steal, or cheat or when they want to hang out with their friends, but their mom needs them to stay at home with a younger sibling.

Tapping into their own personal interests and experiences, our mission as educators was to take middle school students on a journey of self-discovery, empowering them to explore two essential questions: Who am I? Who am I becoming for others?

While students learn about the history of the Medal of Honor—the highest U.S. military decoration—the curriculum is primarily focused on four core values that have enabled ordinary Americans to do extraordinary things: commitment, integrity, sacrifice, and courage.

Each student begins their journey by identifying their own superpowers, the unique strengths, talents, and skills they will need to become their best selves for others. Students are also encouraged to identify the superpowers of their classmates. At the core of these activities is an opportunity for students to discover how their unique strengths can connect to and support the values and goals that mean the most to them.

One of the cornerstone moments of the curriculum is when students are encouraged to reflect and write down a set of goals that focus on who they want to become for others. Some students write they want to be the best friend they can be. Others say they want their parents to see them as trustworthy and responsible.

After students have written about a specific goal that will enable them to be their best self for others, teachers guide them through a series of lessons on each of the four Medal of Honor values. The lessons do not focus on hypothetical scenarios but on how each student’s everyday choices and decisions directly connect and shape their personal goals and identity.

Commitment: Turning goals into action

Students are encouraged to reflect on commitments they have already made, whether it’s helping their parents with the dishes or wanting to be the best teammate. Students also collaboratively explore the reasons why it’s sometimes hard to keep their commitments (e.g., peer pressure, competing priorities, wanting to fit in). In addition, students learn how to develop positive habits and routines that will help them to consistently “live” their commitments.

Each student then creates their own “commitment action plan.” The plan includes:

• a commitment they will implement within the next seven days;
• the habits and routines they will create;
• the challenges they may face; and
• a person they will ask to hold them accountable to their commitment (a friend, parent, teacher).

Integrity: Aligning our values, words, and actions

Students next learn why integrity is important in those moments that matter—and how integrity occurs when we align our beliefs, words, and actions. Students read and discuss different scenarios where someone has shown integrity (and the value or belief at the heart of that person’s integrity, such as compassion, friendship, or sportsmanship).

Students then create their own “Integrity Action Plan.” They start by writing down their North Star values, the values and beliefs most important to them (e.g., honesty, fairness, kindness). Every student is also encouraged to come up with their own personal motto that they will repeat to themselves whenever they need to be reminded why it’s important to follow their North Star values.

Sacrifice: Acting for others, not just ourselves

Students next explore how sacrifice is almost always linked to a conviction or strong belief about who they want to be. Students also discover how empathy and putting yourself in someone else’s shoes can help them decide when to make a sacrifice. They write in their journal about a fictional character from a movie, show, or book who made a sacrifice and how empathy might have motivated the character to make that sacrifice.

Each student then creates their own “sacrifice preparedness plan.” They first write down a particular conviction or belief (e.g., “I want to be caring”). Next, they reflect on those “moments” when they may need to make a sacrifice to stay aligned with their convictions and beliefs. A week later, students come together to reflect on two questions: How does making sacrifices impact people in your life? and How could you start making sacrifices for the things or people you care about?

Courage: Acting despite fear, danger, or hardship

At this moment in the Moments That Matter curriculum, students are eager to explore the three essential “tools” that produce courage in those moments that matter: commitment, competence, and confidence. They learn that:

• commitments push us to act with courage;
• competence is having the knowledge and skills to do something scary or difficult; and
• confidence is that internal feeling of “I can do this!” —an indispensable tool that fuels our courageous behaviors.

Students also learn about the power of positive self-talk.

Finally, students are invited to write their own “courage action plan.” At the heart of the plan is identifying the different areas of their lives where they may need to act with courage.

Next, they create their own “if/then” scripts: “If” I am in this situation, “then” I will respond with courage because I have made a commitment, practiced the skills and knowledge to do the right thing, and can leverage my confidence and positive self-talk to overcome my fears or doubts.

What have we learned from tracking the classroom impact of Moments That Matter? Teachers who piloted the curriculum have told us that what they most appreciate about it is how it encourages student voice (e.g., how students were learning from each other as they shared with their peers why they sometimes did not show integrity or courage).

The post-assessment data collected from our pilot implementation is also promising. Students report increased levels of self-awareness, a greater willingness to take responsibility for their actions, and a stronger tendency to think about their values when making everyday decisions.

Perhaps most powerfully, we appreciated hearing from teachers that the Moments That Matter curriculum gave them the opportunity to serve as mentors. As one teacher shared with us: “The curriculum reminded me why I became a teacher. It gave my students space to talk about character in a way that felt authentic and meaningful for students—and me.”

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In contrast, a 16-year-old white girl said, “I think it’s OK. . . . I do feel bad for minorities. . . . I’m white however and come from a somewhat similar background so I will be alright.”

These two teenagers responded very differently to the racial climate created by Trump—during his first presidency. Research on adolescents during Trump’s first term takes on new relevance now that he is back in office.

As a scholar of adolescent development, I have studied U.S. teenagers for over two decades. When Trump took office in 2016, I was in the midst of leading a five-year study to understand how young people become civically engaged. My colleagues and I were tracking adolescents’ beliefs and behaviors over time, which gave us a unique opportunity to document changes after Trump was elected.

Focusing on 1,400 ninth through 12th graders, I hypothesized that adolescents would become more divided during Trump’s presidency, given the political divisions evident among adults in 2016. And, like other social scientists, my team and I did identify diverging worldviews about racism and inequalities among teenagers and increased discrimination.

Decades of research show that adolescents are influenced in lasting ways by societal events and political shifts, such as the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and changing presidential administrations. Likewise, the short-term impacts of Trump’s presidency identified by research may portend long-lasting effects for this generation of young people.

Diverging worldviews

In our study, young Trump supporters were more likely to be white and male and to have politically conservative parents, and less likely to be immigrants. Teenagers in our study who disapproved of Trump were more likely to be female and Latino, Black or Asian, to have politically liberal parents, and to have parents or grandparents who were immigrants. These groups were not just different demographically; they diverged in their worldviews about race and inequality over time.

Across Trump’s first year in office, young Trump supporters decreased their race consciousness—that is, their support for racial equity and inclusion declined. We measured race consciousness by whether high schoolers agreed with statements like “I show support for equal rights for people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds” and “I express concern about discrimination faced by racial and ethnic groups.”

Young Trump supporters also grew less aware of inequalities in society during this timeframe, becoming less likely to endorse statements like “In America, certain groups have fewer chances to get ahead.”

Conversely, young Trump detractors increased their race consciousness and awareness of societal inequalities during this time. Another study that interviewed youth of color during Trump’s first presidency similarly found that adolescents critical of Trump developed deeper capacities to understand societal inequalities in response to Trump’s policies.

Did these divergent beliefs translate into different behaviors?

Interestingly, only young Trump supporters in our study became more likely to vote after Trump’s first election. This heightened interest in voting among young Trump supporters aligns with 2024’s election results. Although people ages 18–29 were more likely to support Kamala Harris than Donald Trump, the majority of white youth (54%) and young men (56%) who voted turned out to support Trump. The adolescents we surveyed in 2016 and 2017 are among this cohort of young voters in 2024.

Increased discrimination

The divergent beliefs of Trump supporters and detractors may have implications for other behaviors in addition to voting.

After Trump’s first election, 28% of K–12 teachers reported witnessing increases in students’ derogatory remarks toward underrepresented groups, especially in predominantly white schools. Students were emboldened to make bigoted statements about immigrants, Muslims, and other groups. Researchers documented incidents of anti-Black racism and anti-transgender discrimination in schools.

Our study found that Latino youth experienced more discrimination after Trump was elected. Latino adolescents also expressed fears and anxieties due to Trump’s hostile immigration policies and rhetoric, and they attributed Trump’s stance to racism. Four psychologists who systematically reviewed the available research concluded that the first Trump presidency harmed Latino adolescents’ mental health.

These studies did not definitively attribute increased discrimination to actions of young Trump supporters. But young Trump supporters did become less concerned about discrimination and racial equity. And adult Trump supporters did endorse more racist and anti-immigrant attitudes and the use of political violence compared with other adults.

What about now?

Trump’s executive orders in 2025 have expanded the detention and deportation of immigrants, declared that gender is binary, and declared that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are illegal.

Based on how people responded in the early days of Trump’s first term, these orders may directly harm adolescents and embolden discrimination again. For example, immediately after the 2024 election, crisis calls from LGBTQ+ youth increased by 200%, and harassing texts were sent to Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ adolescents across 20 states.

The executive order to eliminate teaching on racial and gender equity from schools, if upheld, would limit adolescents’ opportunities to learn about racism, sexism, and inequalities faced by different groups.

Adolescents’ awareness of and concerns about inequalities diverged during Trump’s first presidency based on their political views. Given the policy focus of Trump’s second term, I anticipate similar or greater divisions in young people’s racial attitudes and actions than my research revealed over the course of his first term.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the book, King addresses loving people responsible for racial segregation and violence against Black Americans, but he does so without ever condoning racial harm.

While King’s understanding of forgiveness flowed from his theology, psychology offers a perspective on whether forgiveness may be more or less helpful for us when a broader social offense has been committed or is ongoing. Though most forgiveness research has looked at offenses between two people—like friends or family members—a few efforts have tried to understand intergroup offenses, like racism. Even wrongs committed between two community members in the U.S. and elsewhere happen within an inescapable reality shaped by race.

Thus, for Americans from racially marginalized groups, considering whether to forgive involves taking into account our individual wellness, as well as the historical context and the social and cultural worlds we live in.

Racial pressure to forgive

On the whole, forgiveness should be viewed within a larger context, says Michael Perez, a social psychologist at Wesleyan University, particularly when it comes to race. If social justice is yet to be achieved, then forgiveness has some risks.

In a courtroom in October 2018, Brandt Jean hugged and forgave Amber Guyger, a white off-duty officer, for fatally shooting his older brother Botham Jean in his Dallas apartment, drawing media fascination with his forgiveness in spite of her murder conviction.

Perez, who was a psychology Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University at the time, became troubled by the coverage. It held echoes of the racially motivated gunning down of nine Mother Emanuel AME Church congregants in Charleston in 2017. “What I felt was that in those instances because the forgiveness was so front and center the racial components of this case [melted into the background]. It was the forgiveness that took up all the narrative oxygen,” he says.

Perez prompts mental health professionals and psychologists to consider the social context of racism when public forgiveness is expressed through Black pain.

Historian and journalist Stacey Patton wrote for the Washington Post, “Black pain is only heard after forgiveness is afforded to these white perpetrators. Black rage is challenged as inappropriate and unhelpful, while the media and others celebrate the traumatized family members’ ability to respond to this latest heinous crime with compassion and love. When black forgiveness is the means for white atonement, it enables white denial about the harms that racist violence creates. When black redemption of white America is prioritized over justice and accountability, there is no chance of truth and reconciliation. It trivializes real black suffering, grief, and the heavy lifting required for any possibility of societal progress.”

If you are not white, Perez says, there may be “cultural expectations of decorum and how you should engage” that stigmatize anger or pushback. Perez worries about the risk of coerced forgiveness when society almost expects forgiveness from certain racialized groups.

In recent years, as public shootings of Black people receive attention, communication scholars have turned an eye to analyzing Black forgiveness whenever a socially visible violence occurs. Communication scholar Daniel Morris documents how news reporters frequently ask the relatives of victims of police brutality if they will forgive the perpetrators.

“We maintain that the wider public not only expects a rhetoric of forgiveness when racial ghosts of the past (and present) manifest in ways that cause Black pain but also those grief-stricken Black families must offer the forgiveness in non-threatening and [expeditious] ways that eases public consciences,” write scholars Andre Johnson and Earle Fischer.

Therefore, an individual choice to forgive may be influenced by larger societal pressures to do so, not just religious pressure but also racial pressure. 

In broader culture, Perez argues, Black forgiveness narratives may reinforce the idea that we live in a more equitable, colorblind society than we actually do, thus letting society off the hook from having to dismantle systems of injustice.

“A lot of the prevailing literature is that forgiveness is letting a weight down. But the pressure to forgive can actually be quite burdensome,” says Perez. The field needs “more people to really think about the idea of how racism can permeate seemingly positive things.”

One of researcher Robert Enright’s (non-sequential) four phases of forgiveness is examining your anger. Perez says we must afford people the right to process that anger on their own timeline. “Sometimes we shy away from the negative emotions,” he says. “But anger gets people to push for change.”

Perez worries that forgiveness just “helps Black people survive in a toxic environment of racism as opposed to addressing the sociocultural worlds that reproduce racism.”

Forgiveness as a coping mechanism

However, despite our social realities, Perez recognizes that some individuals choose forgiveness as a part of their journey. For some, forgiveness may serve as a coping mechanism to survive the environment in which they live day to day—and it may have some benefits.

African Americans who cultivate forgiveness as a general disposition have decreased depressive symptoms, according to a study by Jasmin Brooks Stephens, a University of California, Berkeley, psychologist. She surveyed 101 African American college students who said they had experienced racial discrimination.

Approximately 27% of them met criteria for clinical depression, and the more racial discrimination they said they experienced, the higher their depression symptoms. But this link was weaker when people had a higher tendency to forgive.

The findings corroborated a 2017 study, which found that African American men who practiced forgiveness developed fewer depressive symptoms even as they experienced everyday racial discrimination. However, younger men reported experiencing racism more often and struggled more with depression and granting forgiveness.

Several scholars have also looked at forgiveness through the lens of health.

In a 2012 article, sociologist Michael McFarland, an associate professor at Florida State University, and his colleagues explored the results from a 2001 nationally representative survey of older American Christians—both Blacks and whites. The study found that Blacks who have a more forgiving disposition are less likely to experience alcohol abuse and chronic health conditions.

But those who lived in rundown neighborhoods did not experience the same benefits. They found that Blacks who live “in more deteriorated neighborhoods may not receive the health benefits from forgiveness that those in less deteriorated neighborhoods receive.”

Together, these studies suggest forgiveness has benefits for those who belong to racial minority groups, but they may be limited when other social factors are not addressed.

Forgiveness as a benefits and risk assessment

Michael McCullough, a psychologist at the University of California San Diego, finds that people can cultivate unforgiveness as a survival mechanism, particularly in communities that receive underinvestment. Neighborhood culture there may encourage unforgiveness or even revenge to protect people from more harms. Being forgiving could be perceived as weakness and make someone vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

McCullough studies forgiveness through an evolutionary lens. He theorizes about what conditions lead to forgiveness.

After an offense, a victim has different choices about how to respond. In a 2021 review, McCullough and his colleague Thomas McCauley write, one option is to simply avoid the offender to reduce the likelihood of being harmed again—but that might be difficult depending on any prior relationship to the offender. The victim could take revenge, but that might have its own risks. Both of these strategies also run another risk: losing access to whatever benefits the exploiter offers, such as employment or educational opportunities, financial benefits, or even belonging, love, or acceptance.

Forgiveness might become the right solution, but it depends on the conditions that exist in a particular scenario. For example, a nonprofit that supports BIPOC youth relies on a high-profile donor. The donor makes some insensitive comments that reveal racial biases and are hurtful to staff members, who are also primarily members of these racial groups. In this case, the donor is a long-time partner of the organization and plays a vital role in connecting them to others in the community.

McCullough and his colleagues have found that our decision to forgive is related to our calculation of both the threat of future harm and the value of our relationship with the offender, though neither of these are necessarily the only clear cause of our choice to forgive.

If when confronted, the donor is dismissive and shows no intention to change, staff members might still choose a type of forgiveness to preserve the relationship, while remaining guarded around him. After all, the options to either avoid the offender or take revenge contain their own risks to the stability of the nonprofit.

But if the donor apologizes and takes accountability for the harm by committing to a racial bias training, the nonprofit director might value the relationship more and believe his staff is less likely to be harmed again—thus, encouraging forgiveness.

Intergroup forgiveness

Another line of inquiry is attempting to measure and define forgiveness in an intergroup setting, specifically as it applies to race-related offenses.

In 2015, Georgia State University psychologist Don Davis and his colleagues tested a newly created intergroup forgiveness survey with African American students, who answered questions about their decision to forgive, their perceptions of the value of relationships with an offending group, and how much they predicted being exploited by that group. Students also filled out questionnaires on forgiveness and microaggressions.

They found that students frequently chose to avoid the group—rather than forgive—when they did not judge relationships with that group to be valuable or thought future harm to be likely. The more they felt exploited, the more often they chose a strategy of revenge.

Taking it a step further, Davis and his colleagues asked a separate group of racially or ethnically marginalized students about how committed they were to religion and how connected they were to their racial or ethnic identity, alongside their intergroup forgiveness.

Within the population studied, their findings hinted that people with a stronger racial or ethnic identity showed more intergroup forgiveness. Of the participants, 72.5% had a strong racial or ethnic identity and were more likely to forgive, while the rest were less forgiving but varied in their sense of identity.

People with more religious commitment tended to show particular aspects of forgiveness indicating a decision to forgive—e.g., “I have made a commitment to forgiving them” and “My choice is to forgive them.” Davis says that this might support the idea that intending to forgive can be a coping strategy, similar to Stephens’s notion of forgiveness.

This research shows that interpersonal and intergroup forgiveness appear to be different things. Furthermore, members of the same group choose different strategies in response to race-based offenses, which only sometimes include forgiveness.

Radical forgiveness

Meanwhile, Perez agrees that there might be insights to learn from how Black Christians during the Civil Rights Movement reframed forgiveness not as weak but as power. Public, radical love expressed in peaceful protest highlighted the depths of racist hatred and aimed to move sympathetic whites to join them in social change.

In King’s writing on forgiveness, he was elaborating on the biblical text where Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive a brother who sinned against him. While Peter asks if seven times is enough, Jesus challenges him to 70 times that amount.

King’s elaboration is that no one who forgives that much could do so without forgiveness becoming a permanent character trait. Yet it is by displaying that inner change—actively standing against injustice using (in his case) faith-informed non-violent civil action—that puts on display the depth of the evil underlying racial discriminations.

In a later chapter in “Strength to Love,” King wrote about loving our enemies: “Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

King’s aim was to forgive so hard and thoroughly that justice would flow.

After peaking in 2004 with 64% of the public saying they basically trust the police, confidence sank to a low of 43% by 2022, from which it’s barely recovered, according to Gallup.

But that average conceals a landscape fragmented by race, class, and politics. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly nine out of 10 Democrats support major changes in policing, while only 14% of Republicans do. Two-thirds of all Americans say police treat Black people less fairly than others, a view embraced by almost all Black adults. In general, the lower you go in education and income, the more trust in police falls.

This distrust has an emotional impact on the human beings who comprise America’s police force. As Texas State University crime scientist Tamara Herold describes (based on others’ research), 80% of police are beset by chronic stress; one in four suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression; and suicide rates are 54% higher than in the general population. In many agencies, resignations are rising and recruitment is faltering.

Herold has served as senior advisor to the National Institute of Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice, and developed the pathbreaking Place Network Investigations violence reduction strategy. Her Center for Problem-Oriented Policing serves as a major clearinghouse for law enforcement strategies.

In searching abroad for alternative models of policing, Herold found Colonel Dr. Bernd Burger of the Bavarian State Police in Germany. He introduced her to Markus Ebner, an Austrian psychologist who has developed a new model of “positive leadership” and studied its implementation in police agencies.

I interviewed all three of them at the European Conference on Positive Psychology in Dublin, Ireland, in July. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Jeremy Adam Smith: Tamara, how would you characterize the emotional state of American policing today?

Tamara Herold: It varies across jurisdictions, but overall morale is much lower than it was 10 years ago.

The statistics reflect that. Agencies across the United States are struggling with recruitment, retention, and officer well-being.

Policing has gone through an extraordinarily difficult decade. While many professions face similar challenges, policing occupies a unique role in society. Without a healthy police force, it’s difficult to have a healthy society.

In recent years, police officers have also been heavily criticized in the United States. Some of that scrutiny has been entirely justified. Serious misconduct deserves public attention and accountability.

But one consequence is that many people who have never personally interacted with a police officer now begin those encounters with distrust. That creates an enormous challenge for officers who are trying to help, because successful policing depends on public trust.

JAS: Markus, tell me about positive leadership. What is it?

Markus Ebner: Positive leadership is a leadership style that fosters positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment among employees. It’s measurable, it can be developed, and we can study its outcomes scientifically. We call our model PERMA-Lead.

 

JAS: What are the benefits of positive leadership?

ME: There are benefits at several levels.

For employees, positive leadership is associated with lower stress and fewer symptoms of burnout. Leaders themselves also experience less stress and burnout.

At the team level, people cooperate more, support one another, and create a healthier workplace atmosphere.

At the organizational level, the benefits are measurable, as well. In one study of supermarkets, customers spent more money when stores were led by positive leaders, and employee sick days were lower. So positive leadership isn’t just good for people—it also benefits organizations financially.

   

JAS: You’ve studied positive leadership in policing. What did you find?

ME: We found strong relationships between positive leadership and important outcomes. Teams led by positive leaders reported lower burnout risk. They also felt more responsible for the team’s collective success.

When leaders were less positive, officers focused primarily on their own individual responsibilities rather than the success of the team. I think that’s especially important from a democratic perspective, because policing depends on collaboration and shared responsibility.

JAS: Bernd, how did you discover positive leadership, and why was it relevant to your work as a police commander?

Bernd Burger: I came to it almost by accident.

When I became a commander, I realized that younger officers were very different from my generation. They wanted explanations. The blunt, highly critical leadership style that had been common when I started my career simply didn’t work anymore.

I began giving presentations about younger generations and how police organizations could improve recruitment and retention. Eventually, I realized that leadership was really the central issue. People join organizations because of leadership, and they stay because of leadership.

That led me to Markus’s book on positive leadership. After more than 20 years in policing, I immediately recognized that the best leaders I had worked with naturally embodied the five pillars of positive leadership.

For police officers, that’s especially valuable because we don’t have much time to read scientific research. We need approaches that are practical, understandable, and easy to implement.

I became certified in the approach and now help police agencies throughout Germany and Switzerland integrate positive leadership into their organizations.

Germany also has an advantage in that police officers receive extensive education. Basic officers complete at least two and a half years of training. Middle managers complete another two years of study, and senior leaders earn an additional two-year master’s degree. In total, I received six and a half years of education before reaching senior leadership.

About a year and a half ago, Germany updated its national police leadership regulations. The new guidance emphasizes giving officers meaning and purpose, but it doesn’t explain how to do that. Positive leadership provides exactly those practical tools.

JAS: What are the biggest challenges to implementing positive leadership?

BB: Police organizations are traditionally hierarchical. When people rise through the ranks, they sometimes assume they no longer need to explain their decisions. They simply give orders.

But people need to understand why they’re being asked to do something.

Purpose is especially important for younger officers. People often say that policing’s purpose is simply to provide safety. I ask them, “If that’s all our purpose is, what’s the difference between us and the police in North Korea or Russia?”

 

For me, our purpose is to protect both safety and freedom. We must be transparent. We are accountable under the law. If we make mistakes, we must acknowledge them and learn from them.

That broader purpose helps officers understand why honesty, accountability, and learning matter.

Another challenge is bureaucracy. Police organizations operate within legal systems, and laws are written in very formal, dry language. That style often carries over into everyday communication.

Formal emails rarely make anyone feel appreciated or inspired. Supervisors become accustomed to communicating that way.

One thing I try to do in my workshops is help leaders see that they can give clear instructions while also being warm, respectful, and encouraging. You don’t lose authority by communicating positively. In fact, people usually respond much better.

JAS: Tamara, how can we apply these models and insights to improving American policing?

TH: First-line supervisors are absolutely critical. If you ask most police chiefs who’s really running an agency day to day, they’ll tell you it’s the first-line supervisors.

That’s why we’re focusing on Markus’s PERMA leadership training for those leaders.

We also need to rethink police education. Other countries invest three, four, or even six years educating police officers. In the United States, we often expect someone to be ready after four or six months of training.

At the same time, many people argue that policing is already too expensive. I think that’s shortsighted.

JAS: Yet many agencies seem to be responding with signing bonuses and higher salaries.

TH: Those measures are understandable, but they’re really bandages.

After losing so many excellent officers, agencies are trying to stop the bleeding. Recruitment bonuses might be intended to help fill vacancies, but they don’t address the underlying causes.

We need to ask why the profession reached this point in the first place. That includes investing in better leadership, better education, and more comprehensive training.

As Bernd mentioned earlier, it’s like putting makeup on someone who’s suffering from internal bleeding. They may look better temporarily, but the real problem remains untreated.

Too often, legislation is written in response to the worst examples rather than asking how to help the overwhelming majority of officers who are already doing excellent work every day.

Instead of focusing exclusively on preventing failure, we should also invest in helping good officers become even better.

JAS: Tell me about your work in Austin and with police departments across the United States.

TH: I’m a professor at Texas State University, and much of my work focuses on helping police departments develop evidence-based crime prevention strategies, particularly for violent crime.

What I’ve learned is that even the best strategies require excellent leadership. Successful implementation depends on leaders who know how to guide people effectively.

One concept I’ve learned from Markus’s team is what they call “authentic excellence.” It combines personal strengths with professional competencies.

My work has traditionally focused on building competencies—teaching police officers the science of crime prevention and community dynamics. Pairing those competencies with leaders’ individual strengths has enormous potential.

JAS: What are you hoping to learn through your research?

TH: We already know that positive leadership is associated with lower burnout and healthier organizations.

The next question is whether leadership training actually produces those outcomes over time.

We’ll be evaluating the effects of PERMA leadership training in American policing for the first time. We want to know how long the benefits last, whether some officers benefit more than others, and what kinds of organizational outcomes improve.

Will sick leave decline? Will public complaints decrease? Could positive interactions increase so much that citizen commendations become more common?

These are all empirical questions.

If taxpayers are investing in police training, we have a responsibility to ensure that the training actually works. The existing evidence suggests it will, but rigorous evaluation is essential.

A new Gallup Poll conducted in the United States paints a different picture of the state of kindness. Researchers surveyed over 2,000 American adults asking them to report on their everyday experiences—how often they’d witnessed kindness or received kindness from someone else—as well as how comfortable they were to initiate kindness toward a stranger. By asking individuals about their personal experiences (as opposed to their general impressions based on the current zeitgeist), the researchers found that kindness in the U.S. is more alive and well than we might expect.

“Kindness is swirling all around us, but the perception by ordinary people is that it’s not,” says Stuart Muszynski, president and chief executive officer of the Values-in-Action Foundation and codesigner of the poll. “There’s a kindness perception gap.”

The good news about kindness

Muszynski and his colleagues found that a majority of Americans reported seeing kindness regularly in their everyday lives. Sixty percent said that they’d seen people acting in kind, respectful ways often or very often, while 65% said they’ve been the recipients of kind acts from someone in their community within the last seven days.

Also, 73% said that they viewed other Americans as generally very kind or somewhat kind—a figure that belies our worries to the contrary.

“What shows up in the media every day is a very unkind America,” says Muszynski. “At the grassroots level, people see kindness every day. It’s around us all the time.”

An even higher percentage of those polled, 90%, said they would be very comfortable or somewhat comfortable initiating a kind act toward a stranger—a heartwarming finding. Muszynski points out that this reflects the fact that people who witness kindness are more willing to pay it forward.

“If you see kindness, you do kindness,” says Muszynski. “It’s a natural empathy reaction.”

Experiences of kindness may vary with age

Despite the good news, Muszynski noted some nuances around the findings. For example, younger adults were less likely to witness kindness or be the recipients of kind acts, giving them a less favorable outlook on the state of kindness in our country.

Young adults also felt less comfortable than older adults offering kindness to someone they don’t know. Only 35% of 18 to 29 year olds said they were very comfortable initiating a kind act toward a stranger—significantly less than the 49% of 30 to 49 year olds and the 64% of adults 65 and older that said the same.

“An individual is much more likely to see kindness, report kindness, and do kindness, and then that drops for individuals in the 18- to 29-year-old bracket,” says Muszynski. “That was really, really surprising to us as well as to Gallup.”

Muszynski speculates that this may be due to how distressed younger generations are. He notes that this age group has lived through the 2008 recession, increased political polarization, the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating climate change, and the rise of social media culture. These all could have added to their sense of isolation or feeling the need to look out for themselves first, making it more difficult for kindness to flourish.

“If you’re growing up with an individual as well as collective perception that there’s not kindness around you, you’re not necessarily going to feel comfortable [offering] kindness,” he says.

It could also be that younger adults are generally unhappier than their elders, for developmental reasons. Studies suggest that younger adults experience less positive and more negative emotion than older adults—in part due to older people benefitting from better emotion regulation skills. A poorer mood or outlook could have an impact on their kind behavior, as happier people tend to be kinder.

A recent Pew Research poll found that younger adults report greater mental health challenges than older adults, too, which means they will likely have less energy or emotional bandwidth to reach out to others in need.

Muszynski fears that because young people are more plugged in to the negative messages in social media, it could lead them to expect less kindness in the world. He points to research by Stanford University psychologist Jamil Zaki that found students had overly pessimistic views of how empathic and friendly other students were, based on false beliefs rather than fact. Once Zaki and his colleagues created a campaign to alert students to the fallacy of that narrative, students were much more open to engaging with one another.

“It’s really about social norms and the influence that social norms have in any kind of ecosystem,” says Muszynski.

How real is the kindness age gap?

Of course, one Gallup survey doesn’t paint the full picture on American kindness. Additional research adds context.

A recent meta-analysis pooling together findings from several studies around the world found that, overall, older adults tended to be kinder than younger adults—like the Gallup Poll. However, the difference between groups depended on the type of kindness offered. Older adults tended to be more open to sharing money or resources than younger adults; when it came to assisting someone or comforting them, the age differences were much smaller or unclear.

“Older adults may be more generous in some ways, but they are not necessarily more prosocial in every kind of situation,” says David Shum, coauthor of the study and a neuropsychologist at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Shum and his colleagues also found that a person’s financial situation affected kind behavior. The differences in prosociality based on age were much stronger when an older person had a high level of income than when they didn’t. This suggests that a person’s socioeconomic status could play a role in kindness, too, and that the age difference effect may reflect a difference in means.

“If younger adults have fewer resources, they may appear less prosocial in some situations, even if they still care about others,” says Shum.

Complicating the picture, other research raises questions about whether age and other demographics are actual factors in kindness—and, if so, why.

For example, one study in Germany found that younger adults were actually more prosocial than older adults overall, though the type of kindness mattered, too. As people aged, their willingness to engage in genuine kindness (benevolence) or norm-based kindness (reciprocity or helping to promote fairness) decreased, perhaps because they had fewer resources. The opposite finding from the Gallup poll could be due to the study’s different time, place, and culture, as well as how kindness was measured (experimentally, in addition to self-report).

Muszynski believes economic stress could keep people from being more kind if they are focused more on survival. But economic factors couldn’t completely account for the age differences he found in the Gallup poll. While the poll did find that less educated and poorer people were more uncomfortable helping a stranger than those with more education and income, younger adults within those groups were still less comfortable reaching out to others than older people within those same groups.

We can all learn to be kinder

Regardless of the research on an actual age difference in kindness in the United States, everyone, old and young, could be nudged toward acting kinder. After all, kindness is a universal value, vital to the health of individuals as well as our nation. And it’s often contagious.

Fortunately, small, individual acts of kindness are pretty much the norm, not only in the United States but around the world. As the authors of an international study on kind behavior found, “requests for assistance are very frequent and mostly successful; and when people decline to give help, they normally give a reason.” Though cultural variations impact how this looks, kindness generally begets more kindness—just as Muszynski’s results suggest.

So, how to encourage more kindness to spread? It may be important to remind people that we tend to underestimate the value of our kindness toward others, thinking it won’t matter that much, when it does. Sometimes we have to just overcome our reluctance to step out of our comfort zone in order to initiate kindness toward a stranger and to see how nice it can be. For tips on how to do that in your everyday life, Greater Good offers several research-based kindness practices for any age group.

To Muszynski, part of the solution lies in making ongoing, everyday kindnesses easier to notice. Sometimes, people don’t label everyday actions as kind acts, he says; we don’t recognize that the nurse caring for us is being kind (not just doing their job) or that listening to a grieving friend is an act of kindness. He hopes to encourage more kind acts through a public kindness challenge that he and his team developed.

“I believe that the solution is to change the paradigm, change the dialogue, change the ability for people to see and understand kindness,” says Muszynski.

Wherever and whoever you are, it never hurts to practice kindness in your own life. We all have the opportunity to build a culture of kindness, making for a more perfect and compassionate union.

This phenomenon creates an exceptional opportunity for college and university faculty. Not only can they teach content, but they can help students cultivate character virtues needed for adult life and potentially see them spread throughout many areas of society.

Without too much heavy lifting, faculty can create classroom conditions that cultivate virtues like open-mindedness, awareness, empathy, and democratic citizenship. These virtues can help increase students’ capacity for ethical decision making, leadership, and professional growth, which are crucial for responsible participation in society.

As young people tackle heightened ideological polarization and partisan hostility in the U.S., they need the right tools to navigate tough conversations and connect with others whose lives look different from their own. Universities can offer a safe and structured, yet intellectually challenging, environment for their students to practice character virtues that are essential to a healthy society.

What university experiences support character development?

Our project team wanted to understand how students’ experiences at our university affect their capacity to cultivate character virtues. To do this, we conducted 12 focus groups with 51 undergraduate students, asking them to reflect on the aspects of their course experiences that either supported or hindered them in developing character virtues. Below are some key takeaways.

1. Activities that promote perspective taking and productive disagreement can support students in practicing virtues such as open-mindedness, awareness, and empathy. Examples of these activities varied in scope. Several students spoke about the importance of building meaningful relationships with peers, both inside and outside the classroom. They often mentioned how these opportunities were crucial in nurturing virtues related to open-mindedness and empathy.

Within classes, students highlighted that their most meaningful peer relationships were facilitated through working with members of their program cohort, participating in project-based group work, or discussing topics with partners. For example, students talked about how working in small-group settings encouraged them to build trust with one another, ultimately fostering a classroom environment that encouraged authentic dialogue and productive disagreement:

The [program] cohort that I’m in [is] still small enough where I could probably name everybody, and a fun fact about them, and like that’s super cool, because then I can also disagree with everybody because I feel comfortable, knowing who they are and I know their values, and I know how to contradict them in a way that’s productive versus just like arguing at someone for hours, [that] doesn’t get you very far.

One student, for example, recounted her experience completing an assignment that required her to interview someone who held a different political viewpoint from her. She shared:

I think [my Political Dialogue class is] where I started working on my open-mindedness . . . because [I realized] everyone has a deeper root for what they believe in. There was one guy I had to meet with and talk with, and the reason he was more [politically] conservative was because he grew up in the [Great] Depression era, and his [conservatism] came from the economic side. [This assignment] was really wonderful, because you also learn these skills of talking to people and presenting empathy and open-mindedness [to others].

One student shed light on how her course experiences have helped her grow in her ability to be more curious and less judgmental about people with different views than her own:

[My classes] allow me to have a wider perspective of people’s backgrounds, views, and ideas, and why they have them, even if it’s someone that I don’t agree with. I still appreciate being exposed to that. I think the way my classes are structured really help me learn from a different perspective . . . my professor will take time out of the beginning of class to literally put all [our] desks in a circle so that we look at each other when we speak. It’s little things like that that help with my moral development . . . when I leave [university], I’ll know how to properly listen to a person, ask follow-up questions, and ask clarifying questions . . . little things like that [can] help me learn about someone holistically rather than just [think] “they said a statement” and then I judge it based off of the statement.

2. Personal connections with instructors who show empathy help cultivate environments where students feel comfortable asking questions and sharing opinions. It is not surprising that students emphasized the critical role their instructors play. Specifically, they shared the importance of instructors demonstrating effort in building authentic and meaningful relationships with their students, and being accessible (such as lingering at the end of class, showing up where students spend time, making clear that faculty have time for and are interested in helping students, and providing office hours but also expressing to students how to use these office hours [e.g., “Come and chat”]).

Students also mentioned how the classroom culture set by their instructor influenced how comfortable they felt to express their opinions generally, but also how likely they were to engage in authentic dialogue with their peers:

I’m an [education] major, so a lot of our classes [involve] discussions. I feel [like this] relates a lot to being open-minded. I feel like a lot of the discussions in classes . . . the space is a lot more welcoming, for disagreement and challenging different ideas. And I feel like the professors are very supportive of that, too. I’ve also found that a lot of professors in that school [the School of Education and Human Development] are more willing to foster relationships with their students.

Not all students had positive experiences. Some students spoke about times when instructors created hostile classroom environments that discouraged authentic participation. One Black student shared about a time her professor used a racial slur and how this impacted her psychological safety:

I think that censorship is a big theme in classrooms and . . . I think that students don’t feel like they can truly express themselves because professors are not cultivating an environment where respectful debate is welcome. . . . I know one professor in particular—I love him, but he said something crazy . . . the N-word. And he’s white and tenured. That power dynamic gives you the ability to say something like that and not receive repercussions. . . . But students can’t. . . and that challenges your ability to truly like authentically, be yourself in the classroom. So, I appreciate when professors are who they are, but they are cognizant of the demographics that they are teaching. And even if those demographics are not in the room, they’re constantly including those demographics in their discussions, because to me, that’s true allyship and advocacy.

This example illustrates how important it is for instructors to be aware of their own personal attributes and past experiences, the power differences between them and their students, and the intersection of the two—especially in classrooms that include students with marginalized identities.

3. Understanding the relevance of course content within the real world impacts students’ virtue development. Students crave opportunities to apply their new classroom knowledge to real-world situations linked to current events in society. One student, for example, described how seeing real-life applications deepened their understanding of how they can exercise their civic-related virtues to make the world a better place:

I think using a real-life application project as a way to facilitate diversity [is meaningful]. I remember going to a conference two months ago and seeing a . . . competition where entrepreneurs pitched ideas about how they can use AI or machine learning or any type of technology to improve, for example, maternal health for Black mothers, since we are more likely to die in childbirth. . . . It’s really cool to see how innovative these projects can be and how it can help a lot of people who come from underrepresented backgrounds, or anyone who just wants the problem solved. So more of those real-life examples [in the classroom].

Though students want their learning to connect to real-world situations, it is not always feasible for instructors to implement experiential learning opportunities. Courses are already packed with specialized content and sometimes serve as a prerequisite for other courses. Saying yes to one type of content might mean saying no to another.

Yet we see that college student engagement has dropped in recent years—students, on average, spent 1.7 fewer hours attending classes, discussion sections, and labs in 2022–23 than in 2018–19. Is it possible that incorporating real-world situations would enhance engagement? What if every semester included at least one course built around real-world, experiential learning? This might include asking students to follow a current news topic related to the course content for the full semester, creating assignments that require students to engage with community members, or learning about a local problem related to course content (e.g., local water testing in chemistry, or analyzing data from the city on problems like transportation or affordable housing in a data analysis class).

If it is too difficult to rework curriculum to create real-world opportunities, faculty can turn to other means to engage students in real-world experiences. At least 65% of students enrolled in college engage in research with faculty, extracurricular activities with student organizations, or civic participation. That raises the question—are there ways that instructors can create connections between students’ classes and their daily lives and activities outside of class?

What university experiences hinder character development?

Students were also candid in sharing aspects of their lives that can sometimes limit or challenge their capacity to engage in virtue development:

1. Being the “bigger person” in every situation is difficult to sustain. It is difficult for students to engage in perspective taking and practice open-mindedness with beliefs that oppose their own. One student, for example, reflected on how she grapples with expressing empathy with others, especially to those who hold perspectives that oppose her personal values:

I think sometimes it’s really hard to be compassionate and empathetic when I just don’t understand why [someone is] doing that. And then there’s also the idea of being fundamentally different from somebody, and somebody’s fundamental views on life and morals, are just different from my own and so it’s sometimes hard to give people any benefit of the doubt when I’m like, You’re representing something that I fundamentally disagree with.

2. Students expressed feeling uncertain about their future. This can make it difficult for them to prioritize practicing certain civic virtues, such as social action, because they are focused on how to navigate their own uncertainties ahead.

Students expressed concerns regarding navigating an unstable job market, finding a job related to their degree, and ultimately establishing a career that is aligned with their values and how they want to contribute to society:

I’m currently about to graduate and I’ve accepted one job over another job. . . . I did have two [job] offers that I felt like both of them would have been making a positive change in the world, and would kind of get me closer to where I wanted to be in 5 to 10 years, but I picked one over the other largely because I feel really uncertain about where the economy is headed, where, like education in particular is headed. So, I chose a job over Teach for America, because I’m not super sure where the AmeriCorps is going to go. So yeah, I think financial stability matters to me. But I think at this point, making positive change also still really matters to me.

She also went on to share her concerns regarding the longevity of her career path, given current political realities:

As someone that’s studying public health intertwined in education, those are two things that I feel like are really being defunded or not invested in currently by the administration. Also, I got one of my offers rescinded initially, and that really sucked. I think that a huge challenge for me is trying to figure out and navigate this landscape of what do I do? [Do I choose] what I know will be good for my career in five years, post this [presidential] administration, or do I do what I need to do to be comfortable right now with where I’m at?

Young people will inevitably encounter circumstances that bump up against their character virtues. It is our responsibility, as educators, to provide our students with the tools they need to navigate these difficult moments, so they engage in ethical decision making. The best place to start, we’ve found, is by elevating the voices of your students and genuinely seeking to understand how you can best support their character development. So, start there: Listen first and create opportunities for students to stretch, practice, and apply virtues to real-life, day-to-day situations.

I’m certainly not the only one noticing this kind of vitriolic polarization. Recent polling suggests a majority of Americans believe that the country cannot overcome its current divisions.

As a professor of human development and family studies, I’ve researched and written about traumatic and adverse childhood experiences and existential anxiety for over 20 years. Scrolling through my feed, I was struck by the recognition that both sides had something in common: a profound sense of existential fear.

While political polarization has many potential causes, existential anxiety is one that has received less attention.

What is existential anxiety?

Philosophers have written about the concept of existential anxiety for centuries. My own empirical research is based on the writings of the mid-20th century philosopher Paul Tillich, who outlines three facets of this fundamental human fear:

• Fate and death—fears of nonexistence and uncertainty about one’s ultimate destiny
• Emptiness and meaninglessness—fears about life’s deeper purpose or ultimate concern
• Guilt and condemnation—fears of moral failure or threats to one’s ethical self

Existential anxiety is humanity’s inherent confrontation with mortality, moral responsibility, and search for meaning.

My colleagues and I have found that these fears are very common—between 75% and 86% of participants in our research endorse at least one concern. Higher levels of existential anxiety are associated with indicators of poor mental health, such as symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation. Existential anxiety levels are also elevated among those who have experienced a life-threatening event. For instance, after surviving a natural disaster, up to 94% of research participants reported at least one dimension of this fear.

Importantly, our research suggests that existential anxiety is associated with aggression. In one study of teens, we found that more extreme existential anxiety as measured with the existential anxiety questionnaire was associated with two kinds of aggression: proactive and reactive. Proactive aggression is goal-driven, deliberate, and unprovoked, while reactive aggression comes in response to a real or perceived provocation or threat.

Underlying theme in existential anxiety

Existential fears have their roots in things that pretty much everyone worries about, at least from time to time. But what specifically triggers this anxiety can be different depending on your worldview.

For instance, as I scroll social media, I see friends expressing anxiety about fundamental safety issues, the fate of the nation, cultural erosion, and the loss of traditional values. These concerns are mirrored by other friends’ posts expressing concern that the environment is being destroyed, democracy is failing, and equality is lost.

Though the content of these expressions can be ideologically opposed, each reflects deeper concerns about societal fate, death, or the end of a meaningful way of life. Unspoken but underlying is the fear that the “other side” represents a real and impending threat to one’s very existence.

Though the triggering circumstances can differ based on personal beliefs, both sides’ perspectives reflect existential concerns about meaning, moral direction, and survival.

But existential anxiety isn’t just the likely root of some of this distress. Research suggests that underlying fear can increase aggression. Left unchecked, fears may spiral into potential violence.

Where do we go?

The good news is that while core existential fears may never fully abate, you can identify them, alleviate them, and possibly even channel them toward adaptive action.

The techniques of cognitive behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy provide a path toward finding common ground and preventing existential fears from escalating into violence.

Core to these techniques is recognizing and facing the fear. They both help participants overcome common tendencies such as seeing only one side of the evidence or catastrophizing that things are much worse than they really are. Acceptance and commitment therapy, for example, teaches participants how to cultivate psychological flexibility, learn to tolerate uncomfortable thoughts or emotions, and practice acting in alignment with one’s core values. Together, these skills foster positive action as opposed to destructive reaction.

As disturbing as my social media feed can be, I’ve also seen real-world instances of people figuring out how to connect across a divide. For instance, one poster appreciated another’s comment for helping her realize the existential value his perspective represented to him. Following that exchange, the second poster acknowledged he’d been seeing only one side. In other words, they each recognized the other person’s existential fear—accepting it as such helped them de-escalate the confrontation and move forward more constructively.

The critical point is that people on all sides of every issue yearn for safety, purpose, and belonging. Recognizing that the core existential concerns we all share underlie polarized fears might be an important step toward bridging divides and reducing the risk of fear-driven aggression.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

But new research suggests that’s not necessarily the case. Instead, we tend to overestimate how badly these kinds of conversations will go and underestimate how much people’s views can change within a conversation, including our own viewpoint.

“Entering into a conversation is perhaps one surprising way of acquiring a broader view of an issue that you might care about,” says lead researcher Michael Kardas of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Having conversations, despite people’s predictions, [can] decrease polarization.”

Negative predictions can be overblown

In the study, diverse groups of adults from the United States (and, in some cases, from Britain) were recruited to discuss conflicting viewpoints on different issues, including a non-political one (whether dogs or cats make better pets) and two sociopolitical ones (whether cancel culture is good or bad, or whether Joe Biden was a good president).

Before having these 10-minute conversations, participants first reported on the strength of their views, their reasons why they held these beliefs, and their expectations for a discussion involving someone with an opposing view—in particular, whether they anticipated they or their partner’s views might shift and become more similar to each other.

Researchers gave participants prompts to guide their 10-minute conversation, including sharing their reasoning for their views and asking about their partner’s reasoning. After the discussion, they reported again on the strength of their views. Kardas and his team then compared their current ratings to their earlier predictions.

In all cases, people’s views changed more than they’d anticipated—and so did their partner’s views. Contrary to most expectations, the conversations ended up depolarizing their opinions, to some extent. For Kardas, this was a surprising result.

“People went into the conversations anticipating that no one was going to change their mind,” he says. “But it turned out that even on a conversation about a topic related to personal preferences, like cats versus dogs, people became less extreme in their views to a greater extent than they themselves expected.”

When the researchers surveyed the participants a week later, they found that people’s views on the issues were still less polarized than they were initially, though not as much as they were immediately after the conversation ended. Interestingly, though, the people whose attitudes changed the most, post-conversation, were also most likely to stay that way.

“This suggests that conversations offer, at least to some extent, a somewhat durable route to informing people about issues that carries forward into their later attitudes,” says Kardas.

Why discussion may decrease polarization

To get at why conversations across difference can be depolarizing, the researchers did several sub-experiments and analyses. One thing they discovered is that having these cross-group conversations widens your perspective, because you better understand what information someone draws upon to form their opinion.

For example, says Kardas, let’s say someone believes cancel culture is a good thing. They may have come to that opinion because they’re focused on an example like Harvey Weinstein, the movie producer who was exposed as a sexual predator and then “cancelled.” Someone else may believe cancel culture is bad, because they’ve seen it tar the reputation of someone whose behavior wasn’t criminal, but merely provocative—for example, Colin Kaepernick, who was “cancelled” for kneeling during the playing of the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Hearing how people came by their views for and against something can help us find points of understanding or even agreement, softening our own stance.

“When people formulate their attitudes, they’re often drawing on only a small subset, a small sliver of information that comes to mind when they think of the issue,” says Kardas. “[But] when you actually have a conversation, you recognize that the basis of your attitude and the basis of another person’s attitude are actually drawing on different facets of a multifaceted issue.”

That’s why it’s important to recognize that these conversations across difference have potential, he says. Otherwise, we just get our information only from sources we already agree with, like friends, family, or, often, social media. That might keep us stuck in our shared fears.

“If people expect that a conversation will be unproductive, unfruitful, unnecessary, because no one’s going to learn anything, no one’s going to change their minds anyway, then they’ll stay in the areas of social media and with people that share their views,” he says.

Knowing can make a difference

Can these findings actually change anything, though? Won’t we still be reluctant to talk to people who don’t agree with us?

To find out, Kardas and his team did another experiment. They gave some participants information they learned from their research showing that conversations across difference can reduce polarization, because a conversation partner’s views will become more moderate, their own views would become more moderate, or both views would move closer together. Other participants weren’t told anything about these results.

Then they compared how willing participants were to have conversations across difference (in this case, different views of Joe Biden’s performance). In all cases, those who were told about the research were more willing to discuss the polarizing issue than those who weren’t told.

The study adds to other research showing that our expectations for engagement across political and other differences might be overly negative, keeping us from hearing each another.

For example, Kardas says, a 2019 study found that people overestimated how badly they would feel listening to speeches by politicians on the other side of the political spectrum from themselves. Once informed that their fears about engaging across differences were likely exaggerated, people became 24–34% more engaged with diverse sources of information.

“It tends to be less emotionally jarring than people think it will be when you’re exposed to information that doesn’t align with your own beliefs,” says Kardas.

Similarly, research has shown that people overestimate how polarized we are politically and that correcting that view can help people become less extreme around their own positions. In another study, giving people more accurate information about how those in an opposing political party viewed members of their own party (less negatively than anticipated) helped people attribute more positive qualities to political opponents.

This is good to keep in mind, because many of us already have overblown fears around having conversations with people we don’t know, let alone someone we disagree with. If you expect people to be angry or upset with you based on your views, it could keep you from talking to them and, potentially, increasing civility.

“The same tendency for conversations to reveal unexpected areas of agreement that I’ve detected . . . also [seems to] produce a less hostile and more congenial conversation than people expect,” says Kardas.

This is good news for organizations who work to bring people on opposite sides of political issues together to have conversations, says Kardas. Though he doesn’t necessarily think depolarization is the goal of having these conversations, encouraging people to have them could result in more warmth and shared knowledge, making it easier to find consensus around solving our social problems.

“To the extent that people can acquire a complete understanding of an issue, and then arrive at what they themselves believe is the appropriate attitude, we can collectively be better informed citizens about the issues we consider socially and politically important,” he says.

Yet they can change the feel of a day. 

Most people know this from experience. A tense morning can soften when someone treats us with unexpected warmth. A crowded commute can feel less anonymous when another person makes space. A classroom, workplace, neighborhood, or family can become more humane through gestures that are almost too brief to record.

In a recent paper in the International Journal of Wellbeing, we use the term “microkindness” to describe these moments, though the word itself has appeared in earlier work. We define them as small gestures, motivated at least in part by genuine warm feelings toward others, that benefit someone else. These acts are brief, often lasting less than five seconds, and they involve little personal cost or risk to the person offering them.

That definition may sound modest. It is meant to be. Microkindness is not heroic sacrifice, sustained caregiving, or major generosity. It is the tiny act of human regard that passes from one person to another in ordinary life.

But the fact that microkindness is small does not mean it is trivial. Indeed, its smallness may be part of its importance. Because such acts are easy to perform, they are available almost everywhere. Because they are brief, they can occur many times a day. And because they are social, they may not stop with the first person who receives them.

The intriguing possibility is that microkindness may spread.

The flip side of microaggressions

The idea of microkindness partly arises as a counterpart to the better-known concept of microaggressions: brief, often everyday words or behaviors that communicate disrespect, exclusion, or contempt. One lesson from that literature is that small things can matter, especially when they accumulate. A single slight may be brushed aside. Repeated exposure can become a burden.

Microkindness invites a parallel question in the positive direction. If small acts can wound, can small acts also repair, include, affirm, or encourage?

This does not mean that a warm smile cancels out injustice, or that individual kindness is a substitute for structural change. The point is more precise: Daily social life is partly made out of small signals. Human beings constantly communicate whether others are welcome, noticed, respected, and safe. A microkindness is one way of sending a positive signal.

In a classroom, this might mean a teacher smiling warmly at a student. In a workplace, it might mean acknowledging someone’s contribution in passing. In public, it might mean a brief friendly exchange with a cashier or neighbor. These moments do not ask much of us. But they can alter the emotional tone of an interaction.

They may also shape what others do next.

Kindness as something that travels

When people think about epidemiology, they usually think about disease: how viruses spread, who is most at risk, and how outbreaks can be prevented. But the broader tools of epidemiology can also be applied to positive states and behaviors. This is sometimes called positive epidemiology: the study of the distribution, causes, and spread of positive health-related qualities, not only illness and risk.

In the case of microkindness, the question becomes: Where do these small acts occur? What makes them more likely? Who receives them? Who is left out? Under what conditions do they ripple outward?

This way of thinking matters because kindness is often treated as a private moral choice. It is that, but it may also be a social phenomenon. People act within environments. A family, school, workplace, online platform, religious community, or neighborhood can facilitate kindness—or make it less likely to occur. Some settings invite warmth; others reward suspicion, speed, competition, or emotional distance.

Research on social networks suggests that emotions and behaviors can cluster and spread among people. Happiness, cooperation, and prosocial behavior are not merely individual traits floating in isolation. They can be shaped by relationships and social norms. If kindness operates in a similar way, then the smallest acts of goodwill may contribute to a larger social climate.

That does not mean kindness spreads automatically. A smile may be returned, ignored, or misread. A friendly gesture may land differently across cultures, contexts, or relationships. What feels warm in one setting may feel intrusive in another. The study of microkindness needs to take these complexities seriously.

Still, the possibility is worth investigating: Some acts of kindness may not only benefit the person who receives them. They may increase the chance that kindness continues.

Why a smile may matter

Our paper focuses especially on smiling as an example of microkindness. This is not because every smile is kind. Some smiles are fake. Some may even express superiority or pleasure at another person’s discomfort. Context matters.

But a genuine, kind smile is one of the clearest examples of a microkindness. It is brief. It costs little. It can communicate warmth, safety, recognition, and goodwill. It can be offered to people we know well and to people we barely know at all.

Smiling is also interesting because it is visibly social. A person’s smile can elicit a smile in return. That returned smile can affect the next interaction. In this way, smiling offers a simple case for thinking about how microkindness might move through a room, a classroom, a gathering, or a community.

Imagine entering a meeting where no one looks up. The room feels closed. Now imagine entering the same meeting and being greeted by one person’s warm smile. The agenda has not changed. The organization has not changed. But the social meaning of the moment has shifted. There is now a signal: You are seen. You belong here.

Such signals may be especially important in environments where people are uncertain about whether they are welcome. A student entering a new school, a patient in a medical office, a new employee on a first day, or an older adult entering a community event may all be scanning for cues. A microkindness can serve as one of those cues.

This does not require exaggerating what a smile can do. It simply recognizes that human beings are relational creatures. Much of our well-being is shaped not only by major life events but by the texture of daily contact.

Microkindness and flourishing

The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard defines flourishing broadly as the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of life are good, including the contexts in which a person lives. Its framework often focuses on several domains: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability.

Microkindness touches several of these at once.

It can support happiness, because warm social contact can lift the emotional tone of ordinary life. It can support mental health, not as a treatment in itself, but as one small part of a less hostile and more supportive social environment. It can support meaning, because offering kindness connects daily action to the good of another person. It can support character, because kindness is a habit of attending to others with goodwill. And it can support relationships, because relationships are built not only through major commitments but through repeated small gestures of care.

Microkindness is clearly not the whole of flourishing. But small acts are one part of the social world in which flourishing becomes more or less possible. They help create the atmosphere of a place. Over time, that atmosphere can influence what people expect from one another.

What this means in daily life

The practical implications of microkindness are intentionally modest, but not insignificant.

First, microkindness asks people to notice the many small opportunities for goodwill already built into the day. These are not elaborate interventions. They are brief acts of recognition: smiling, greeting, thanking, acknowledging, encouraging, or making space.

Second, it suggests that kindness may be especially powerful when it becomes part of a culture rather than an isolated act. A classroom in which students are greeted warmly, a workplace where people routinely acknowledge one another, or a community gathering where newcomers are welcomed may become an “epicenter” of microkindness. The goal is not forced cheerfulness. It is a shared norm of humane attention.

Third, it points to the role of institutions and media environments. If microkindness can spread, then the environments that shape attention matter. News and social media often amplify outrage, threat, and conflict. A healthier information environment might also make room for stories and signals of kindness, not as sentimental distraction, but as part of the social ecology that affects public life.

Finally, microkindness calls for humility. A gesture intended as kind is not always received that way. Cultural norms, power dynamics, prior experiences, and context all influence interpretation. Studying microkindness well will require attention not only to the person offering the act, but also to the person receiving it.

A small beginning toward a better world

The study of microkindness is still new. Our paper is an invitation to research, which asks whether the tools used to study the spread of disease might also help us understand the spread of kindness. It asks whether small gestures deserve more scientific attention. It asks whether societies concerned about polarization, loneliness, and distrust should pay closer attention to the brief moments in which people communicate goodwill.

That may seem like a small place to begin, but much of life happens in small places: in doorways, sidewalks, classrooms, checkout lines, waiting rooms, emails, meetings, and glances across a room.

A kinder society will require more than microkindness. It will require justice, patience, courage, forgiveness, strong institutions, and serious commitments to the common good. Still, the path toward such a society may be shaped, in part, by what people repeatedly communicate to one another in passing.

A smile. A greeting. A thank you. A moment of recognition.

Small acts may be bigger than we think.

Victor Counted is a psychological scientist whose research across 40 African countries offers a data-rich rethinking of flourishing on the continent. His findings challenge the dominant narrative that Africa is “lagging behind” in development by showing a more nuanced picture of what it means to live a good life. We asked him more.

The Conversation: What is flourishing?

Victor Counted: Flourishing is more than economic growth or individual happiness. It’s a multidimensional state of being that reflects how people feel about their lives and how well their lives are actually going. So it also measures people’s values within their community.

The idea of well-being often carries a Eurocentric emphasis on the individual—personal satisfaction, autonomy, achievement. Flourishing accounts for how whole a person is in relation to their environment.

It includes the social, spiritual, and ecological contexts in which one lives. So, it’s not just about how one feels, but how one lives—fully, meaningfully, and in a satisfying relationship with the world around us.

TC: What’s the Global Flourishing Study?

VC: The Global Flourishing Study tries to measure global patterns of human flourishing. It’s an ongoing five-year longitudinal study in over 200,000 participants across 22 countries.

I was one of the team of global scholars brought together to examine the trends on what it means to live well across cultures and life circumstances.

The study identifies six key dimensions of flourishing:

• Happiness and life satisfaction
• Mental and physical health
• Meaning and purpose
• Character and virtue
• Close social relationships
• Financial and material stability

Participants rate how they’re doing in each of these areas on a scale from 0 to 10. Further questions capture experiences related to trust, loneliness, hope, resilience, and other related well-being variables.

                     

Of the 22 nations, five were African: Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Egypt.

While these countries didn’t top the global rankings (Indonesia and Mexico did), Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt all reported relatively high flourishing scores, especially when well-being was considered apart from financial status.

Nigeria, for example, ranked fifth globally in flourishing scores that excluded financial indicators—ahead of many wealthier nations. Nigerians indicated strengths in social relationships, character, and virtues (like forgiveness or helping others). But potential areas of growth included financial well-being, housing, ethnic discrimination, and education.

Overall, this suggests that while material resources matter, they’re not the only thing that determines well-being. Kenya ranked seventh, Egypt 10th, Tanzania 11th, and South Africa 13th. Each showed unique strengths in areas like meaning, social connection, or mental health.

TC: You did a separate study on flourishing in Africa. What did you find?

VC: In a 2024 study, we analyzed data from the Gallup World Poll (2020–2022) to explore 38 indicators of well-being across 40 African countries.

This study offered a more detailed and culture-sensitive picture of how Africans experience and prioritize flourishing. The dimensions explored were derived from both local and universal sources, allowing for regionally relevant insights.

We found that African populations often score high in meaning, character, and social relationships—despite economic hardship. This offers an important corrective to Western assumptions about well-being.

Some of our key findings were:

• There is significant diversity between and within African countries. Mauritius consistently ranked highest in life evaluations (overall satisfaction with their lives), while countries like Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe scored lowest.
• East African countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia showed strong performance in social well-being indicators (like feeling respected or learning new things daily) even when economic indicators were low.
• Countries in West Africa, such as Senegal and Ghana, scored high in emotional well-being, with many people reporting positive daily emotions like enjoyment and laughter.
• Southern African nations, despite challenges like income inequality, displayed resilience through strong community ties and cultural practices rooted in the philosophy of ubuntu.

The results reinforced that flourishing in Africa cannot only be reduced to gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (a measure of the average economic output per person in a country)—nor to Western norms of success.

TC: What can African countries focus on to flourish?

VC: In my view, the path to greater flourishing lies in embracing local knowledge and investing in culturally relevant development priorities. Instead of following Western pathways—centered on individual advancement—Africa can model alternative flourishing pathways that reflect what matters most to African people.

1. Prioritize local knowledge systems. African ideas about a connected society—like ubuntu (southern Africa), ujamaa (east Africa), teranga or wazobia (west Africa), and al-musawat wal tarahum (north Africa) teach people to care for each other and live in peace. These values help people live meaningful lives and can inform leadership and legislation.

2. Redefine development metrics. Western development models focus on individual achievement, economic output, and material consumption. GDP per capita fails to capture the everyday realities and aspirations of African communities. We should also measure things like how happy people are, how hopeful they feel about the future, how strong and resilient their communities are, and how clean, safe, and dignifying their living environments are.

This is not a new idea—for years development scholars have called for a shift away from narrow economic indicators toward a focus on human dignity, agency, and the real opportunities people have to pursue the lives they value. What’s new is the growing availability of data and the momentum to take these alternative metrics seriously in shaping national policies and priorities.

3. Invest in education for character development. Quality education is essential to unlocking the continent’s potential to flourish. But Africa needs more than just academic skills and workforce readiness—it needs a strategy for intentional development of values and habits that shape how a person thinks, feels, and acts with integrity.

Part of the problem lies in how the humanities—fields like history, literature, philosophy, and religious studies—are often undervalued or underfunded in education systems. But it is precisely these disciplines that nurture moral imagination, critical reflection, and civic responsibility. We need educational models that form not just workers, but whole persons—people who can think ethically, act responsibly, and lead with character in their communities.

TC: What does Africa offer the world in terms of flourishing?

VC: Africa is not waiting to be saved. Across the continent, people are building communities of care, cultivating joy amid hardship, and passing on values of unity, faith, and compassion. This is what development looks like when rooted in human dignity.

Africa’s flourishing goals offer an alternative vision for development—one that starts with what Africa already has, not what it lacks. These are locally emic aspirations for well-being. They are shaped by Africa’s indigenous knowledge systems, cultural values, and religious/spiritual traditions. Pursuing these goals means prioritizing wholeness over wealth, community over consumption, and resilience over rescue.

The continent has so much to offer the world: wisdom, strong community values, and ways of staying resilient and living fully even in hard times. But many of these local insights are missing in the global science of well-being.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

But as time passes, is it helpful to hold on to feelings of distress or ill will? While avoiding someone, stonewalling them, or plotting revenge can feel natural, are the feelings that drive these kinds of reactions good for health and well-being in the long run? 

Research suggests not. Letting go of anger and extending goodwill to the people who harmed us tends to restore our internal equilibrium and help us sleep better and live longer.

But why do some things still feel unforgivable—like holding a grudge is the right thing to do? 

Forgiveness and the nervous system

The human body is built with two main branches of the nervous system that are below the neck: the sympathetic branch (SNS) that mainly supports faster “fight or flight” drives and reflexes, and the parasympathetic branch (PNS) that is more involved in gradual “rest and digest” and “tend and befriend” motivations and behaviors. These systems are in constant dialogue, dynamically shifting physical resources like oxygen, glucose, and hormones back and forth to equip us to do whatever is best for our survival in any situation.

When we sense threat or are reminded of something hurtful, the SNS is dominant. When we feel safe and beloved, the PNS prevails. It feels right when these systems give us the energy, wherewithal, and focus to do the right thing, like hustling to catch a bus, train, or airplane when we’re late, or enjoying a deep, loving conversation with a friend after a nice meal.

Sometimes, though, there’s a mismatch, like late-night restless worrying even in the comfort of a safe and warm bed, or procrastinating on an important, time-sensitive task. Mismatches often involve miscalculating time, either focusing on the short term when a long-term view would be more helpful, or ignoring the present moment in favor of the unchangeable past or unknowable future. The “negativity bias,” which is our mental tendency to privilege information from the past, present, or future that could be threatening in any way, also feeds into this mismatch by getting us ready to escape or defend, even when we’re safe.

Without conscious deliberation, our first urge in many situations is to avoid what’s costly and gain what’s immediately desired, even at long-term loss or at the expense of lasting benefit. For example, we may refrain from waving another driver into a convenient parking space to avoid walking a relatively short distance ourselves, though the generosity would feel nice and the walk would be pleasant and better for our health. Or we might hold back from apologizing for an unintentional offense to avoid being vulnerable and go on with our day uninterrupted, though offering the apology would initiate reconciliation that could relieve stress and strengthen our relationship.

So what does this have to do with forgiveness and grudges? Studies of forgiveness and physical health suggest that unforgiveness (in other words, holding a grudge) may be one of these mismatches. Grudges may feel valid in the moment, but are problematic when held long-term; forgiveness feels unsteady and tender in the moment, but ultimately helps you feel better.

Why do we hold grudges?

According to forgiveness scholar Everett Worthington at Virginia Commonwealth University, forgiving means reducing negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors toward someone who committed harm and replacing them with positive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Forgiveness does not mean pardoning, condoning, excusing, or justifying harm, nor does it require reconciling with the person. This is an important distinction, because believing that forgiveness does mean “getting back together” can make it feel unfair, like it invalidates our pain and suffering, which can make holding a grudge feel more sensible and appealing.

Forgiving is also not a strategy for becoming complacent when we’re being treated poorly; it does not mean rationalizing or justifying harmful conduct so that we can continue to endure it. When we forgive, we honor and remember that we felt badly in order to move forward more wisely, while letting go of ongoing, unbidden anxious and unpleasant feelings. 

Unforgiveness can also feel like a better choice because it seems easier. It is uncomplicated and unequivocal: “I am right and the person who committed harm is wrong.” This view is simple and certain, and does not require additional consideration—in other words, it carries low cognitive cost. One of the costs some people perceive of forgiveness is losing face and the possibility of applying consequences. Deciding to surrender the certainty of “an eye for an eye” logic can be challenging because it feels asymmetrical and ambiguous.

Unforgiveness can also feel protective because it motivates absolute avoidance: no further encounters or contact with those who commit harm. No more bad feelings from being reminded of the harm. Forgiveness, on the other hand, requires emotional labor—or acknowledging the hard feelings linked to a past harm and working to shift them toward a gentler, more nurturing stance. Forgiving means being open to the possibility of remembering or even encountering a harm doer again and readying ourselves to offer ease and goodwill.

Finally, studies have documented that seeing a cheater or harm doer get punished activates reward pathways in our brain, the “altruistic punishment” or “schadenfreude” signal, a motivator of the basic human preference for restoring justice. When we anticipate satisfaction as we imagine holding someone accountable or exacting revenge, it may strengthen the urge to hold a grudge.

What is left out of all these mental justifications for grudge holding, however, is the long-term detrimental impact. While feeling mad, afraid, sad, or otherwise unpleasant or upset about being harmed are healthy emotional responses in the short term, they are naturally time-bound and fluctuating. Emotions emerge in real time to guide our responses to the current context and inform our long-term knowledge, and then subside. A grudge, on the other hand, keeps these feelings pervasive and enduring. They remain intense and they recur, sometimes unexpectedly, in response to associations and reminders in our life. Lingering, recurring negative emotions overactivate the SNS, which amounts to a type of chronic stress that can increase our blood pressure, impair our immune response, increase our cardiovascular risk, and disrupt our sleep.

“Forgiveness of others is associated with risk for all-cause mortality, and the mortality risk of [forgiving someone] may be conferred by its influences on physical health,” writes Laurent Toussaint.

Two ways forgiveness is good for your health

Embracing, labelling, disclosing, and accepting difficult and unpleasant feelings about past harms enable us to be resilient. Seeking social support, to process negative feelings—which can be part of forgiving if we involve a friend, ally, supportive person, or even the perpetrator of harm if it makes sense—helps us learn, grow, and find ease and meaning from them. A recent study by Marilyn Cornish reported that forgiveness helped medical patients adapt to life changes after suffering a spinal cord injury, suggesting that accepting ambiguity as part of forgiving may benefit our response to other unforeseen circumstances.

Forgiveness improves physical health by reducing and untethering our negative emotional reactions about a prior harm or any reminders of it from our day-to-day experiences. Reducing “hard feelings” about a past harm helps restore balance between the SNS and PNS, instead of keeping us in stress overdrive.

According to a systematic review of multiple studies on forgiveness in aging and advanced illness, “Forgiveness should be taken into account among holistic care professionals as a considerable contributor to the resolution of stress associated with conflicts over the lifespan to promote well-being and health outcomes.” 

Forgiving also frees up mental and emotional resources for us to be trusting, optimistic, and self-compassionate (i.e., kind toward our own inadequacies and flaws), and promotes friendlier behaviors like participating in social gatherings, activities, and community events.

While several large-scale studies have reported that people who are more forgiving are less likely to die of any cause, and attributed the lifespan gain to the benefits of forgiveness on physical health, correlation cannot be interpreted as causal. Are forgiving people healthier, or are healthier people more forgiving?

In a recent study led by Songzhi Wu at Columbia University, participants who forgave rated stimuli that reminded them of a past harm (like a photo of an unfaithful romantic partner’s favorite restaurant) as less unpleasant. These findings suggest that forgiving someone reduces the intensity of negative emotion linked to reminders of a past harm. Another 2020 study published in BMC Psychology measured forgiveness one year, and positive emotions, social integration, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, hopelessness, and loneliness five years later. Those who forgave more often fared better in all these areas, suggesting a more direct impact of forgiveness on health. A third study published in Psychology and Health revealed that people who are more forgiving of both themselves and other people sleep better:

Because forgiveness is associated with better sleep, it capitalizes on the powerful role that sleep plays in good health. If forgiveness of others and self-forgiveness can help people cope with the day’s psychological and emotional burdens in a way that frees one’s mind and promotes a more restful mental state for sleep, then they support the health-related process of sleep in meaningful ways.

When I teach the science of forgiveness, there is often a contingent of people who proudly refuse it—from a place of defiance and perceived empowerment. The rigidity, distrust, and emotional compartmentalizing that go into unforgiveness, however, amount to greater enduring cost mentally, socially, and physically than the lesser, yet significant, upfront effort that goes into deciding to forgive and emotionally shifting toward mercy and grace. Forgiving is not a gift to people for the hurt they have caused. Forgiveness is a physiologically balancing, resilience-building lifesaver for us.

Resilience is a skill set that combines emotional awareness, problem solving, and flexibility—qualities that help kids bounce back from stress and adapt to adversity. Parents can help cultivate it by equipping kids with tools to navigate hardships so they feel more confident, courageous, and capable.

Whether it’s helping your child handle disappointment, temper big emotions, or tackle something scary, opportunities to teach kids resilience arise every day.

Despite these growth-building opportunities, many kids are facing what psychotherapists and parenting experts Sissy Goff and David Thomas call a “crisis of capability.”

In their new book, Capable, Goff and Thomas draw on 30 years of clinical experience, providing a roadmap to help parents raise kids who stay steady in the face of struggle, believe in themselves, and take on healthy risks that stretch their abilities.

Juli Fraga: What inspired you to write this book, and why is it important now?

David Thomas: Youth mental health has been a crisis for several years. We’re seeing one in five kids dealing with anxiety, and 18% of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 dealing with symptoms of depression.

In our work, we’ve seen that this decline in mental health has been followed by a decline in kids’ capability. Now more than ever, our offices are filled with kids who feel incapable of doing things like reaching out to a new friend, trying out for a sport they might not do perfectly, or getting their driver’s license.

JF: I’m curious what role anxiety plays in shaping a child’s confidence. Can you share more?

Sissy Goff: When it comes to anxiety, research shows that two common parenting strategies are escape and avoidance. So, when a child feels anxious, we’re seeing more parents pull their kids out of scary situations than we ever did before.

I have written several books on anxiety, and the layperson’s definition that I came up with is that anxiety is an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of what kids can do themselves. And so, when we rescue a child, we may send the message that kids need parents to always step in and that they can’t do hard things on their own.

JF: What does it mean to be a capable kid?

DT: Capable kids have practiced coping and developed competence to face life’s challenges. And here’s one thing we challenge parents to consider: Stress is guaranteed. No one is exempt. But here’s one thing we tend to forget: Stress can also be growth-giving. So, if we can camp out in that space and remember that when our kids experience stress, good growth can happen.

For example, my daughter tried out for cross-country in middle school, and she came in dead last for over three seasons. And so much growth happened in that season of her life. I just cheered her on as she finished a marathon. That milestone would have never happened if she hadn’t spent a lot of time running and coming in last.

To raise capable kids, we want to support them without standing in the way of growth-giving opportunities. This sends the message that competence is deeper than confidence. We put a lot of focus on praising kids and raising confident kids, which, of course, we all want. But we really believe that confidence is born of competence, and this is what happens when kids struggle with something hard and develop the skills to handle it.

JF: Research shows that flexibility and resilience can be learned. What are some small things parents can do to help their kids practice these skills?

DT: Remember that you are your kid’s hero. Even if they’re adolescents and rolling their eyes, kids hear what you say and see what you do. Practice flexibility together as a family, and let your kids know how challenging it can be for you, too.

For example, you might start every night at the dinner table by having each person move one seat to the left. Model what it’s like to mix it up. Send the beautiful lesson that you’re all figuring it out as you go.

JF: In this era of information overload and AI chatbots, what advice do you have for parents who may feel unsure about what advice to listen to?

SG: There’s so much information out there, and we find that parents are trusting experts more than they’re trusting themselves. Parents may ask AI how to troubleshoot a problem, and while AI provides information, it’s certainly not wisdom.

We advise finding two to three sources that really help parents to trust their gut.

JF: If a parent is reading your book and they want to learn skills to help build their child’s resilience, what can they do?

DT: In the book, there are five strengths, five skills, and five strategies that we believe are foundational to building capable kids.

One skill is dealing with disappointment and failure. We challenge parents to remind their kids that failure is the gateway to neuroplasticity—our brains literally grow when we fail. We love the acronym FAIL, which is a “first attempt in learning.” As parents, let’s flip failure on its head and see it as a tool for growth.

We also encourage parents to narrate the experience as they go. Talk about mess-up moments that have happened to you.

For example, I had a wonderful and funny conversation with a mom who decided to take up tennis in her 40s. She said to me, “David, I never played the sport growing up. Turns out, I am terrible at it. The instructor gave me some feedback in front of the entire class, and I found myself tearing up. But then I thought, This isn’t Wimbledon; this is mom tennis!”

This turned out to be a beautiful opportunity for this mom to talk with her kids. She shared what it felt like to have a coach give her feedback in front of others.

There’s incredible value in sharing our experiences with our kids. It shows that we are going to fail at different things, we aren’t going to have everything figured out, and we are going to feel overwhelmed.

I think these conversations have a lot of value.

“I’m not going to be your partner on the project unless you give me the treat from your lunch!”

These kinds of threats are tactics many school-age kids use to solve conflicts. Parents and teachers sometimes assume these common threats are basically harmless.

After all, are they so different from comments kids might hear from grownups in their lives? It’s a small step from “Daddy better get you to school on time or Mommy is going to be angry with him!” to “If you don’t give me that toy, you won’t be my best friend anymore!”

The adult and the kid versions are both signs of bullying behavior. I’m a child psychologist, and I know that kids imitate the behaviors they observe at home. Bullying is tied to poor outcomes not only for the child who is bullied but for the bullies themselves, who run a higher risk than their peers of experiencing depression when they become teens. Youth who are bullies also are more likely to engage in aggressive and rule-breaking behavior, have substance use problems, and hang out with other adolescents who share these tendencies.

The good news is that parents can change the ways they handle their own conflicts to demonstrate for children how to use healthier and more positive ways to interact with others.

Getting people to do what you want

Across cultures, regardless of temperament, most children act with two goals in mind: to get or do things they want and to avoid things that they don’t want.

Kids want things like hugs and affection, praise, cool toys, yummy food, and treats. They want to play, have fun, and spend time with family and friends. Alternatively, they don’t want to do things that seem tiring, stressful, scary, or boring, like cleaning up, doing chores, getting ready for bed, or completing difficult or tedious schoolwork.

Think about all the ways you can get someone to do something that’s undesirable to them, especially if you have power over them. You can use positive tactics, such as direct encouragement, incentives, and praise. You can try negative tactics, such as threats, manipulation, and force. Some—asking politely, saying please and thank you each time—work better than others, such as nagging or pleading.

Children learn which tactics work and are acceptable by seeing how adults, who hold power over them, employ them.

On one extreme, observing aggression between parents increases risk for children’s heightened aggression and violence in their own social relationships. Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura’s seminal 1961 “Bobo Doll Study” found that preschool children who saw an adult hit and kick a life-size inflatable figure were more likely to be aggressive toward that figure when frustrated.

In my own research, I focused on children who were exposed to domestic violence between parents as early as in infancy. As adults, these now-grown children were more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of violence with their romantic partners. People were particularly likely to be violent as adults if they were exposed to domestic violence when they were in preschool, as opposed to later in childhood, suggesting early childhood is a particularly important time for parents to model healthy conflict resolution.

Many people don’t regularly use physical force on each other or on their kids to get what they want, so children also pay attention to how subtle tactics such as manipulation, threats, and exclusion work. If children constantly hear, “If you don’t do this, you’ll lose that, or I’ll do this to you,” they learn that threats are acceptable and effective at getting others to comply.

What about even more subtle behavior, such as parents criticizing each other or giving one another the silent treatment?

If children regularly hear adults pointing blame or diminishing others’ self-worth—for example, “Mommy is so disorganized, she can’t keep herself together!” or “Daddy is so lazy, Mommy always has to do all the cooking AND the cleaning”—they are more likely to use these strategies to gain social dominance.

For children, this becomes, “You can’t play with us because your dress is ugly” or “You aren’t smart enough to be my partner.” Kids can pick up on each other’s weaknesses and learn to exploit them to get what they want.

For older children who observe one parent giving the other parent the silent treatment, “freezing out,” “canceling,” or “ghosting” others now become potentially useful strategies.

Modeling kindness

But what about the flip side: If parents modeling aggression or disrespect is harmful for children, is modeling respect, kindness, and compassion helpful? The answer is yes.

Parents who make respectful requests of one another, thank and praise each other, and work as a team model healthy social strategies for their kids, and these patterns have long-term benefits. Armed with these positive skills, children are not only less likely to bully others to get what they want, but they are more likely to recognize—and resist—being bullied themselves.

For example, if Mom is more patient and empathic, whereas Dad is able to be more stern and “hold the line,” parents can work as a team and play to each other’s strengths. This might look like Mom making the morning routine happen with warm and directive encouragement, while Dad takes charge of enforcing bedtime routines.

Then, a key ingredient to make this noticeable to kids is that both parents praise each other’s strengths in front of the kids: One parent says, “Thanks to Mom for getting us out of the house on time!” The other says, “Thank goodness that Dad keeps us organized!” This subtle yet detectable respect goes a long way. It also demonstrates how to leverage relationships to further your own interests, but in a positive and healthy way.

Kids who are accustomed to using kindness and respect to get what they want are less likely to tolerate unkind, mean, or manipulative behavior from bullies. Kindness becomes internalized, and it empowers kids to walk away from a bully.

Kids watch grownups for signs of how to act. Parents hold power over what kids get done and how, but they also have the power to show kids how to treat one another and how to do difficult things while also feeling good about them. The key is modeling kindness, teamwork, and gratitude to get things done well—and to do this across your child’s life, ideally as early in their development as possible.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Liudmyla Herasymenko, an associate professor at the Ukrainian State Flight Academy in Kropyvnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Ukraine, is one of the millions of educators carrying the invisible weight of supporting her students’ social and emotional well-being despite the turmoil that surrounds them every day.

“Because of the existing threat, which is hanging, you cannot plan your day in advance,” Herasymenko says. “You can have some plans, but everything can be changed in one second, and you need to adapt to be flexible about it. We have alerts, so that means we need to go to the shelter, then schedules of electricity, which means you need to find power and Wi-Fi. So, it’s a lot of stress that we are experiencing.”

Herasymenko is not alone—a rising number of children and educators are currently facing unprecedented disruption and stress due to living in conflict-affected areas. More than 473 million children live in or are fleeing settings of conflict and crisis around the world, and approximately 204 million people worldwide live in areas controlled or contested by armed groups.

Educators in these spaces are navigating burnout, secondary trauma, and constant uncertainty, while they simultaneously hold space for students’ fear, grief, and hope. In these conditions, the question is not whether teachers and students need support, but rather what kinds of support are actually feasible, sustainable, and relevant to them.

Small practices that make the day possible

Despite years of disruption, Ukrainian educators have found creative ways to help students stay connected and engaged. They adapt lesson plans around air raid alerts, maintain routines that foster belonging, and cultivate community across distance and displacement. Social-emotional learning (SEL) practices have become one more tool in that effort, helping educators strengthen the care and support they were already providing.

According to a recent journal article, SEL Kernels—short activities and strategies that are used to support the growth and development of social and emotional skills and competencies—helped support teachers and students in wartime Ukraine. These include games, routines, and activities that target specific skills like emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and building relationships.

When SEL practices are not adjusted to be responsive and relevant to a particular culture, they’re less likely to have benefits. These SEL Kernels, developed by Harvard University’s Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning Laboratory, were modified to fit the evolving needs of educators and teachers in Ukraine. How? Rebecca Bailey and her colleagues started with landscape research to identify what challenges students and educators in Ukraine were actually facing.

“Building on these findings, we engaged in a collaborative co-design process with Ukrainian teachers and a team of LEGO Foundation Ukraine Master Trainers to adapt and refine the Kernels for local relevance and usability,” they write.

They conducted a survey and organized focus groups for teachers to discuss their concerns about student well-being and mental health. Teachers identified areas where additional support could strengthen the work they were already doing, including helping students regulate emotions during air raid alerts, rebuild social connections, and navigate prolonged uncertainty.

Based on the survey and focus group discussions, the researchers identified five priorities for the Ukraine Kernels materials, including cooperation, mindfulness, cognitive skills, emotional intelligence, and teacher well-being.

“Finally, we piloted the adapted Kernels materials in diverse classroom settings, gathering data on implementation, feasibility, and relevance,” they write.

After the final revision of materials and rollout of the Kernels, Bailey and her colleagues found that teachers viewed the SEL Kernels as beneficial for both their own and students’ well-being. Teachers reported that the activities helped support emotional and psychological health, made learning more engaging and meaningful for children, and provided practical tools that eased the demands of teaching.

For example, Herasymenko has found that short mindful moments help ground both her and her students. Having students name their rose, thorn, and bud for the day—having them reflect on something positive, naming a challenge, and looking ahead to something they’re excited for—have helped them hold on to hope.

Additionally, she leads a five senses grounding practice with students to reconnect the mind and body without taking up a large amount of time during the learning day. In high-stress environments, practices like these work because they are small enough to hold, even on hard days.

“I cannot imagine my teaching being the same as it was before the war,” Herasymenko says. “Everything is different now. So, I prioritize my students’ well-being more than their academic achievements. I think that now it’s more important for them to be OK and to be without stress in my classes. This is my priority now.”

The impact of Ukrainian conflict in neighboring countries

Data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre show that internal displacements—people who have been forced to flee or leave their homeland to avoid the effects of armed conflict, violence, or violations of human rights—increased from 20 million in 2024 to 32 million in 2025.

Schools in Poland have been significantly shaped by the conflict in Ukraine, and many educators are experiencing new emotional and practical challenges while supporting students. Małgorzata Lidacka, an educator in Kraków who works with displaced Ukrainian students ages seven to 10, has had to approach teaching in a much different way to help her students acclimate to the new environment—often slowing down and reminding herself not to rush to solutions while navigating both lesson plans and emotional responsibilities.

“When you’re a subject teacher, no one tells you that you will then have to be a coach, or some kind of therapist,” Lidacka says. “You can make a mistake and then it can influence these kids. So I feel this burden that it’s a lot for one person to combine those roles.”

The cultural barriers have also made it difficult for her to connect with parents, and some students have fallen behind because they refused to learn Polish when they first arrived, thinking that the stay in a new country would have been over much faster. The anger, fear, and hopelessness that her students are experiencing make it increasingly difficult to focus on academics, and Lidacka empathizes.

To support herself and her students while carrying this increased mental load, Lidacka turned to social-emotional learning strategies. She now routinely advocates for play to promote shared joy beyond language barriers and encourages small acts of kindness—like lending a pencil or a book to a classmate. Additionally, when working with parents, she began asking open-ended questions and practicing mindful listening, which she found made a huge difference in connecting and finding common ground.

“During the workshops with parents, I just listen,” Lidacka says. “And they are creating such great ideas about the future—for them and for their families.”

Despite the challenges Lidacka has faced with her students, she has also seen how remarkably adaptable they are. Many have learned to transition between online and in-person learning at a moment’s notice, they support classmates navigating similar disruptions, and most really dove headfirst into learning the new language and culture.

“The best part is small acts of kindness on a daily basis, and also a huge determination from Ukrainian kids to learn Polish,” Lidacka says. “They really wanted to learn very fast. And we have some pupils in the first grade that are fluent in Polish, even though their parents aren’t. So I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ Of course, it was a requirement, but not everyone succeeds.”

Supporting the supporters: Teacher well-being in real time

While searching for additional support and resources for her classroom and her own well-being, Lidacka found the Greater Good Educators Community of Practice (CoP). The CoP offered a space for educators across the globe to connect with one another and learn science-based practices focused on purpose, awe, self-compassion, gratitude, and kindness and compassion for others.

For educators like Lidacka, who had already experimented with small, bite-sized SEL practices, the Greater Good Educators CoP created a space to expand on what she already knew. The practices emphasized that teacher sustainability begins with teacher well-being, and the community conversations helped her see she was not alone.

“After these three years, I see among my peers that we are exhausted,” Lidacka says. “More and more often, we are searching for places to debrief or to just sit and talk about how difficult it still is to manage this.”

Alongside learning SEL practices like mindful listening and self-compassion, the educators who joined the CoP were encouraged to practice the shared community invitations of curiosity, compassion, and respect with each other. These invitations helped create a supportive environment where teachers could connect across experiences and process challenges together.

Herasymenko is one of the many educators Lidacka was able to virtually connect with, and she shared similar sentiments about the importance of having an outlet to support her own mental well-being.

“It’s great to have some kind of community of teachers during all these hardships,” Herasymenko says. “Before the war, I didn’t pay so much attention to my well-being, and now I understand that this is an important part of a teacher’s job. To think about taking breaks, to think about how to recharge yourself.”

Educators like Lidacka and Herasymenko are not waiting for ideal conditions to create caring learning environments. They have continued teaching, adapting, and building community through years of uncertainty. SEL initiatives are not a one-size-fits-all cure for the challenges they face, but they offer additional support for work they are already doing. By investing in educators’ well-being, we help sustain the people who make learning, connection, and hope possible—even in the most difficult circumstances.

Scaling up large health programs, working through complex systems, is what we do in global health. Guided by the science of epidemiology, we study how and why disease is distributed. We ask, why does disease “cluster,” affecting certain people, at certain times, in certain places? Understanding these patterns can provide the information needed to reduce the risk of disease and promote human health. So naturally, while listening to Jinpa, we wondered: could the statistical tools and methods of epidemiology also be used to “scale up” compassion? 

Epidemiology is a latecomer to compassion science. Psychologists and neuroscientists have studied compassion for decades. Spiritual traditions have taught compassion for centuries. Collectively, they have focused on cultivating the capacity for compassion in individuals. “Scaling up” requires broadening the field to include institutions, systems, and populations—which is precisely the strength of epidemiology. 

The novel idea that epidemiology might contribute to compassion science faced headwinds. Epidemiologists considered compassion to be too “soft,” too difficult to measure. Epidemiology is a quantitative science after all, for which precise measurement is crucial. On the other hand, compassion scholars and teachers warned that attempts to measure compassion would ruin it. Finding a “middle way” required innovative dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration. We started with two exploratory meetings at the Task Force for Global Health, a review of the compassion science literature through an epidemiologic lens, and, in March 2026, a special issue of the International Journal of Wellbeing, “Towards an Epidemiology of Compassion”. Our intent was to encourage scholars and thinkers from other disciplines to contribute their insights into how an epidemiologic approach could help to build a more compassionate world.

Challenging questions

While epidemiology has proven its value in public health, we found that applying it to compassion requires wrestling with several fundamental questions. First, do we have the right conceptual framing for compassion at a population level—are we thinking about it in the right way? Compassion educators who regard compassion as an individual human skill are doubtful. Only individuals, they say—not organizations or communities—have the capacity for warm-heartedness, which is necessary for compassion. However, they concede that organizations differ in their capacity to acknowledge suffering and respond with compassion, just as individuals do: Some are more compassionate than others. A reliable framework for understanding why compassion clusters in some organizations or systems more than others could provide clues for nurturing compassion in all organizations.

A second question is whether current epidemiologic and statistical methods are up to the task of analyzing the complexity of factors, interacting at multiple levels, that determine the extent to which compassion is present and how it is expressed. These factors include individual intent; physical, relational, historical, and emotional influences; and environmental and cultural determinants, among others.

Perhaps the most critical question for an epidemiology of compassion is that of measurement: What should be counted? Even at the individual level, measures of compassion rarely capture its essence. A recent scientific review by psychologist Cassandra Vieten and her colleagues found 503 measures of compassion and empathy—evidence that consensus is lacking. At the population level, outside the controlled environment of a laboratory, the challenge is even more complex. Measures of intention, empathic resonance, brain activity, or physiologic changes—which are useful in experimental contexts—are neither feasible nor reliable for studying compassion in populations. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva and Jennifer Mascaro have argued that, at the macro level, compassion can be measured by how well it is institutionalized through policies and actions. But are such policies and actions the same as compassion? Not according to those who insist that compassion is a skill or trait only of individuals, or that, for action to be considered compassionate, we must know that it is motivated by a positive intent. 

Gaining momentum

What began years ago as a vaguely defined notion among a small group of enthusiasts is gaining momentum. As an example, “Towards an Epidemiology of Compassion” featured 23 articles by more than 90 authors from a broad range of disciplines. Significantly, the articles provided much-needed perspective on conceptual frameworks, epidemiologic methods, and measurement. 

Conceptual frameworks. Working independently, several groups have proposed new conceptual frameworks to guide an epidemiology of compassion. Each of these frameworks or conceptual models emphasizes the need to understand how compassion manifests at multiple levels, including the individual, collective, and societal levels. Some of the frameworks describe how compassion “flows” across these levels, while others focus on determinants of compassion at different stages of life. Taken together, these conceptual models highlight the emerging understanding of compassion at the collective level and open new lines of inquiry into collective expressions of compassion—actions that are possible only through the shared intention and coordinated work of many people.

We have argued elsewhere, for example, that the field of global health, which seeks to alleviate and prevent suffering at a global level, is a manifestation of compassion. Exciting recent work on organizational compassion by Ace Simpson, Monica Worline, Jane Dutton, and others goes beyond these frameworks to describe the processes and features that characterize compassionate organizations. These include, for example, compassionate leadership; communication networks that alert staff to the presence of pain or suffering; roles, routines, and social networks that facilitate alleviation of suffering; and the use of physical space to increase staff accessibility and interaction.

Methods. The convenings at the Task Force for Global Health confirmed that epidemiologic methods are well-suited to studying compassion at the institutional and population levels. Methods used in chronic disease epidemiology, in particular, are designed to handle the extraordinary complexity of multiple “risk factors” interacting across different levels and time points. Other epidemiologic methods, such as geospatial analysis, can be used to map where and when specific forms of suffering (such as hunger) occur and whether resources (such as food pantries) have been put in place to address that suffering.

Measures. Although a single ideal measure of compassion remains elusive, significant progress has been made in refining and triangulating measures of compassion, particularly in health care systems. For example, Shane Sinclair and his colleagues have developed companion measures of compassion that take the perspectives of both patients and health care providers. Taking a systems approach, Anupama Jha and her colleagues developed a suite of measures to evaluate the impact of compassion training and health systems transformation in district hospitals in Bihar, India. Beverley Fehr and Susan Sprecher recently applied an epidemiologic lens to synthesize two decades of psychological research that used the same existing measure—the Compassionate Love Scale—and provided fresh insight into the clustering of compassion by time, place, and person.

Looking to the future

Since Jinpa’s keynote address in 2018, we’ve seen a global outpouring of interest in compassion and how it moves through human systems. Along with this interest has come a desire for a scientific approach that can guide research and inform practical efforts to nurture compassion in institutions and systems. Epidemiology contributes a population-level lens to compassion science that can help reveal and quantitatively describe the interplay of factors that enable compassion to arise in specific settings. So, what is needed now for compassion science to realize its potential through epidemiology?

Broaden the conversation. As Jinpa noted, we must reach beyond our own community to broaden the conversation. We must include voices from other disciplines—as well as voices of those who do not align themselves with any academic discipline. Progress on the central challenge of measurement can come only from a thorough understanding of compassion in different cultures and settings, incorporating perspectives across the breadth of human experience. We must learn particularly from Indigenous communities and colleagues in the global South. We need the perspectives of evolutionary anthropologists, sociologists, primate biologists, artists, peacebuilders, spiritual leaders, and theologians. And the conversation should extend more deeply within epidemiology itself, for example, to explore how the tools of infectious disease modeling and social epidemiology can help us understand how compassion is transmitted or spread across populations. 

Conceptual frameworks. There is much to be learned from in-depth exploration and comparison of the new conceptual models of collective compassion. Broadening and deepening the conversation to refine, apply, align, and learn from the new conceptual models can lead to an integrated framework, a conceptual scaffolding for further research and testing of ideas. 

Data. Epidemiology is a data-driven science. Advances in conceptual frameworks inevitably lead to new questions and stimulate the search for data to answer those questions. There is much to be gained from epidemiologic analysis of existing data, as shown by Fehr and Sprecher, as well as from including compassion-related questions in new research on human flourishing, happiness, and well-being. For example, analysis of compassion-related questions in the Global Flourishing Study by Julia Nakamura and her colleagues provides intriguing insight into the spatial distribution of compassion at a global level.

Systems perspective. Compassion science has largely focused on the giving of compassion by individuals. The recent increase in scholarship and interest in self-compassion and receiving compassion from others has opened a rich inquiry into how compassion “flows” across these dimensions, as well as the implications of such flow for well-being and mental health. In unpacking their multi-level framework, James Kirby and his colleagues argue that the systems in which humans live and work not only facilitate or constrain the flow of compassion among individuals, but these systems also serve as “active agents that can give and receive compassion.” While they may not be capable of warm-heartedness, organizations “possess the primary driver of compassion: intention,” and they can be sensitive to suffering and committed to its alleviation. This radical approach opens a new landscape for compassion science, for which epidemiology, with its systems perspective, is well-suited. 

Influence on epidemiology. Historically, epidemiology has overwhelmingly focused on disease and threats to human health. Tyler VanderWeele and his colleagues recently argued that the tools of epidemiology also should be applied to promote human flourishing. An epidemiology of compassion opens the field to a broader “positive epidemiology,” similar to developments in positive psychology. By inviting narratives and first-person accounts of the experience of compassion, epidemiology will be stretched in new ways—not unlike the field of contemplative neuroscience.

Compassion and social justice. The systems perspective of epidemiology, with its attention to populations, leads to the unavoidable question, rarely explored in individual compassion training, whose suffering is to be alleviated? In prompting this question and providing an analytic framework to address and monitor it, epidemiology brings compassion science into much-needed conversation with ethics and social justice. 

We live in a world that seems increasingly polarized. The need for compassion at the institutional and societal levels has never been greater. Applying the epidemiologic toolkit and its systems perspective to compassion science will not be a panacea, but we and others believe that it can make important contributions, just as it has in global health. We look forward to working with others who share this view—and to engaging in conversation with those who don’t. And we are eager to see more writing, thinking, and noticing of the ways that compassion manifests in communities and organizations. These real-world observations and reflections, combined with robust epidemiologic methods, hold the potential to bring us to the next frontier in compassion science—and to answering Jinpa’s question about how to “scale up” compassion.

In Unreasonable Women, van der Leun follows three women whose experiences challenge familiar narratives about crime, punishment, and victimhood. Through years of dogged reporting, court records, and interviews, she traces how domestic violence, childhood trauma, poverty, and systemic failures shaped the choices these women made—and the harsh sentences many received.

I spoke with van der Leun over Zoom about criminalized survivors, the limits of self-defense law, and what it would take to create a more just system. Here is our interview, condensed and edited for clarity.

Hope Reese: You set out to discover how many women in U.S. prisons fall in this category of “criminalized survivors.” What drove you to research this yourself?

Justine van der Leun: I was reading a report called The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline by an organization called The Human Rights Project for Girls, looking at the way that girls—in particular, Black girls—who were in the juvenile justice system had been sexually abused, often severely, before being incarcerated.

I was really interested in this idea of punishment, this further state punishment for this thing that had happened. But it was really hard to report on kids, to get permission—especially kids who don’t have parents. I abandoned that; I just didn’t know how to get in.

Then I learned about the idea of “survived and punished” from the group Survived and Punished. I ended up on Nikki’s case. And then I created this whole ridiculous project—in retrospect, what was I thinking?—to find how many criminalized survivors are there now.

HR: What did you learn? How many respondents reported experiencing abuse before entering the prison system?

JV: There’ve been studies that show that in certain facilities, up to 94% of women in prison have histories of domestic or sexual violence. And, anecdotally, I never really talked to somebody who didn’t—it’s almost everybody.

My research shows that 30% of respondents are criminalized survivors, and that’s probably like a vast undercount because I didn’t prime them. I didn’t ask specifically, “are you a criminalized survivor? Or “did you experience abuse or violence?”

One thing that I cannot know is how many women get off. How many times do prosecutors not charge? If you don’t get convicted, there’s no record of anything. So if a woman did, say, defend herself and they chose not to press charges—or try and they fail—then there’s really no way for me to find that person and then look at their characteristics and compare them. Everything is down to these individual DAs, for the most part.

HR: A recurring question, when it comes to these women and other victims of abuse, is “why didn’t she leave?” Can you address this?

JV: It’s a natural question that people who haven’t lived through this have. People think, “Well, if someone’s raping me, strangling me, putting me on Pornhub, or whatever, I would just go.”

Anyone who’s been through it knows that you can’t.

The simplest answer, looking at these situations, is that it’s not about if she decides to leave—it’s about if he lets her leave. So the decision is really not the survivor’s, the victim’s decision. It’s always the decision of the abuser.

We put the onus on her to leave, but in almost every single case that I’ve looked at, she wants to leave. But in domestic violence situations, the person being abused is so intricately aware of their abuser’s triggers and how they will react to everything. They know what will happen if they do. It’s not like you can make the free choice just to walk out.

Furthermore, as Nikki said to me once, “If he had thrown me on the ground and raped me the first date, I wouldn’t have been with him.” But the abuse is so gradual.

Also, when people have children and when people have lives together, it becomes so hard to disentangle yourself from these people—who’ve also convinced you that you’re worth nothing.

Gemma is one of the women in my book. She said it doesn’t matter how strong you are. It doesn’t matter what a badass you think you are. If somebody, day after day, isolates you and tells you that you’re a terrible mother, you’re going to lose your children, you’re worth nothing, nobody will want you—you start to believe it.

An abuser isolates you—or identifies someone who is already isolated—and gloms on to them. And when kids are involved, women wonder: How do I extract my child? Will he come for my child? Will the state come for my child? How do I remove my child from this life that they have with their dad?

Tanisha, she wanted to leave, but she would have been homeless if she did. So she stayed while trying to get her life together. And it’s not really a free choice, it’s like the other choices, like sleeping in your car, you know, are untenable.

For the other three women, everything that happened occurred when someone had left or was trying to leave. That’s the most dangerous time.

HR: Of children who have been abused, 77% face abuse in adulthood. Can you talk about how you observed this pattern in the women you wrote about?

JV: I haven’t been able to untangle it to the degree that I would like to. One expert said that the way they deal with trust is profoundly altered—they either trust too much or they don’t trust at all. The compass guiding them is a little broken.

Tanisha had been abused so much as a child, she almost took it as a given that a man would do this to her. She was abused in all of her relationships. I don’t know that she ever thought she was worth anything more, or knew that she was worth not getting abused—because that was her only experience in life.

Nikki’s childhood abuse—in all cases, actually—was never dealt with properly. So they couldn’t find healing. It was denied or like swept under the rug. And when you don’t heal from that, I don’t know how you can go forward and create healthy relationships when you have sexual trauma—stuff that you never got treatment for.

Even people who get treatment find it really hard to have healthy relationships later. So people who live on the margins have a lot of self-hate, shame, and worthlessness that they carry. Abusers are often really good at identifying that and coming into the lives of people like that, as well.

HR: And violence isn’t always registered by the person experiencing it. Gemma, for example, had been thrown against a glass coffee table that shattered—but she didn’t note it as abuse. Why do you think this happens?

JV: She told me, “That year was good.” Gemma would say that, first, she loved him and she got involved—and then he was abusive. The more I looked at it, the more I saw that he forced her into the relationship and the marriage—by strangulation and abuse, and by tracking her and stalking her. But because she felt that there was an inevitability to it, she may have tried to create, in her mind, a more pleasant reality in which she was choosing this and loved him.

Because the alternative was that she was being like forced and raped and strangled into a relationship. I think she wrote off a lot of things because she kind of had to, to live her life and to keep going. Including the coffee table incident. She had created a bit of an alternate reality.

HR: Beginning in the 1970s, lawyers defending or helping women with cases of criminalized survival advised them to plead insanity rather than self-defense. Why is self-defense so difficult to prove?

JV: I called the book Unreasonable Women because for a long time, the jury was tasked with deciding if a defendant acted as a hypothetical “reasonable man” would have acted. They were supposed to put themselves in the person’s shoes and answer, “Would a reasonable person have done the same, knowing the same things, having the same fears?”

There was never really a reasonable woman. Later it was turned to the “reasonable person standard.” So self-defense has typically been conceived of as the idea of like two men outside of a bar, equally sized, having a fight—would a reasonable man in that situation have reacted thusly?

A woman in a domestic violence situation—what is reasonable to her, knowing what she knows—is quite different.

Then there’s the issue of imminence in self-defense—the threat had to be so imminent that you had to react with force. It’s often required that it be in that exact second, in hand-to-hand combat. But if it were hand-to-hand combat, women would usually die. She won’t be able to defend herself. So imminence looks different for women—and that’s rarely considered historically and legally.

HR: How is Tanisha’s story a prime example of criminalized survival?

JV: Tanisha was dealing with not having housing. She ended up meeting a guy at a club, and he had a room, and she didn’t want to sleep in a car, and she didn’t want to impose on friends. She ended up going and moving in with him. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was just a roommate. But he abused her.

Quickly, he took over her life. She wanted to leave, but he also took over her finances, so she couldn’t leave very easily. So she decided she didn’t want to sleep in the car, so she would make it work while she stayed.

He then killed a man in their shared apartment. She was there at the time. She ran out. He put a gun to her head. He put a hand to her throat. And he basically told her to get with the program and do as he said—or he would kill her, as well.

She did as he said. She helped wrap the body of this young man that he had killed. Then she ran for years. She was really scared of him. She was scared of the police. Finally, her conscience got to her. She came forward to help solve this cold case and help the police so that his family would have closure.

HR: She’d had faith that the system would protect her. What actually happened?

JV: Alisa Bierria says something like, “Black women are used as pawns to demonstrate justice and then disposed of.” I certainly saw that. If we consider justice convictions—which I think prosecutors often do—these women are often used to testify.

Tanisha came forward—but she was promised immunity, according to her. She had a bad lawyer, and she didn’t get it. They needed to build their case. They said, to make her believable to a jury, she couldn’t have gotten any deal. They used her as a witness so that they could win their conviction. And so they threw her life away.

HR: Efforts such as New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act address criminalized survival. What would it take to overhaul the system?

JV: Survivor justice laws provide openings for people who are in prison to get their cases heard. Oklahoma, Illinois, New Jersey—and, more recently, Georgia—have passed such laws. The laws allow for a person who can show that abuse was a significant contributing factor, for the judge to have discretion on sentencing. They’re also retroactive. So if you’re in prison, you can have a chance of getting your case heard again.

Those laws are really important, but I can’t sugarcoat it: It’s a systemic issue. It’s generational, it’s enslaved people who came before these women were born, and these ideas that people learned about these communities, what they’ve been through.

It’s clear that the narratives we’re told about people, and the labels that are put on them—by the criminal legal system, prisons, even media—have nothing to do with who they are, the real context of their lives, or what really happened.

Some really remarkable people are locked up on murder convictions. It’s changed how I understand being a woman in America. This is baked into our culture and society; it’s what we all experience on some level. This is all by design.

My interest in the science of disappointment began more than 15 years ago as a workplace consultant. I was struck by how often clients described episodes that left them feeling disappointed as deeply personal and unsettling experiences—and by how little research there was to help me respond meaningfully. That prompted me to do a Ph.D. on the subject.

Disappointment often reflects a gap between expectation and reality. It can involve grieving a future we had already begun to live in our minds.

My subsequent research with colleagues revealed a telling pattern. In the workplace, disappointment is frequently generated at a systemic level by unrealistic targets—yet lands on individuals as a sense of personal failure.

In many walks of life, it is commonly dismissed as an unwanted and unhelpful emotion. But our research tells a different story. Disappointment can be an important fuel for creativity. It surfaces what we truly desire, clarifies what matters to us, and points us toward what we are not yet willing to accept.

Whether in our professional or personal lives, disappointment is a signal worth learning to read. Here are some ideas for when you next come up against it.

1. Don’t get ahead of yourself

When we are waiting on a significant decision—a job offer, test result, or relationship turning point—our emotional response is prepared long before the answer arrives. The same outcome can feel entirely different depending on what we anticipated would happen. The wider the gap between expectation and reality, the greater the disappointment.

In the workplace, severe disappointment in not getting a job or missing out on a promotion can stem from the loss of a working future we had already begun to imagine. If that future does not materialize, we grieve it—even if it never fully existed.

2. Beware the success trap

Success can quietly raise the bar for future failure. One of our respondents illustrated this dynamic neatly. Exceed your work target by 10% one year, they observed, and your manager is unlikely to reward you with a lighter load the next. Rather, the target is raised again, making falling short more likely—and the disappointment more acute because of your past success.

The same pattern can play out in social situations. Think of a friend who often picks up the bill. Over time, a generous gesture becomes expected behavior. Then, on the one occasion they don’t pay, this becomes a moment of disappointment that people notice and remember. That disappointment is not proportionate to what actually happened, but to the gap with what was expected.

3. Try not to blame yourself (or anyone else)

People rarely experience disappointment in a neutral way. Rather, they tend to interpret it through one of two familiar patterns.

The first is internal: “I am the problem.” This assumes they did not try hard enough or were simply not good enough. Disappointment is treated as a sign they are a flawed or bad person.

The second interpretation is external. The fault is with others who did not recognize the person’s value and did not live up to expectations. The instinct is to blame and get angry with them.

Our research on disappointment in organizations shows both responses miss the point. Blaming ourselves or others can be a way of avoiding something harder to confront: that expectations are unrealistic or based on inaccurate assumptions.

4. The Ikea effect

Environments shape expectations. In workplaces, many people are encouraged to aim high and improve continuously. Organizations often promote ideals of progress, achievement, and fulfillment.

These ideals can be motivating, but they can also create a perfect scenario that reality struggles to match. From this perspective, disappointment can be a structural feature of systems that rely on high expectations and idealized outcomes.

But there’s a personal aspect, too. Research on what psychologists call “the Ikea effect” shows the more effort we invest in something, the more we value it—rather like a flatpack piece of furniture that we have built ourselves. At work, we routinely pour time, energy, and identity into projects, roles, and relationships. So, when things don’t go as hoped, we are losing something very personal.

And because failure at work is often witnessed by colleagues and managers, the stakes feel higher. The loss can become entangled with how others see us, and how we see ourselves.

Left unexamined, such feelings can calcify into something more damaging than the original disappointment: a diminished appetite for risk, a reluctance to invest fully in what comes next, and a growing suspicion that doing so is simply not worth it.

5. Be realistic, not idealistic

Moving from trying to eliminate disappointment to tolerating it can make it less destabilizing and more informative. As a manager, this might mean developing the habit of noting, at the outset of a project, what a realistic rather than an ideal result would look like.

Similar patterns can appear in relationships too, where expecting things to feel perfect all the time can make an otherwise good relationship seem lacking.

Research consistently shows that naming difficult emotions reduces their intensity, and that workplaces where disappointment can be discussed honestly tend to be psychologically safer, more creative, and better at learning from setbacks than those where such feelings are expected to be quietly moved past.

6. Accept disappointment, don’t dismiss it

Disappointment is uncomfortable because it confronts us with limits: to what we can control, to what organizations can deliver, or to what relationships can provide. An understandable instinct is to try to move past this quickly.

But a more constructive approach is to reflect on where our expectations come from, how they are formed, and whether they can be moderated in ways that benefit us. If disappointment is a signal that our expectations and reality are out of alignment, then understanding this may be one of the most important forms of resilience we can develop.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Three months after a New York Times investigation detailed allegations of sexual violence against United Farm Workers movement cofounder Cesar E. Chavez, many Latinos are still grappling with that question. The revelations have sparked difficult conversations about accountability, memory, and what it means when someone whose legacy is woven into a community’s identity is accused of causing profound harm.

To understand why the allegations have resonated so deeply, it helps to understand Chavez’s place in American history. In the 1960s and 1970s, farmworkers across California endured grueling conditions, including low wages, job insecurity, exposure to pesticides, and few legal protections.

Alongside labor organizer Dolores Huerta, Chavez helped build the United Farm Workers into one of the country’s most influential labor movements, organizing strikes, leading nationwide boycotts, and advocating for better pay and working conditions. Their efforts helped bring national attention to the exploitation of agricultural workers and secured contracts that improved conditions for thousands of laborers.

Over time, Chavez became more than a labor movement leader. For many Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans, he came to symbolize perseverance, dignity, and the fight for civil rights. Schools, parks, streets, and public buildings bear his name.

His story has long been taught as an example of nonviolent activism and collective action. His image has become inseparable from the broader history of Latino political empowerment in the United States.

That is why the New York Times investigation landed with such force. Drawing on interviews and historical records, the investigation reported allegations from multiple women who said Chavez sexually assaulted or abused them over several decades. It also examined claims that people within his circle were aware of the alleged misconduct but failed to intervene.

Although Chavez died in 1993 and was never criminally charged or able to respond to the allegations, the reporting challenged a public legacy that had largely portrayed him as a moral leader and champion of justice. For many who grew up revering Chavez, the investigation has forced an agonizing question: How should communities remember a figure whose contributions to social justice are now being weighed against allegations of profound personal harm?

Psychologists suggest that revelations involving admired leaders can trigger a unique form of emotional conflict. Psychologist Jennifer Freyd’s research on institutional betrayal suggests that when harm is committed by someone closely tied to a person’s identity, community, or sense of belonging, people may experience grief, confusion, anger, and disbelief simultaneously. The challenge is not only processing the wrongdoing itself, but reconciling it with long-held beliefs about a person or institution once trusted. In these moments, the person being questioned is not merely a public figure but someone connected to collective memory, cultural pride, and a community’s understanding of its own history.

That tension raises yet another difficult question: How can communities acknowledge painful truths without abandoning the movements and values that shaped them?

Holding two truths at once

For Pablo Gonzalez, a first-generation Chicano scholar-activist and anthropologist who studies social movements, the allegations against Chavez forced a conversation that could no longer be avoided.

“There’s no way you can’t have this conversation in a Chicano studies class,” Gonzalez said.

When he addressed the topic with students, he found himself overcome with emotion. As someone whose generation benefited from educational opportunities created through the broader farmworker and Chicano movements, he understood both the movement’s significance and the pain of confronting its contradictions.

“I got emotional because it’s something that for us, we have not yet been able to have deep conversations about,” Gonzalez said. “What the broader movement, that includes the Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers struggle, [meant]—of how deeply important it was but also how deeply painful it was in regards to its internal contradictions and conflicts.”

His response reflects a challenge many communities face when confronting harm committed by influential figures. The conversation is often framed as a choice between honoring a movement’s achievements and acknowledging abuse.

Alexandra Barahona de Brito, a scholar of collective memory and reconciliation, explains that societies are often better served by simplified narratives. Furthermore, research on transitional justice suggests communities build a more honest understanding of the past when they acknowledge both the accomplishments and failures of historical figures, rather than reducing them to heroes or villains.

Acknowledging one reality does not require denying the other. Instead, confronting both can create a fuller and more honest understanding of the past.

The cost of hero worship

According to Gonzalez, part of the difficulty lies in how social movements often become centered on individual figures.

Over time, Chavez’s role within the farmworker movement became inseparable from the movement itself. Through public fasts, religious symbolism, and widespread media attention, he became more than an organizer. He became a symbol.

“Over time, you create this persona,” Gonzalez said. “History starts to write about Cesar, and he becomes central to the story.” As Chavez’s image became increasingly intertwined with the farmworker movement, criticism of the leader could feel like criticism of the movement itself.

Psychologists use the term “halo effect” to describe the tendency for positive impressions in one area to shape perceptions of a person’s overall character. In Chavez’s case, admiration for his leadership and the movement’s achievements may have made it more difficult for supporters to reconcile evidence that conflicted with his public image.

That psychological tendency was reinforced by Chavez’s symbolic role within the movement.

He had become its most recognizable public face; questioning Chavez could also feel, for many, like questioning the legitimacy of the farmworker struggle itself. While charismatic leadership can inspire collective action, it can also make criticism of a leader feel like an attack on the cause they represent.

Gonzalez said that dynamic often led difficult conversations about Chavez to be sidelined.

“You don’t talk about, for instance, his anti-undocumented labor stance,” Gonzalez said. “You don’t talk about how he ostracized Filipino labor leaders or other farmworkers that didn’t agree with him.”

Instead, protecting the image of the movement’s most recognizable leader frequently took priority.

The recent allegations challenge communities to reconsider what happens when social movements become attached to a single individual rather than the thousands of people who collectively made change possible.

What survivors make possible

At the center of the current conversation are the women who came forward to share their experiences.

For Gonzalez, their decision to speak publicly represents more than a need to reassess Chavez’s legacy. It offers an opportunity to address forms of harm that have long remained unspoken within Latino communities.

“It takes time for those voices that were silenced and suppressed to come out,” Gonzalez said. “But they’re there. They’re always there.”

Psychiatrist Judith Herman’s research on trauma and recovery suggests that healing often begins when survivors are able to speak about their experiences and have those experiences acknowledged. Naming harm does not weaken communities. Instead, creating conditions where survivors feel safe enough to come forward and be taken seriously can become an important first step toward accountability and repair.

Gonzalez pointed to Dolores Huerta’s willingness to publicly address the allegations as an example of breaking longstanding silence.

“When young girls— . . . girls of color—are looking for heroes and heroines and they look at Dolores Huerta, they’re not only going to see a labor leader and civil rights leader, but also a person who broke the silence,” he said.

“They’re going to see other women, whose names probably won’t be written in history books, break the silence.”

Creating space for difficult conversations

The revelations surrounding Chavez arrive at a moment when conversations about sexual violence are unfolding across many institutions, from universities and workplaces to religious organizations and immigrant detention centers.

For Gonzalez, the importance of this moment extends far beyond one individual.

“Breaking the silence around that is important,” he said. “It could be the place where we see mobilization. Sexual violence in detention centers. Sexual violence against young girls. Everything that, again, our community has not had a meaningful dialogue about.”

That dialogue, he argues, must begin by centering survivors rather than protecting legacies.

“There has to be a dialogue in our community around sexual violence,” Gonzalez said. “There has to be a dialogue around centering victims.”

Restorative justice scholars argue that accountability begins not with protecting reputations but with understanding harm. Rather than asking how a leader’s legacy should be preserved, restorative approaches encourage communities to ask who was harmed, what support survivors need, and what changes are necessary to prevent similar abuses in the future.

Beyond heroes

As communities continue to wrestle with Chavez’s legacy, Gonzalez believes the broader lesson is not simply about one leader but about how we define leadership itself.

“The solution here is not to create more pedestals,” he said.

While some have proposed replacing Chavez’s name with other figures, Gonzalez argues that doing so risks repeating the same pattern. Instead, he believes communities should shift their attention away from singular heroes and toward the countless individuals whose labor, courage, and sacrifices sustain social movements.

“We have to embrace the nameless—not the voiceless, but the nameless—people who make up everyday struggles, because that’s who we are.”

The challenge facing Latino communities today is not deciding whether Chavez was entirely good or entirely bad. It is learning how to tell a fuller story—one that honors collective achievements, acknowledges harm, centers survivors, and resists the temptation to place any individual beyond accountability.

Perhaps that is what collective healing ultimately requires: not the erasure of history, but the courage to face it honestly.

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As I moved from my early to late 40s, one feeling resonated: I felt great! My smartest, most confident, and healthiest version of myself. 

The disconnect between what I was expecting to feel and what I actually felt was so large that, at the end of last year, I started a Substack to talk about the notion that, yes, we can be Happier in the Middle. It turns out my hunch is beyond anecdotal and actually rooted in scientific research.

Primetime, by Margie Lachman, the director of the Lifespan Lab at Brandeis University, suggests that we are looking at both life and especially life in the middle the wrong way.

Instead of viewing life as one mountain to climb, the foundational perspective of the “downhill” metaphor, it’s more accurately a series of mountains and the middle a pivotal summit where we get to look back at where we’ve been and make decisions about where we want to go next.

Why do we believe in a midlife crisis?

Based on over 30 years of research, Lachman roughly defines the middle as age 40 to 60 (plus or minus 10 years).

She demystifies the origin story of the “midlife crisis,” tracing it to a 1965 article by a Canadian psychoanalyst who noted that the creativity of artists dipped in their mid- to late 30s, which he linked to feelings of a looming end of life. We also have him to thank for the notion that life after 40 goes “downhill.”

The idea of a midlife crisis was later fueled by a 2008 study showing a U-shape to happiness, with it dipping in midlife. However, when Lachman and her colleagues investigated the data driving this study, they found that “while visually compelling . . . the giant dip in the graph isn’t as significant as it appears from the image.” But the damage of a belief in a midlife dip in happiness had already been done. Add to that media uptake, and we have a full-blown cultural phenomenon that lives rent-free in most of our heads.

However, research by Lachman and her colleagues shows that only 10 to 20% of adults report having a midlife crisis. More importantly, what’s termed a crisis is closer to an introspective life challenge, and one of many inflection points experienced throughout the lifespan, not just in midlife.

Another challenge that amplifies concern about midlife is the belief that who we are is relatively stable by then, in terms of our self-concept (what we think of ourselves) and personality (how we show up in the world), both of which are key drivers to change. Self-concept and personality impact the realm of what we feel is possible for our lives: the goals we can achieve, lifestyle changes we believe we can make, and types of experiences we seek out.

Lachman offers scientific research that counters the belief of a stable and immutable self. Specifically: 1) Personality can change well into midlife and typically only begins to stabilize after the age of 50, and 2) the 50s is a pivotal decade marked by increased introspection and self-reflection. “One of the great opportunities of midlife is that we are in a stronger position than ever before to close the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Using personality change as an avenue for improving the way you think, feel, and behave is a new and underutilized tool,” she writes.

We can have what she calls in one section of the book “a midlife personality glow-up”!

What do we lose and gain in midlife?

A big challenge that I have with the popular midlife narrative is that it’s a deficit-only narrative. We only hear about what we may potentially lose in this phase of life and far less about what is available for us to gain or maintain. Primetime balances the scale in this area.

The book covers various tradeoffs in midlife focusing on potential losses and gains. I’ll share three such examples below.

Cognition. A big concern many of us have, me included, is: Will I be able to maintain my intelligence and memory as I age or not? Lachman helps us to reframe this black-and-white way of thinking about cognition through the lifespan by reminding us there are two components of intelligence, fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. “Fluid intelligence is about quick thinking and innovation. . . . Crystallized intelligence . . . is the epitome of wisdom . . . which relies on experience, semantic memory, knowledge, and the ability to synthesize them all and apply it to the current problem.”

Yes, fluid intelligence may gradually decline as we age, but our crystallized intelligence gets better as we age, through our 60s and 70s. This explains why I feel so confident now: It’s the culmination of life experience, learned knowledge, and my ability to map it on to new situations, all things that we acquire with time.

But if maintaining fluid intelligence is important to us, we are not powerless. Prioritizing activities that encourage neuroplasticity—like learning a new instrument or language, travel to a foreign country, or developing an artistic habit—can help us to preserve fluid intelligence as we age.

Inflammation. In addition to our cognition, another area that gets a lot of attention around midlife decline is our physical health. Everyone from your doctor to well-meaning friends and partners is likely warning you about the potential uptick in illnesses as you age. Their warnings not only are well-meaning, they can also be true. Research does support that as we age, we become susceptible to more physical health problems like cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurodegenerative issues.

A major driver of age-related health decline is inflammation. Inflammation is our immune system’s response to injury, infection, or harm. Lachman reminds us that a key driver of inflammation is chronic stress, something that many of us in the middle may experience due to managing child care, work, and aging parents.

Although we may not be able to control all of the stressors we face at this stage of life, we can mitigate them through our mindset, social support, and healthy behaviors. For example, a study Lachman worked on using Midlife in the United States survey data found that we can employ what she calls “psychosocial anti-inflammatories,” such as cultivating a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives, self-efficacy (believing we can impact change in our lives), optimism, and positive social connections—as well as adopting a regular exercise routine, which has been found to benefit both our physical and mental health as we age. 

Combined, psychosocial anti-inflammatories and exercise help reduce stress and the impact of stress-related inflammation.

Social network. Many of us are likely to have a robust social network by the time we reach middle age, largely due to all of the roles we hold during this period: parent, partner, adult child, friend, boss, coworker, community member, etc. In support of this pattern, Lachman shares data from Pew Research Center that shows that 54% of Americans in their 40s are caring for both children and an aging parent.

With our expanded network comes the potential for a rich and supportive tapestry of social support. But social networks can also add strain and stress stemming from the relationship. Our goal should be to minimize this to the extent possible and capitalize on the social support aspects of relationships. Social support can reduce the impact of life stress and positively contribute to our overall well-being.

An interesting turn that midlife presents for our connection to others is generativity. “Research shows that one of the biggest gains we make in midlife is in the realm of generativity, the way we positively contribute to the world through care and concern for others,” Lachman writes. For example, this might include volunteering, community activism, or mentoring.

It’s in this area that our lived experiences pay in dividends, not just for us but for others. While the concept of generativity places a premium on helping younger generations, this form of support can also be extended to peers and those older than you, as well. A good example is an organization highlighted in the book, Seniors Helping Seniors, where older adults help other older adults across a variety of needs.

The biggest takeaways from Primetime are, first, that our mindset is one of our best assets as we age. It can determine the type of life we will live in midlife and beyond. Second, it’s never too late to start making changes to positively impact our health and well-being. I’m living proof of that, having only recently regained a consistent physical fitness routine in the past couple of years, which has contributed to how good I feel right now, with my 50s around the corner.

We have the capacity to shape how our midlife years and beyond look through the right mindset, decisions, and support; we are not powerless.

He’d earned that nickname after spending 14 years collecting definitions of the word “compassion” from passersby in a notebook or on video. This grew out of a personal awakening he had in 2009, when he gave away all of his possessions to devote his life to a higher purpose, one that included living without stable housing, approaching each day without expectation, and embracing simplicity and minimalism.

It seemed a cruel irony that someone who lived and breathed peace and compassion lost his life in such a tragic way. I was devastated, to say the least. Even further: During the early days of my grieving process, I rediscovered a message David had sent me, one he felt he needed to write as he was becoming more of a public figure in Davis: “If I’m ever harmed or unable to speak for myself, forgive the perpetrator and help others forgive that person.”

Not long after, I found myself sitting in a courtroom, yards away from the young man who took David’s life. How could I possibly live up to David’s wish, this close, this personal, still deeply embedded in the grieving process?

I had to try to practice forgiveness. In real time.

I kept coming back to that word: “practice.” I knew I couldn’t expect anyone else to feel the same way as me—this was my own journey.

But there were others I could learn from, people who’d gone through incredibly difficult experiences but still managed to somehow tap into a place of empathy and mercy. I studied the work of Holocaust survivor Eva Kor, who forgave the people who killed her family. I listened to stories by Jack Kornfield, including his 12 Principles of Forgiveness. I learned from Fred Luskin that I had to “be at peace with the vulnerability inherent in human life.”

These were lessons I absorbed, integrated, and put into practice. At first, it was easier said than done. But I had these examples and David’s words to guide me. I also discovered things about the young man who killed David—and found unexpected common ground in our life stories. 

It may sound ludicrous that someone would be open to identifying a common humanity with someone who’s taken the life of a loved one. But that’s exactly what I found myself doing during the course of the trial in May and June of 2025.

Our mother had schizophrenia. So did the person who took David’s life, Carlos Reales Dominguez. However, Carlos had never been diagnosed as schizophrenic—that happened as a result of receiving a psychiatric evaluation during the trial.

There’s more. My mother was from Jamaica, and Carlos was from El Salvador—we all shared immigrant roots, and all grew up in lower-middle-class families in dangerous neighborhoods. David, Carlos, and I had all been honors students. All of us, in our own ways, were survivors. We’d been accepted into college, with Carlos and me both being first-generation attendees.

We’d overcome so much. It made me view Carlos not only through the same lens as David and me, but also that of many of the kids I’d grown up with, where domestic abuse, sexual abuse, food insecurity, and more accumulated into multiple adverse childhood experiences. These, in turn, can increase the likelihood of negative outcomes in adulthood.

Not only did these shared stories deeply move me—I found myself noticing what it took to reach a place of openness to hearing them. It was, once again, practices, including active listening (granted, potentially inherent in a process that involves testimony and evidence), mindfulness, and deep self-reflection, that helped me navigate pain and reckon not only with my humanity but also with someone else’s.

I had to notice my emotions without judgment, recognize biases, and listen, to not only testimony but also the deeper context of suffering in general.

It didn’t interrupt the grieving process. That wasn’t my goal, anyway, and my therapist told me this wasn’t particularly healthy. But what it did do is help me heal a little faster, grieve a little less, and empathize a lot more.

We all play roles and bring our identities, biases, hurts, wants, and needs to painful situations. Because I was primed for it by David’s request to “forgive the perpetrator,” by the work I’d done to learn more about how to practice forgiveness, and by my understanding of severe mental illness because of my mother, perhaps forgiveness came more easily to me.

But I think anyone’s capable, given the time and space, to reach the same place of openness and empathy. It may not happen overnight. But the possibility, I believe, is there, if one looks for it.

The first trial for Carlos resulted in a hung jury. The retrial is now underway. I’m further along in my grieving process. I’ve even started partnering with transformative justice organizations that believe in fair chances for those who’ve committed crimes, as I believe. As civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson writes in his book, Just Mercy, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

I’m in a good place, still healing, finding purpose. Still, to take care of myself, I’m limiting my involvement with the trial this time around. Come what may, I’m going to be approaching everything with the resources I’ve gained and integrated—and with clear-eyed compassion.

Jean-Michel Robichaud, a psychologist at the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick, studies situations like this when adolescents feel hurt by their parents’ actions. While working as a therapist at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal during his Ph.D. studies, he saw families with damaged relationships—often because of a hurt that occurred when the teen was younger. This led him to be curious about how parent responses to an offense impact family relationships and teen well-being.

In this hypothetical scenario, Sophie—we’ll call her—feels compared to her older brother, who is high-achieving and a good kid, while she is thought of as the rebel in the family. Her parents are worried about her, so they give her less autonomy.

Robichaud wanted to offer his clinical patients research-based advice to help them where they felt stuck in moving forward in a conflict. His research addresses where apologies fit into parenting—whether they’re helpful, and what they should sound like. He wondered how to offer an apology that brings satisfactory resolution and well-being, but he didn’t find many studies on the topic when he began his work.

What apology research says

Previous research supports the idea that apologizing can facilitate forgiveness from those who have been hurt.

Karina Schumann, who was also in her Ph.D. program in the late 2010s, noticed that most work on forgiveness studied the victim’s perspective: “How do people perceive apologies? Does it contribute to forgiveness?” But she wondered about the transgressor’s side of things. “What does it mean to be a person who has harmed someone, and what then moves you toward engaging in a reparative action?”

To fill that gap, Schumann, now a University of Pittsburgh psychologist, began focusing on apologies. “What might influence our willingness to apologize? . . . How can we understand what motivates transgressors to apologize?”

Meanwhile, Robichaud saw that the scant research that existed addressed dynamics other than parenting—such as governmental or institutional apologies and romantic relationships. When he took his first faculty position at the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick in 2022, he became intent on researching apologies in parent and child relationships.

Schumann and Robichaud teamed up. “Right away the results were astonishing. . . . It seems to be something that is very important in parent-child relationships,” says Robichaud.

What prevents apologies?

Schumann wrote about three main barriers to apologizing based on insights from a review of recent research. The most common obstacle pertains to saving face. People protect their self-image. “It’s an icky, uncomfortable feeling for us to face our mistakes. We want to be good people, partners. All of that can make us feel really uncomfortable,” she says.

In the moment we realize our behavior was hurtful, we immediately think of all the reasons why we behaved the way we did. “I’m stressed, tired, or you haven’t done these things for me or supported me. We can create excuses around our behavior, even if we don’t verbalize it,” she says.

Adding to that, many conflicts are characterized by dual responsibility.

“We often feel like we’re not the only ones responsible. We find ourselves in a situation, ‘Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have done that,’ but we have such a strong inclination to want to feel good about ourselves.”

People feel that if they apologize first, it makes them more responsible for the conflict than the other person. “I worry you will think I’m 100% responsible,” explains Schumann. While conflicts are often thought of neatly as having a victim and a transgressor, sometimes both parties are responsible for misbehavior—even though the blame might not be evenly shared.

In another paper, coauthored with her graduate student Anna Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, Schumann found that more self-compassionate people are less likely to withdraw in shame after they’ve done something wrong. Shame does not lead to forgiveness-seeking, according to a 2013 study led by Calvin University psychologist Blake Riek. When people perceive mistakes to be self-defining, they’re inclined to avoid admitting responsibility in order to protect their self-image, says Schumann. However, people who understand that they will make mistakes and don’t let mistakes define them are more likely to apologize.

Another reason people avoid apologies is that they struggle to empathize with the victim, she writes in the review. MacEwan University psychologist Andrew Howell that people with certain personality traits (like higher self-esteem and compassion) are more willing to apologize, while people with other traits, like narcissism, are less willing. In a series of experiments, Schumann found that people with higher empathy for a romantic partner or friend offered higher-quality apologies rather than defensive responses.

Schumann lists a third restraint: the perception that an apology won’t elicit forgiveness or compassion from the victim. A 2012 study found that transgressors stay attentive to any clues that a victim is willing to repair the relationship and tailor their responses accordingly. 

Different types of apologies

Robichaud refers to apologies as “psychological vitamins”—that’s how good for parents and children he believes them to be. “When you make a mistake, you just created an opportunity to teach several key values to your child and to nurture your relationship with your child,” he says.

However, successful apologies contain specific elements. “The way you phrase your apologies will also be key in reaching forgiveness and all the benefits that come with it . . . both for the one who apologizes and the one who receives,” he says.

Robichaud along with Schumann tested victim-centered apologies and defensive apologies among French-speaking teens in Canada. Victim-centered apologies included things like “I’m sorry,” “What I did was unfair,” “I hurt you,” or “I reacted too quickly.” They even might request forgiveness but without pressuring: “I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if you’re not ready.”

In contrast, defensive apologies fail to empathize with the hurt a teen might feel. They might explain the mistake, justify particular actions—“I did it for your own good”—blame the child, or minimize the hurt—“It was just a joke.” 

The studies tested apologies in a variety of ways, including participants answering questionnaires about their relationship with their parents, writing responses about a particular situation they could recall, and responding to a hypothetical scenario.

Robichaud found that parents who apologize to their children create an environment that cultivates forgiveness. “We have data consistently showing that the more parents do this, the higher the likelihood [adolescents] will forgive, but also the healthier the reasons they will forgive.” In other words, forgiveness is offered freely without the motivation of a controlling parent.

Beyond forgiveness, adolescents who receive parental apologies have higher well-being and act in kind and helpful ways, says Robichaud. When parents apologize, adolescents are more likely to disclose their own mistakes to their parents and less likely to lie.

Taking responsibility in your apology

Sometimes in Robichaud’s clinical work, parents offered apologies that included justifications for their behavior: “You were difficult,” “I was sick,” “Your father wasn’t there.” In the scope of things, he thought that “those seemed like very legitimate reasons, but the families weren’t doing better.”

In the example with Sophie, her parents felt accused of being neglectful and reacted highly defensively. “How can you even say that? We give you so many privileges. You have a TV, and your brother never had one.”

But that kind of response fails to address how the teen feels and instead focuses on the parents’ feelings. What it sounds like to the teen is: “What you are living is not real,” while the parents intended to communicate: “We love you equally.” Teens either react back or close up when parents act defensively, says Robichaud.

“What I noticed is that the families where the parents could find it in themselves to apologize and take accountability for what they had done . . . they were doing much better after months of therapy,” he says.

Later, let’s say the parents realized that their teen’s complaint had some truth in it: “Even though they valued treating their children equally, they failed to do it,” describes Robichaud. He explains how they could offer two apologies: one for their initial reaction and another for their unfairness, while opening a discussion about how to give Sophie the same opportunities that her brother had.

Parents who hope for positive outcomes should leave out any explanation for their behavior. “If you want to apologize, don’t defend yourself at the same time. That’s the equivalent of having done nothing,” says Robichaud. “They might be tempted to defend themselves, minimize the harm that was done, or blame the child—‘if you hadn’t acted so horribly for so long, maybe I wouldn’t have freaked out.’ That defensive language has been shown to have the opposite effect. It increases lying, reducing disclosure, reducing forgiveness.”

Parents can model what it looks like to take responsibility for your mistakes. “You give [teens] the experience of how good it feels to be validated after being hurt,” says Robichaud. “When parents apologize to their children, the more teens or children are inclined to apologize to their parents later. . . . They learn from that.”

What we know—and don’t

The research on apologies is less robust than the psychology of forgiveness, and Robichaud is still working through some remaining questions.

However, one apprehension Robichaud sought to address early on in his research is a popular concern about parent apologies. Some blogs and online advice from clinicians suggest that apologizing to children might undermine parental authority in some way. When parents apologize, it upsets the typical power dynamic: Parents must put themselves in a position of weakness. Some wondered if that shift creates an insecure environment and leads to a passive-aggressive pressure for the child to forgive their parents. Though appearing humble, apologizing may actually be controlling.

In a separate paper, Robichaud and Schuman tested for that in multiple ways but didn’t find any significant effect that apologies had on parental authority.

“When you apologize, you tap into the relational trust, bond, care, love, but you don’t tap into the hierarchy rules or respect,” says Robichaud. “It’s not about that. It’s about repairing the bond that has been broken, the relational damage, the trust that has been hindered by the mistake.”

Robichaud also wants to know: Could severe cases of abuse or chronic patterns of mistreatment diminish the benefits of apologies? “What happens when it’s a cycle or the parent repeats the same mistake over and over? Are words enough? Do they lose their power?” he asks. Additionally, while he started his research among teens, he’s interested in understanding parent apologies to younger children.

What Robichaud is sure of: All parents make mistakes. “The list of factors that can bring even the best of the best of parents to make a mistake goes into the hundreds. There are so many factors that have been identified as a risk factor that can impact the quality of parenting behaviors. There are too many factors at play for a parent to expect they can be perfect,” he says.

“Every parent has bad parenting moments,” says Robichaud, especially considering various cultural factors around parenting, common childhood struggles, and pressures outside the home, such as work-related stress. “They do have consequences, but that’s where parents have control. They will make mistakes—they can’t realty control that—but when they do, they can apologize. How parents respond to the mistake can determine whether the mistake will have a negative effect or a less negative effect.”

In the aftermath of this ghastly genocide, the country needed to figure out how to move forward. Concerned about renewed violence, the newly formed government created a justice and reconciliation process to ensure that all Rwandans live side by side peacefully. This would be achieved by establishing “Reconciliation Villages.”

One of the villages, Rweru Reconciliation Village, serves as a case study in post-genocide reconstruction. In the village live both survivors and perpetrators of the genocide, there to demonstrate that living side by side is possible. All the residents participate in joint activities, such as farming the land and building homes together, attending communal gatherings, and reconstructing the social fabric.

As we’ll see, forgiveness in Rwanda is not without its challenges. Forgiveness takes time and can be a profound personal journey, shaped by cultural, religious, and spiritual beliefs. But for those who live in Rweru, forgiveness is seen not as condoning past atrocities, but as breaking free from the cycle of violence and hatred. We believe Rwanda shows the world that, even in the face of unspeakable horrors, communities can come together, forgive, and rebuild.

It is one thing to forgive someone who has offended you. It is a different story when faced with the task of making peace between groups that have committed violence against each other. What does forgiveness look like in a situation like this, and can forgiveness initiate societal change? Through our work at the Forgiveness Project at Stanford University, we’ve come to see Rwanda as a model of political forgiveness—a concept that is essential to building a more peaceful world.

What is political forgiveness?

In her book The Human Condition, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt writes, “Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would be confined to a single deed.”

The beauty of forgiveness, as noted by Arendt, is that forgiveness interrupts otherwise automatic processes—not only in our private lives but also in the public sphere. Forgiveness is as vital in the public realm as it is to preserve bonds between individuals.

Psychologists describe forgiveness as a conscious choice to set aside feelings of anger and resentment toward an individual who has caused harm, regardless of whether that person deserves it. Although there is some disagreement about whether forgiveness requires developing positive feelings toward the offender, there is agreement that forgiveness is a process of letting go of deeply held anger or resentment.

In recent decades, psychologists have empirically validated several methodologies that promote forgiveness toward self and others, one of which is the Stanford Forgiveness Project. Research on the impact of psychoeducation on forgiveness has shown that it helps people forgive those who they feel have wronged them, forgive themselves, and enable existential forgiveness. These approaches, which we believe have been validated across a wide range of human offenses, offer promise in helping to resolve political and civil violence.     

Our goal is to integrate the secular model of forgiveness developed by the Stanford Forgiveness Project with a tested dialogue method from Colombia, South America, to create a testable process we are labeling “political forgiveness.” We believe the essence of political forgiveness integrates interpersonal and self-forgiveness with structured dialogue to help enable communities to recover from violence and civil unrest.

Political forgiveness can be defined as the process of repairing fractured relationships among individuals, nations, or groups. The goal of political forgiveness is to heal individuals, reconstruct communal relationships, and rebuild trust. Political forgiveness emerges from the enfolding of appropriate grieving of wounds, forgiving of self and others, and creating positive dialogue. Forgiveness by and for individuals and groups is a powerful mechanism for healing harmful actions that cannot be reversed.   

Forgiveness in Rweru

What does political forgiveness look like?

Let’s return to the example of Rwanda and the Rweru Reconciliation Village. Two of its residents are Maria Izagiriza, a survivor, and Philbert Nterzirizaza, a former perpetrator and Izagiriza’s neighbor, who killed some of her family members. Izagiriza’s husband and six of her nine children were murdered during the genocide.

Right after the downing of the plane that killed the president, Izagiriza had been warned that there was trouble ahead. Her neighbor said to Izagiriza that her people were responsible for the leader’s death, and she would pay dearly for what she had done.

The following morning, the militia showed up at her home, killed all her livestock, burned her house down, and beat her husband nearly to death. Fortunately, her children were left unharmed. Izagiriza hid until nightfall when she felt that it was safe enough to return to her compound to get her husband and children. When she finally found them, she described what she witnessed: “Though breathing, my husband was so badly wounded and bleeding from all parts of his body,” she says, pausing to wipe the tears streaming down her tired face. “The children were scared stiff but unharmed.”

With the help of her children, Izagiriza somehow managed to drag her injured husband to a hiding place where she felt they would all be safe. This is when she realized that the person she thought was a friend and who offered to help, instead delivered her husband and children to the killers. Again, she managed to escape, but this time, with her four-month-old baby strapped to her back. No one else made it. “That was the last time I saw my family alive.”

Izagiriza ended up at a barricade where a group of young men stopped and killed people. Among them was her neighbor, 18-year-old Ntezirizaza, who was motivated by his own hate and, with disregard for human life, was responsible for killing some of her family members.

“In 1994, I was a teenager, my body full of youthful vigor and my mind filled with a terrible ideology, fed to me since I was in elementary school. . . . Our mindset at that time was more lethal than the machetes we carried.” Ntezirizaza paused, then, with a low voice and distant gaze, said: “We hacked her husband and eldest son to death and threw the remaining two children in a deep pit, alive. We knew they wouldn’t survive.”

Ntezirizaza, who spent time in prison after the genocide, carries the burden of shame and guilt for what he had done. Like others who committed acts of violence, he wanted to make amends through Rwanda’s reconciliation process. Ntezirizaza was afraid to face Izagiriza. He understood that asking for forgiveness was necessary if both were to move forward. He also recognized that he could not just ask for forgiveness to absolve his guilt; he was asking for forgiveness to help them both move on to restore their community.

Izagiriza understandably struggled with forgiving the man who killed her loved ones. Yet, over time, through the village’s reconciliation program, Izagiriza came to understand what had happened and why Ntezirizaza had been indoctrinated to hate. Her experience of forgiveness brought her peace and speaks to her survival and recovery.

“When one’s heart is burdened, you don’t see anything good at all,” she told Vice Magazine. “But when you forgive from your heart, you see many good things coming your way. And forgiveness is an important thing, as it makes your heart relieved and you gain new ideas of self-development, and life continues as normal.”

For his part, Ntezirizaza came to understand the gravity of his actions and, in so doing, was able to ask for forgiveness. “After getting released from jail, I would feel guilty that I committed crimes against Maria, and I would feel fearful and ashamed of myself. . . . I asked her to forgive me. She forgave me, and I felt relief in my heart.”

Izagiriza and Ntezirizaza are now working together in the village fields, helping to grow food to sustain their community.

Turning experiments into examples

Political forgiveness begins with people from all warring sides agreeing to come together and work with one another. Our method involves meeting separately with two groups who have been in conflict in order to teach the basic skills of forgiveness and discover how the process of forgiveness has inspired people in similar situations. The goal is to come to a common understanding of what forgiveness is and is not.

The process we’re currently testing is based on work done in Colombia, which saw decades of violence between the government, militia groups, and crime syndicates. After many attempts to stop the violence, in 2012 President Juan Manuel Santos was able to begin peace talks in Havana, Cuba. One of the outcomes of the talks was the creation of the “Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Co-existence and Non-repetition” (CEV) focused on victims and their right to the truth.

The CEV promotes the idea of co-existence, which was achieved by creating safe spaces for dialogue between the deeply divided sectors of Colombian society. Rather than treating the “truth” as a series of facts, Father Leonel Narváez developed a process called “logics of truth” to facilitate emotional healing. Inspired by political forgiveness models, this framework acknowledges that there are different layers that make up what we call “truth.”

This process helped de-escalate hostilities by having participants explicitly separate events, which are objective, from the meaning ascribed to them. This dialogue framework helps participants grasp the complex, multifaceted nature of truth. The dialogue process begins with each side discussing what happened as they see it, why it happened, and its significance. Then they discuss how to move forward from what happened, including the painful consequences and intense feelings. Finally, the dialogue broadens to discuss how the group can work toward societal reconciliation to help prevent violence from erupting again.

We are now testing this model with Palestinians and Israelis based in the United States who are struggling to make peace with each other. In our work as researchers and practitioners, we understand that forgiveness is both a decision and an ongoing process. We have each worked with suffering people whose suffering only abates when they can forgive. We try to never lose sight of the fact that forgiveness is a choice, something that can be taught and practiced.

Though that phrasing could be interpreted broadly, the full statement makes clear that the government agency is not worried about Father Knows Best reruns getting labeled “TV-G,” but rather is questioning “shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming” that are being rated “appropriate for children.” Supporters of the effort have cited programs like Disney Jr.’s Firebuds, a cartoon where talking cars exist alongside a human character who is nonbinary, as cause for concern. The implication of this public inquiry is that such programs are potentially inappropriate.

The FCC, led by Brendan Carr, is not-so-subtly extending the Trump administration’s years-long targeting of gender-expansive communities, which has included fearmongering around trans people in bathrooms and limiting access to gender-affirming care. In its announcement about this effort, the agency vaguely asks if “gender identity themes” should be explicitly named on TV in the future and if any mention might inherently warrant a stricter rating. (Programs with crude language, violence, and sexual situations currently receive additional scrutiny and warning labels.)

Yet research suggests that while it might be useful to call out the inclusion of transgender and nonbinary characters for parents, it is largely for the opposite reasons. Rather than this being universally problematic, studies have found a myriad of benefits to consuming media sensitive to the lives of gender-expansive people.

The benefits of expanded gender representation

Layered representations on TV that expose kids to people and experiences they may not see or have access to otherwise are an opportunity for transformative education and community building. Meanwhile, there are real risks to continuing to use a narrow, binary framework to limit how children learn about gender, sex, and sexuality.

In a 2019 article published in the journal of Communication, Culture & Critique, researchers looking at the impact of gender-diverse representation concluded that, at the very least, “media is one discourse that reflects and creates reality.” So for children who are just starting to define their own identities, seeing a variety of experiences on screen could be crucial to discovering and affirming who they are.

This is why programs like Steven Universe, one of the shows flagged by supporters of the FCC inquiry for intentionally “targeting” kids with its “LGBT characters,” have actually been used to teach social and emotional skills in classrooms. The cartoon follows a boy named Steven and his adventures with intergalactic beings known as the Crystal Gems. Researchers have highlighted its disruption of gender norms, discussion of mental health, and expansive representation of queer relationships in order to argue that Steven Universe can improve skills like decision making and building relationships.

This view of the show has been affirmed by kids themselves, with one teenager reflecting to Teen Vogue that “seeing characters you look up to be flawed individuals and love each other despite that is refreshing, and as a young viewer—I started in middle school—those lessons stick with you.”

Meanwhile, when depictions of trans, queer, or nonbinary people are lacking, or stereotypical, researchers find it can give “license to hegemonically inclined parents to stamp out gender-deviant behaviors in their children.” (Hegemony is defined by the researchers as “the willing submission” to the behavioral rules determined by the “dominant group”). And queer children who are not supported by their parents are more likely to be depressed and experience “higher levels of parental abuse.” Based on interviews and surveys, the 2019 study of gender-diverse representation found that narrow depictions on TV are limiting “understandings of what it means to identify as TGD [transgender and gender-diverse] in the world.” Narratives that focus exclusively on gender-binary, white, upper-middle class, and “post-operative heterosexual” characters may even be exacerbating well-documented health risks for queer kids, which include 1 in 3 “TGD” people experiencing assault during primary school.

In addition to changing how we view ourselves, media can be used to increase positive attitudes toward others. A direct, realistic story is among the most effective means of teaching children (and adults) about the existence of transgender identities and challenging “gender essentialism” (or the idea that biology determines gender).

For example, in a 2021 study, participants improved how they viewed transgender people and those living beyond the binary after watching a single 1992 episode of Star Trek: Next Generation, titled “The Outcast,” which features a main character, Riker, starting a romantic relationship with J’naii, a character from a society without gender. The researchers selected the episode because they felt it represented “an atmosphere where a gender diverse individual is not discriminated against or seen as an abnormality” (though it is perhaps more complicated than that, since it turns out J’naii actually wants to identify with a binary gender and is subsequently persecuted by their own community in the show). By increasing familiarity and empathy, they concluded, media interventions like this might contribute to decreased discrimination and violence against trans people.

Going deeper than representation

It’s worth noting, though, that in that same Star Trek study, the researchers did not find that changed attitudes guaranteed changed behavior, nor that a decrease in transphobia necessarily indicated a willingness to support civil rights for trans and gender-nonconforming people. This actually tracks with “The Outcast,” which does not end with Riker and his coworkers necessarily overhauling how the gender binary operates onboard their ship, despite any lessons they’ve learned from J’naii.

It’s clear that representation alone does not move the needle and can—if the portrayals are not varied, expansive, and accurate—even increase harm. Another study found that “the rise of visibility in the media of trans people has coincided with more public scrutiny” and in some cases made life harder for those navigating a society that was already structured to discriminate against them. This is echoed by the research on the impact of stereotypical media representations of Black children, which can distort self-perception and be a factor in racially motivated bullying. Depictions in children’s media are particularly notorious for the “adultification” of Black girls, which can also contribute to less care, greater surveillance, discipline at school, and more sexual violence.

In fact, racist and sexist representations have been part of children’s TV for a long time, and these depictions have not always been incorporated into parental ratings. A 2021 New York Times editorial criticized Looney Tunes for perpetuating “rape culture” via its Pepe Le Pew character, after which Warner Brothers announced that they would no longer produce new episodes featuring the lecherous skunk, who is often seen stalking and giving non-consensual kisses to Penelope Pussycat. Yet older episodes with the character, which clearly include overt messaging on “gender identity,” are widely available and are still deemed appropriate for kids today.

Other characters from Looney Tunes like Bugs Bunny also have clear roots in white supremacist minstrel shows, but this fact is not flagged for parents in the current ratings system either (which gives some episodes a TV-Y7 rating, meaning it’s suitable for children ages seven and older). Even the aforementioned Steven Universe, created by Rebecca Sugar, has faced criticism over its depiction of Black-coded characters that may lean too far into stereotypes.

On the flip side, shows created by and for the people they represent are more likely to lead to authentic content that resonates with those communities. For example, a 2024 study found that series “with at least one Native writer, director, and/or executive producer” were rated more favorably by audiences than those without. Similarly, Disney and Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur—whose protagonist is a Black girl named Lunella Lafayette—had a writer’s room and directing team featuring many women of color and has been subsequently praised for its treatment of Black queer girls. (Even so, an episode from season two of the show, centered on a Black transgender girl named Brooklyn who wants to join a volleyball team, was pulled in 2024 before it ever aired due to a stated desire to be “respectful of the role parents play in making choices for their children”).

Regardless of how you look at it, it’s hard to find any evidence that kids who are exposed to holistic, layered representations of gender diversity are harmed by the encounter. As the studies discussed suggest, even if a TV show like Star Trek might challenge how a viewer thinks about gender, it doesn’t mean that it will change anything about how they behave.

Instead, such media have the capacity for opening up conversations that are otherwise not happening at home. A 2025 study found that parents are still more likely to use gender-neutral language like “kid” to describe children and characters in books whom they see as “boys” or “men,” as compared to those whom they see as “girls” or “women,” implying that the “default” person is still largely thought to be a man. This socialization is enforced by a children’s TV landscape where, according to the Geena Davis Media Institute, “male characters” outnumber “female” characters by 22.6% and are “significantly more likely” to be white. Leaving things this biased should be more concerning than a few characters on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur talking about being trans.

A majority of parents agree that social identity impacts their children’s success in life, yet more than 60% of them are not discussing race, ethnicity, or social class with their kids. Repeated studies find that children’s media can reduce prejudice and increase self-confidence if what’s being shown is inclusive and thoughtfully engaged with. That last part—whether or not parents take the opportunity to intentionally engage the media being consumed and want to imagine possibilities with their kids—is not something a TV show can determine.

But it seems clear that parents and educators materially benefit, regardless of how they approach children’s learning, from more, not less, expansive representations of gender, sex, sexuality, race, ability, and class in media made for kids. Though the FCC’s call for comments on TV ratings does not mention all these other aspects of identity, there is significant overlap between how these factors are, or are not, represented on screen. Given that the industry is still largely controlled by wealthy white cisgender men, the restrictions or isolation of shows that challenge the dominant order in one way can easily have a cascading, silencing effect on efforts to challenge the dominant order in other ways.

The few shows being questioned by the FCC today are no more prescriptive around gender than the binary messaging of Father Knows Best and Looney Tunes. Promoting even more multifaceted representation of and by gender-diverse people of color on TV can provide a necessary counterbalance to the historical and sustained ubiquity of stories that normalize white patriarchal rule.

I think about that gap often. The distance between the announcement of freedom and the experience of it. The way something can be technically true and still take years, generations, to land in the body—if ever.

And I think about what freedom, maliciously delayed, would have even meant to the newly self-possessed. Were they reaching for relief from the daily indignities, the particular violence of a system designed to extract everything and return nothing? Or did they believe it would mean something structural—the dismantling of the system itself? Slavery was technically over, but the system was not dismantled. Which means what was on offer in 1865 was not liberation. It was, at best, a temporary and conditional relief expected to be received as grace.

This pattern repeated itself in the generations that followed. The right to order one’s own steps, to live where you chose, to build in a neighborhood that would hold what you built—blocked at every turn. The freedom to move, which had always been a precondition for everything else, was managed, restricted, and re-administered through new instruments every time the old ones were formally prohibited.

In his 1945 autobiography Black Boy, Richard Wright wrote of leaving Mississippi years earlier: “I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . . to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom.” Isabel Wilkerson built her landmark book, The Warmth of Other Suns, around that line, as she documented the 6 million Black Americans who left the South between 1915 and 1970 in search of dignity.

When I left the United States for Spain in 2017, this, too, was an exercise in freedom of movement. I called it a break. I was burned out in the particular way that Black women in the U.S. get burned out—from the sustained physiological cost of living in a country that registers your presence as a problem to be constantly surveilled and managed. A bone-deep fatigue that rest did not ease, that did not belong entirely to me. It had been passed down.

There’s a name for this condition: “weathering.” Coined by public health researcher Arline T. Geronimus, who has spent four decades documenting its effects in Black Americans, weathering describes the way chronic exposure to racial stress accelerates biological aging, wearing down the body itself. By midlife, more than half of Black women show signs of advanced biological aging that cannot be explained by socioeconomic status alone. The problem, Geronimus argues, is not how well we take care of ourselves. It is how well society takes care of us. There is no current evidence that weathering stops, let alone reverses, on departure. What I felt abroad was real. It just did not happen on the tarmac.

But weathering is not the whole story. Corey Keyes, a psychologist at Emory University, identified a striking paradox: Black Americans report higher rates of flourishing than white Americans by clinical measures, even while carrying greater exposure to discrimination, stress, and physical illness. When Keyes controlled for perceived discrimination, the Black advantage in flourishing increased across nearly every measure, meaning Black Americans would be even healthier were it not for discrimination.

What the data registers as resilience is simultaneously evidence of what is being endured. To read it as proof that Black people can take more, that what has been suffered is not that bad, is to misread the data in a way that has consequences. It converts structural injury into individual strength and lets the structure off the hook. There is no current clinical evidence that weathering reverses on departure.

Three years after I had landed in Spain, still trying to understand what I had moved toward, what I had moved away from, and whether those were the same question, I launched my podcast and archive, Flourish in the Foreign. This happened on May 11, 2020, two weeks before the world watched George Floyd die on a Minneapolis street. My project became an award-winning, internationally acclaimed life-history archive documenting Black women living abroad, building narratives that mainstream media preferred to flatten.

Merriam-Webster defines flourishing as growing luxuriantly, achieving success, and being in a state of active production. That is the flourishing I named this archive after. Not a diagnostic threshold, but a felt life; the gap between those two definitions is where this essay lives. What the guests on my podcast describe—the body stopping its bracing, the jaw unclenching—gestures toward something the research has not yet followed them far enough to name. Flourish in the Foreign exists because I understood, from my own body, that the research could document the toll but could not capture the texture of what women were actually navigating—the calculations, the grief, the unexpected discoveries, the slow interior work that no wellness program had prepared them for.

Over six years, I have conducted more than 150 life-history interviews with Black women living across 30 countries. Through my recent “Aging Abroad” podcast series, I have begun revisiting many of these women years later, creating a rare longitudinal record that documents not only why Black women leave but how their understanding of wellness, belonging, and freedom evolves over time. The question Richard Wright asked—can the transplanted person grow differently, can they bloom?—is the same question running beneath every interview in my archive.

What this project has taught me, consistently and without exception, is this: Relief is real. And relief is not the same thing as freedom. Confusing the two has costs.

What does liberation require?

Niana was my first podcast guest. I had known her since we were both language assistants in northern Spain. She’s from Chicago, a city that received hundreds of thousands of Black Americans during the Great Migration, and whose children will likely never know the city the way she does because they are being raised in the Netherlands.

That, too, is what movement does across generations, disrupts identities and connections to place. I recorded our conversation in February 2020, 18 months after she had left Spain to follow her Dutch husband to the Netherlands, and months before the podcast publicly existed. She was still Spain-shaped, still grieving it from the flatness of the Netherlands.

Six years later, when she returned for the “Aging Abroad” episode at 42, she named what Spain had actually given her: “When I went to Spain, I felt free. I felt like someone had lifted something off my chest. But what came with that—it was just myself and my internal voice . . . it was super clear. It was super loud. It couldn’t be hidden by interactions with other people or distractions.” Spain is not devoid of anti-Blackness. But what it offered her was the specific removal of enough noise that the voice waiting underneath got loud enough to hear.

She also named what she had had to reckon with in that quiet—the guilt of the American differential, the specific social transaction of announcing her nationality and watching rooms shift in her favor in ways she knew were not available to the Black Spanish and Afro-European women around her.

“I felt a lot of guilt there because I knew that I had to say I was American,” she said. “I would immediately be treated differently and I would have access to things that this person who’s born here who deserves it will never have access to.” That observation, made 18 months out of Spain, was not yet theory. It was a pattern she had watched play out for five years and had not yet found clean language for. The essay you are reading is still looking for that language.

What began as a personal experiment became a sustained interrogation of what wellness actually means in the context of voluntary migration and whether what Black American women are calling freedom is what they are actually reaching for, let alone experiencing. The question moves through a historical thread: from Juneteenth, where freedom was declared but had not yet arrived in the body, to the Great Migration, where Black Americans moved North and West toward dignity and found a different version of the same constraint, to the present idea of Blaxit (Black Exit), a growing social and political movement of Black Americans away from the United States—and beyond.

The movement is global, but the question underneath is the same: What does liberation actually require, and is that what is being sought, or simply the next iteration of conditional relief? To name that distinction is the beginning of honest accounting.

Migration as liberation

Courtney grew up in a sundown town in Michigan. Her family integrated the neighborhood in 1988; her father, a police officer in a neighboring city, was stopped and harassed by local police every night driving home through the neighborhood where he owned property, because they did not believe a Black man belonged there, regardless of the badge he carried. Her mother had moved north from Mississippi following siblings who had already gone in earlier surges of the Great Migration.

“I consider myself a product of it,” Courtney told me on the podcast. She carried that lineage before she ever boarded a plane.

She built a life in Atlanta. In the first six months after she and her husband moved into a townhome there—one of the only Black families in the neighborhood—they had police called on them twice: once because a moving truck briefly blocked a cul-de-sac, once because a neighbor heard music and called rather than knock. The year before she left the United States, her closest friend died by suicide. Same age. In her wedding. Had just earned her Ph.D.

“Looking at my friend in a casket, somebody that just like looks like me and like is in the same life stage as me, really did something. It broke me open, quite honestly.” She flew to Mexico on May 1, 2021. She cried before the plane doors opened, tears streaming into her mask before they had even disembarked. Mexico is not devoid of anti-Blackness. What it offered her was the specific removal of the specific instruments that had been administering harm to her entire life.

“Migration as liberation,” she told me, “is a newer, modern way for us to reclaim our freedom.” She named the lineage she was placing herself inside: Josephine Baker in France, James Baldwin in Paris, Assata Shakur in Cuba—people who left not always because the world was offering them better, but because survival required departure. She named her mother’s Mississippi-to-Michigan journey as the movement she descended from. The wager she was making in Mexico was the same wager, updated for a different century and a global map.

I believe this. I also believe that liberation requires something that relief does not.

Relief is a change in conditions—the body stopping its bracing, the jaw unclenching, something long-held beginning to release. It is real and substantive.

Liberation is a change in structure—internal, relational, and political. It requires self-awareness about the construct you are leaving. A commitment not to rebuild it somewhere else. The willingness to be in genuine relationship with the place and people you have arrived among. To bring your gifts rather than your hunger.

Becoming, and the long work

Sienna came to Spain for the first time as a study abroad student from Vassar for five months, extended by a month on her own money, long enough that she wrote her senior thesis on the misrepresentation of Afro-Latina and Caribbean women there.

She went back to Brooklyn after graduation, worked a good job, and was unhappy in a way she couldn’t fully name. The freedom she had found in Spain had no equivalent in her daily life. She applied to the government language assistant program, got placed in Murcia, and moved permanently. That was 12 years ago. She had been building toward Spain deliberately, which makes what happened next the more instructive.

She still had her hair fall out at 24. As she said on my podcast, “That was almost like a culmination of all of the years of not living in alignment that had kind of manifested itself through my body.”

She had come home from the beach one afternoon and begun taking out her braids. Clumps in the shower. A month of doctors offering no answers. The geography had changed, and she had chosen it with intention and intellectual preparation. The survival mode had not. What Spain offered was the specific removal of enough noise that the interior work became impossible to avoid.

“Where you are does not matter if you do not do the work to heal, to become who you truly want to be.”

Twelve years later: VP of growth at a talent and recruiting platform, a successful brand, Las Morenas de España, built and left on her own terms. A village of 700 people in Valencia. A partner. Chickens. A garden. Not the relief of arrival. The consequence of work.

Khephra came to Spain in 2013, before this was a movement, before it had a name, before anyone was using the word Blaxit. A New Orleans woman who had grown up bold and uninhibited arrived in Madrid and had to learn, for the first time, to have some inhibitions. She came because she wanted to, a desire that required no political rationale.

“I just left because I wanted to. I’ve always wanted the chance to leave.” She went natural, organized, started the first protest after Michael Brown’s murder with seven friends and a permit for 1,200 people—4,000 came. She does not fully belong in Spain. When she goes home to New Orleans or Atlanta, she does not fully belong there either. She has made peace with a diasporic home rather than a national one, a self assembled from chosen belonging rather than inherited geography.

“I’ve grown so much and, yes, I’ve been through so much, but I’ve also learned, don’t die. That’s the best we can do. That is liberating.”

That sentence is not ironic. It is this essay’s argument at its most earned and unsentimental—not the liberation of the golden hour, not the liberation of the terrace in Lisbon, but the liberation of a woman in her mid-40s who has been at this for over a decade and has found the courage to be disliked, to occupy her own full complexity, to stop managing other people’s comfort. She suspects her picture lines the finest bird cages and litter boxes in Spain. She is fine with that, as long as they got her good side.

Freedom is something to live

Ayoka B., a writer and poet from Washington, D.C., was a featured guest on the podcast in March of this year. She discussed leaving America for Costa Rica, and also was guest essayist on my Substack, Letters From Elsewhere, in May 2026. She wrote about the evolution of her motherhood abroad in the weeks before her son—raised in Costa Rica from 13, fluent in Spanish, thriving in ways she could not have engineered for him at home—flew back to D.C. against her wishes.

She described her departure from the U.S.: “I felt like I was fleeing for my life because I was.”

Her son rode his bike to school, an 11-minute ride he navigated alone, something he could never have done in D.C. He earned As and Bs. He played basketball on weekends and hung out at the beach. He moved through a community that evaluated him on what he contributed rather than managed him for what he might threaten. “My son could move around alone and with his friends, unbothered,” she said.

And then someone suggested he return to the States after graduation. He agreed. He had grown up in the freedom she made and did not know what made it necessary. He did not grow up in the D.C. that she survived.

“Now, he wants to return to the United States, against my wishes, at the worst possible time.” She named what he would be returning to: ICE raids, ballooning unemployment, police violence. She named what he did not understand: that there is a difference between visiting D.C. and living there, that he doesn’t know how to move in it, that his disposition—open and trusting, easygoing, earned on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica—could make him a mark. “My son, who has always had his own room, will be sharing a house with four people and sleeping on the couch.”

He flew to D.C. on May 28. She is currently filing paperwork for Costa Rican citizenship, hoping more options will lure him back. “I am terrified. I’m not as emotional as before, but I’m not OK.”

Crossing the gap

That is this essay’s most difficult truth: Relief can be built, inhabited, handed to a child, and returned. The freedom Ayoka made is real. Her son’s choice to leave it is also real. He never had to experience what made it necessary. He does not know what she survived. He doesn’t yet know what she knows.

On Juneteenth, we celebrate the day the news arrived. But what Juneteenth also documents is that freedom can be declared and not yet lived. There is always a gap—sometimes measured in years, sometimes in the distance between a mother in Costa Rica filing citizenship paperwork and a son on a plane to D.C.—between the moment liberation is made possible and the moment it is actually inhabited.

I am nine years into crossing that gap. The women in this archive are years and decades into it.

Niana, at 42 in a Dutch village, craving Lake Shore Drive, told me: “I can also say what might heal me may not be where I’m from, but I’m proud of that.” She holds both truths without resolving them. She has been holding them for 13 years.

We are not running away. We are running toward something that was never available where we started. The thing we are running toward is not a specific country. It is an experience of self-determination. It is an opportunity to cultivate a life well-lived, on our own terms.

Richard Wright asked whether the transplanted person could grow differently. Whether they could respond to the warmth of other suns. Whether they could, perhaps, bloom.

The women in this archive are the answer. Not because they have arrived. But because they are still growing.

• A Short History of Black Happiness: What can African American history tell us about the cultivation of well-being?
• How Well Do Happiness Practices Serve Black Communities?: We interviewed Black people about where happiness comes from and whether 15 typical happiness practices work for them.
• On Juneteenth, Black Women Reflect on Seeking Freedom Outside the U.S.: Black Americans can find relief when they leave the United States to live abroad—but do they find liberation?
• Why Telling Our Own Story Is So Powerful for Black Americans: Andrea Collier reflects on the role of storytelling in black American history—and in her own life.
• Why Storytelling Skills Matter for African-American Kids: For black students, storytelling skills directly predict their early reading skills.
• Can Loving Yourself and Others Protect Your Health?: Research suggests that seeing our spiritual connections to others could protect us from disease and promote public health.

Emancipation Day celebration in Richmond, Virginia, 1905. Source: Wikipedia

• How to Change the Story about Students of Color: Dena Simmons explores how educators can inadvertently harm students of color—and what we can do to bring out their best.
• Why Marginalized Students Need Hope to Succeed: Researcher Dante Dixson is developing programs to help disadvantaged students envision a brighter future for themselves.
• Can We Teach Racial Justice by Talking About Virtues?: It’s harder to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools these days, but there might be other ways to frame the conversation.
• How Talking About Race Can Bring Black Families Together: A new program is helping Black children and their caregivers talk about race—and they’re learning important lessons about racial socialization.
• For Black Children, Play Can Be Transformative: Play is a radical and liberatory activity for Black children. As adults, we have a responsibility to promote and participate in it, too.
• Does Preventing Depression Look Different for Black and White Kids?: New research suggests that ways of supporting mental health in white youth may not work for underrepresented groups, such as Black youth.
• Nine Picture Books That Illuminate Black Joy: These books celebrate Black children’s everyday lives—being bold, curious, creative, loving, and playful.
• How Adults Can Support the Mental Health of Black Children: Psychologist Riana Elyse Anderson explains how families can communicate about race and cope with racial stress and trauma.
• How Can I Stay Positive for My Kids When I’m So Overwhelmed?: Even for a psychologist who studies how kids understand racism and violence, talking to her own children about it is difficult.
• How the “Strong Black Woman” Identity Both Helps and Hurts: Being a “superwoman” could help African American women cope with racial discrimination—but it may have some drawbacks.
• Seven Complicated Lessons From Jamaica About Happiness: What does the island reveal about the science of happiness?
• From Othering to Belonging: In a Science of Happiness podcast, we explore racial justice, well-being, and widening our circles of connection and concern.
• When Diversity Is Stressful, Focus on Building Trust: We talk with Claude M. Steele about his new book, Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It.
• Thoughts on Awkward Relationships and Bridging Divides: In a Science of Happiness podcast, comedian W. Kamau Bell discusses the challenges of finding common ground, even with people in your own family.
• Why George Floyd Still Matters: Five years ago, the police killing of George Floyd provoked a wave of change. As those gains come under attack, Stephanie Griffith finds hope in human moments.
• Can We Build a World Where We All Belong?: john a. powell explains why we distance ourselves from groups of people and how we can all find the connection that we crave.

We also have resource pages devoted to anti-racist tools and to the scientific case for diversity.

It was last May and the Knicks were facing the heavily favored Boston Celtics in the first game of their playoff series. The Knicks had fallen behind by 20 points early in the second half. By the end of the third quarter and into the fourth, though, the resilient Knicks started clawing their way back into the game.

That night, I was actually attending a Yankees game in the Bronx with some friends, but Amanda—who at 12 was aware of the Knicks since I was a big fan, but not particularly invested in the team—had started casually watching the game at her mother’s place. “You watching this game, bruh?” she texted me as the Knicks’ comeback gathered steam.

I began checking the scores on my phone and soon realized I had a strong enough cell signal to watch the actual game. Amanda and I began furiously texting with each successive play that narrowed the deficit: “Did you SEE that shot, Dad?” and “Holy crap, they just hit another three!!!” and “I can’t believe we might actually WIN this game!!” At one point when the Knicks had tied the score and the Celtics took a time out, Amanda called me, breathless, and we went over all the big plays, marveling at what we were witnessing. 

I eventually started ignoring the baseball game I was attending to focus on the Knicks contest, which ended with one of the Knicks making a huge steal from the Celtics biggest star to seal the win. Amanda and I could barely contain ourselves, ecstatic over the outcome.

Incredibly, two nights later, when Amanda and I watched the next game together, almost the exact same scenario occurred—the Knicks again fell into an early 20-point hole, before slowly scratching their way back into the game. And once again, that same Knicks player who made the clinching play in the first game did the SAME EXACT THING to claim victory at the end of the second game.

All the while, Amanda and I were losing our minds, high-fiving each other and jumping up and down with each new charge by the Knicks and missed shot by the hated Celtics. Our hometown team would eventually win the whole series, four games to two, in a massive upset. The Knicks continued to step up and deliver, and the Celtics’ biggest star unfortunately suffered a season-ending injury midway through the series.

Those games, and especially those wildly dramatic two victories at the start, were when I knew Amanda had gotten hooked on the Knicks, opening up a whole new exhilarating chapter in our relationship.

Building the relationship I wanted

My own father, who emigrated to the U.S. with my mother from Hong Kong in the 1960s, took me and my older brother to a handful of Yankees games back in the 1970s, with the idea of exposing us to this quintessentially American pastime. But he was a distant figure, raised in a different time and culture and, as I would later learn, scarred by his own unhappy childhood. He spent little time explaining the game or what was going on. So while attending those games—and the Yankees’ dominance in those formative years—helped engender a lifelong love of the team, I didn’t associate them at all with my father and our relationship.

At my daughter’s birth, I vowed things would be different, and not just with respect to sports.

From an early age, I made sure to encourage her and validate her feelings, and our similar personalities—perceptive and highly sensitive to others’ feelings, but also anxious at times and imaginatively inclined—connected us even further. As she grew up, we bonded over creative activities like cooking, especially baking, and making up our own lyrics to popular songs.

When Amanda was about six, her mother and I split up, with each of us taking 50-50 custody and alternating time with her every two to three days. This heightened my desire to maintain a close relationship with Amanda and make sure she felt seen and supported.

For a time, I took her with me to a basketball clinic for adults I attended every Sunday, after which we’d practice dribbling in the hallway. I still have a video of her successfully executing several crossover dribbles and then proudly proclaiming that “I’m probably the first kid that’s ever done that!” When I hesitated to agree with her, she emphatically qualified that she meant a kid “my age!”

But Amanda’s interest in playing eventually waned, and my dreams of coaching her into a future basketball star receded. I understood that such things couldn’t be forced, but I at least hoped to bond over watching basketball and rooting for the hometown Knicks.

As a self-conscious and sometimes timid child of immigrants, I recognized from an early age the power of sports fandom to connect with others. Cheering for the Knicks and Yankees established an instant bond that made me feel safer around new people, no matter their backgrounds. Not surprisingly, I later formed several close friendships in my 20s and 30s because of a shared love for the Yankees and Knicks and watching games together.

Indeed, social scientists have long known that when people experience emotions as a group, those feelings tend to be more intense and long-lasting. And few shared experiences can match the emotional ups and downs of cheering for a pro sports team, with joy and hope alternating with dread and heartbreak, sometimes within the space of seconds. Moreover, a significant amount of other research shows that fathers often connect with their children through stimulating, emotionally charged forms of play, and that these interactions can strengthen emotional regulation and trust.

I envisioned sharing wonderful moments with Amanda, cheering on the New York teams, but the Knicks performed woefully in her early years, having become a bit of a laughingstock as their management made one terrible draft pick and trade after another. At one point I resorted to taking her to a few Brooklyn Nets games, whose tickets were much more affordable, and whose team was much more talented at the time.

But the Knicks still had a stranglehold on most New Yorkers’ hearts, including mine, owing to their long and storied history, and that was made abundantly clear as the team finally started to become more competitive around the time of the pandemic. The previously meddling owner took a new hands-off approach, and a fresh front office deftly acquired several talented new players. I gradually began watching more games on television, with Amanda sometimes sitting beside me and getting to know some of the players, including those on the despised Celtics.

And then came that fateful playoff series against Boston last year.

In that second game we watched together, Amanda and I developed what became a signature routine. One of the Knicks, Karl Anthony Towns, nicknamed KAT owing to his initials, scored a particularly impressive basket, prompting me and Amanda to make cat-like clawing gestures with our hands. This led to us developing special gestures for the other players, too.

• After three-point baskets by the Knicks’ stoic leader, Jalen Brunson, we imitated his signature kissing of three fingers on each hand and raising those hands to the sky, adding a shout of his initials, “JB!”
• To fast-break baskets and hustle plays by Josh Hart, the team’s engine, we thumped a fist to our respective hearts.
• Swishes by the smooth-shooting small forward, Mikal Bridges, became a fluttering of one’s fingers over the other’s and a shout of “building Bridges!”

Coming up with one for the Knicks’ tall and athletic forward, OG Anunoby, proved a bit more challenging, but we found our solution while watching the TV broadcast for one of the home playoff games against the Celtics. After an emphatic dunk by Anunoby, the camera panned to the cheering crowd and eventually zoomed in on former Knicks great (and ex-New Jersey senator) Bill Bradley, who put his hands together in a large “O” shape above his head. Amanda and I instantly knew we had found our celebratory sign for OG.

Every time a new player joined the team, we came up with a new gesture, testing it out for effectiveness and ease of execution, and refining as needed. Rooting strongly for the same team allowed us to come up with our own language.

Lessons beyond basketball

Bonding with Amanda over the Knicks helped me see and appreciate some of her talents more clearly. I always knew she was a quick study, but her ability to grasp some of the nuances of basketball strategy surprised even me at times.

“If the other team keeps fouling Mitch Robinson”—referrring to the Knicks’ center, whose terrible free throw shooting sometimes prompted opponents to foul him intentionally—“why don’t the Knicks just take him out of the game?” Amanda once asked me. “Well, that’s exactly the calculation the Knicks have to make,” I explained to her. “Is it worth it to keep Mitch in for his incredible defense and rebounding, or do you sit him because of his offensive liabilities? The answer varies depending on the situation.” She quickly nodded in understanding.

Another time, she asked me why it was so much easier to get rebounds when a team was on defense, as opposed to offense, which I told her had to do with the positioning of players on the court. Knowing she was able to grasp these ideas made me realize I could explain some very high-level concepts to her and quickly level up her understanding of the game.

The next round of the playoffs, this time against the Indiana Pacers, who had eliminated the Knicks the previous year, presented yet another opportunity to ratchet up our shared fandom. Dave, a good friend of mine who had also successfully converted his young daughter into a Knicks fan, happened to mention that tickets for game 2 of the series that Friday night in New York were actually selling on the secondary market for a relatively reasonable price.

At the time, I didn’t have money burning a hole in my pocket, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that splurging could be worth it for the rare opportunity to see a pivotal playoff game in person with Amanda. I wasn’t sure, however, how my often introverted and anti-social daughter would feel about going to watch a raucous game with 20,000 insane sports fans. When I mentioned the possibility, she immediately said “sure!,” much to my delight.

Dave snagged four tickets at almost $700 each, the most by far I’d ever spent for a sporting event, but a good price for the circumstances and seat locations. I joked to Amanda that we’d be eating a lot of instant noodles for the next few weeks—something I’d learned from her mother that Chinese people often say following an extravagant purchase.

Arriving at Madison Square Garden, known to many as “the mecca of basketball,” the atmosphere was electric. Watching the game in person compared to on TV was like upgrading to 4K ultra high definition from standard definition, and being in the physical presence of so many other fans rooting ferociously for our team heightened the experience immeasurably, just as studies had suggested. 

As the two talented teams clashed, Amanda and I executed our special celebrations for each player with added intensity, sprinkling them in with high fives and fist bumps with Dave and his daughter—and some of our neighbors—at other big moments. It was close, but the Pacers made the big plays when it counted and won by five points. And while we were, of course, deflated by the final result, it had been exhilarating for both of us to be in the building to see our team live in action. 

The Knicks eventually wound up losing the series in heartbreaking fashion as the team’s fortitude and good fortune simply ran out. As Amanda and I watched the final seconds tick down, I tried to put things in perspective. I thought about the famous tagline from ABC Sports when I was growing up—“the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat”—and explained to her that in sports, as in life, you can’t have one without the other, to which she merely nodded her head dolefully.

Lessons like these were much of what I had always wished to receive from my own father, who unfortunately lacked the tools and experience to impart them to me. But seeing Amanda absorb and appreciate them has been incredibly healing in its own way, a confirmation that these lessons are important, and one that’s empowering to me as I’ve been able to actively create the kind of relationship I had always craved. My father passed away suddenly earlier this year, and a frequent feeling I’ve experienced as I’ve bonded with Amanda over the Knicks has been sadness—for both myself and my father—that he seldom got to experience this sense of connection and closeness with a child of his.

More than just a game

The Knicks’ offseason came with its own drama, as just a few days after the playoffs ended, the team fired its dyspeptic head coach, who had helped turn the franchise from a joke into a respectable and now even competitive team. Coming so soon after the team’s magical run, we were among many feeling shocked.

To follow that one in-person playoff game, I began to contemplate another splurge: partial season tickets for the upcoming season. One conversation with a fellow fan cemented the decision. Ed was a security guard about my age at a cafe in lower Manhattan where I often worked. After one particularly thrilling playoff victory, my Knicks t-shirt prompted a discussion between us about the game. It turned out he had gone to the game in person, having been a partial season ticket holder for several years.

On subsequent visits, I learned that Ed’s own father had fostered his fandom, taking him and his siblings to Knicks games as kids. Later, Ed and his wife continued the tradition with their kids, despite how expensive tickets had become over the years. 

I peppered him with questions about the various season ticket plans and rules, and one day, sensing I was close to pulling the trigger, he put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “You’re going to be doing a wonderful thing, Nelson,” Ed told me. “Your daughter will never forget going to these games with you.” Given my own remote relationship with my father, I didn’t need much more convincing.

I took Amanda to about half a dozen regular season games, thrilling to the rhythms of the live contests—the solemn renditions of “The Star Spangled Banner,” the arena-induced prompts to shout “Let’s go, Knicks!” and “Dee-fense!,” the roll call of celebrities on the Jumbotron, and the exuberances—sometimes profane—of the fans around us.

In between those contests, Amanda and I watched most of the other regular season games on television together in a way we never had previously. We discussed the team’s performances and prospects obsessively, and soon began sending each other social media posts and news about the Knicks. Following the Knicks had truly become our shared enterprise.

The victory that mattered most

After an overall good, but quite uneven, regular season in which the team never fully jelled for any length of time, this year’s Knicks finally unlocked their formidable talents when they were fighting for survival early in the playoffs. At one point, they became virtually unbeatable, ripping off an incredible 13 straight wins, and this past weekend, they secured their first championship in 53 long years, an unlikely development that has united our oftentimes fractious city, draping it in an ocean of orange and blue.

As dramatic and exciting as this year’s championship run has been, however, the truth is that Amanda and I already won long ago. 

Through the Knicks, I’ve been able to show her how wins can be amplified and losses mitigated by sharing them with loved ones, and she’s witnessed how wonderful it can be to be a part of a group that’s bigger than herself. I’ve shared with her important life lessons about the value of consistent dedication to an ideal, and the importance of being present in the ecstatic moment. Above all, we’ve become closer than ever, and I’m confident that our abiding love for this team will build the foundation for her to come to me whenever she experiences challenges in the future.

One of the things I’ll cherish most about our shared fandom is the gift Amanda got me for Father’s Day last year, right after the team’s surprising run. It’s a hardbound collection of key stories about the Knicks that have been published in the Daily News dating back to 1947, a gift idea she’d seen advertised on Instagram. The cover of the book notes that it was “Presented to Nelson Wang” and the front page bears a personalized inscription from Amanda: “Hope you enjoy reading this as it’s as nerdy as you!”—a playful testament to our shared passion.

What sweeter victory could there be than this?

With sleep-under-your-desk culture now ascendant, more of us feel compelled to keep pace with people who move at one speed: full throttle. It doesn’t help that we have few role models who are good at incremental retreat. “We don’t learn how to pace ourselves,” one workplace consultant told me. “There’s not a class on that.”

But as elite athletes and endurance experts know, going 110% without respite often sets up a crash that takes months or even years to overcome. It’s far healthier—and smarter in the long run—to manage your energy more deliberately, noticing when you’ve neared the edge of burnout and decelerating before you fall in.

My book The Art of Pacing explores how to pull back thoughtfully and incrementally at work, online, in community service, and more. Pacing yourself in this way doesn’t mean disengaging from what you care about—in fact, just the opposite. By setting a more sustainable rhythm, you can keep making fulfilling contributions to your community and the planet for a lifetime. Here are some everyday pacing strategies to help you do that.

1. Try narrative streamlining

To set an engaged, comfortable pace, it helps to understand just where you are and where you want to end up. By locating the narrative thread that wends through your life, you can get a clearer sense of what’s brought value to your life and what your highest goals are.

“One of the primary ways that we find meaning and make meaning in our lives is the stories that we tell, both to ourselves and to other people,” says the Boston College management professor Ben Rogers.

Rogers has designed what he calls a “restorying” exercise to facilitate this process. Through a sequence of seven questions based on the classic “hero’s journey” story structure, the exercise guides you to reflect on your most significant goals, how you came to pursue them, the obstacles you’ve faced trying to achieve them, and the gift or legacy you’ve been able to leave to your community. (You can try the exercise for free.) In Rogers’s studies, people who completed the restorying exercise saw their lives as more meaningful than they had before.

Restorying guides you to focus more intently on the goals and pursuits that feel most purposeful—and when you do that, each day’s tasks start to feel more energizing than exhausting. The restorying process can also help you pare back on commitments that don’t align with your core goals and values, freeing up more time for rest and recovery.

2. Practice modulation

This science-backed breathing practice allows you to shift your body into a more serene, focused state. Modulation—which researchers call “resonance frequency breathing”—involves breathing at a specific pace unique to you: the speed at which your heart rate accelerates most as you breathe in and slows down most as you breathe out. This pace creates pronounced “heart rate variability,” which promotes a calmer, more resilient nervous system.

To begin your own modulation practice, determine your resonance breathing pace by using an app like Elite HRV, or by breathing along with paced videos on YouTube to see which speed feels most comfortable. (Most people’s resonance pace is between four and six breaths per minute.) Once you’ve figured out your own ideal pace, breathe in time with a paced video or track for a few minutes each day, or whenever you’re feeling anxious or spun-up. After a few days, you’ll learn your resonance pace by heart and will no longer need the track to guide you.

I learned modulation from the psychiatrist and researcher Joseph Arpaia, who’s taught the practice to overwhelmed clients for years. The day we met, Arpaia clipped a heart-rate monitor on me and had me breathe at my own resonant breathing pace, 5.2 breaths per minute, for about five minutes. As I kept breathing, I saw my spiky heart-rate pattern relax into U-shaped waves, a sign that my nervous system was relaxing, as well. When I was done, Arpaia remarked that even an IV sedative would not have calmed me that quickly!

In addition to its benefits in the moment, modulation primes you to make well-thought-out decisions that facilitate smart pacing over the long term. When you’re in a calmer mental and physical state, you’re less apt to fire off a thoughtless remark that torpedoes a relationship or make an impulsive choice you regret—and you spare yourself the repair work you’d need to do in the wake of such snap decisions.

3. Manage your energy

Time management is all the rage in some influencer circles: mapping your entire day into 30-minute or one-hour blocks, for instance. But while this strategy can help you feel in control of your day or week, it’s also highly vulnerable to collapse. One unexpected event—a family crisis, a meeting that runs long—means having to re-jigger the whole intricate calendar, a process that can itself become a time drain and source of frustration.

Energy management, which many top athletes have embraced, is more flexible and accessible than time management. It involves structuring your day around your natural energetic highs and lows. When middle-distance runner Ajée Wilson is preparing for a big meet, she schedules her main workout of the day to coincide with her highest energy peak: from mid-morning until about noon. Afterward—in a variation on the siesta tradition—she takes a long afternoon nap to allow her body to recover from the intense training session.

To take advantage of your own high-energy windows, think about what time of day you tend to be more engaged and focused, whether morning, late afternoon, or night. Then plan to do your most demanding and absorbing work within that general window. (No need to map things out down to the minute; your exact starting time doesn’t matter as much as whether your deep work “pulse” coincides with your energy peak.)

When you hit a natural energy lull, as many people do after lunch, take a break or turn to less demanding work, like filling out forms or replying to messages. By working with your natural energy fluctuations instead of against them, you’ll make meaningful progress on your goals without feeling like you’re pushing a truck uphill.

4. Light “brief candles”

We often assume that “generativity”—the kind of social contribution that strengthens well-being—requires a sustained infusion of time and effort. However, certain white-hot moments of encounter, which I call “brief candles,” last only a few minutes but are profoundly generative all the same. Because their impact far outlasts the time they take, they allow you to contribute in meaningful ways without exhausting your energy reserves.

Brief candles may be dramatic encounters, like an intervention that convinces someone who is fighting mad to stand down. More often, they’re moments of total attention that light up ordinary exchanges: offering crucial words of encouragement to a mentee who’s flailing, or giving timely advice that sets someone on a new life trajectory. The effects of brief encounters like these may go on to reverberate for decades.

Some Zen Buddhists practice “mindful listening”: focusing completely on another person in their vicinity, even if just for a few moments. Lighting brief candles calls for just this kind of listening and responsiveness—and the rewards of such attentive moments compound over time, for receivers as well as for those passing the flame.

When you light a brief candle, pause to reflect on the experience. How does it feel to re-awaken something in someone else that they may have forgotten was there, or to avert a disaster that would otherwise have occurred? By deliberately “taking in the good,” as psychologist Rick Hanson calls it, you can prime yourself to create more such moments on a regular basis.

5. Ask yourself, “What’s the wise choice here?”

When I began pacing myself more deliberately, I considered what thoughtful pacing would look like over various time frames—a day, a month, or a year. I pictured myself devising sophisticated pacing plans like those athletes make to map out their training seasons.

But I’ve learned that when I feel overwhelmed in a daily, ordinary sense, my long-term pacing plans recede into the background. Instead of projecting too far into the future, I ask myself a simple question: “What’s the wise choice here?”

This is a strategy the coach and sports psychologist Amy Baltzell taught me. It’s perfect for overloaded moments because it guides you to focus on two things: what you realistically need in a given moment, and how best to address that need. After an unexpected crisis, do you need a full day off, or do you need to consult with your boss before planning your next move? Identifying the wise choice and carrying it out has a way of leading you to the next wise choice, and the next, which becomes its own form of responsive pacing.

As a researcher who studies nonresident fathers, as we call fathers who don’t currently live with their minor children, I’ve seen firsthand the value of their engagement in children’s lives and the importance they place on their parental role. A few years ago, as part of a large federally funded project with nonresident fathers enrolled in fatherhood programs, I learned about the struggles these men experienced in trying to stay connected or reconnect with their children—and to be the fathers they wanted to be.

One dad, covered in tattoos from head to toe, wanted to reconnect with his children, but didn’t know how or where to start. When he learned that his eight-year-old daughter was being bullied and didn’t want to go to school, something ignited in him. He vowed to take her to school and pick her up every day. He wanted other kids to see that she had a father who loved and protected her, so no one would “mess with her.” He was still not able to pay all the child support that he owed, but he could “be there” for his child.

Fathers don’t live with their children for a variety of reasons: parental separation, incarceration, and lost custody. Yet research finds that engaged, nonresident dads play a vital role in the emotional and psychological development of their kids, and that they are connected in ways that may be invisible to even their families and other adults who play a supportive role in the world of the child. While Black and Hispanic dads are more likely to be nonresident, they are also more likely to see their children than nonresident white dads. The more that everyone can recognize the importance of non-resident dads and the role that they play, the more their engagement can be supported, for the benefit of the child.

Who are nonresident fathers?

Nonresident fathers are more likely to be young, be Black or Hispanic, lack a college education, and be unable to meet child support obligations on top of their basic living expenses, research finds.

Out of 76.7 million U.S. parents in 2021, more than 9.7 million did not live with their children, 75% of whom were fathers, according to the Congressional Research Service. The majority (81%) of nonresident fathers are men of color, and the majority (72%) have at most a high school diploma or GED. Just over two-thirds are younger than 34 years old. That is, most nonresident fathers are economically disadvantaged.

One simulation using modern child support guidelines found that most nonresident fathers would be unable to meet their taxes and basic expenses for food, clothing, housing, and transportation if they paid their formal child support obligations in full. Despite these difficult circumstances, Black and Hispanic nonresident fathers are more likely to see their children than white nonresident fathers, suggesting that residency may not be a requirement for paternal involvement for ethnic minority men. However, the limited human capital of most nonresident fathers, and the fact that they may be supporting several children from different households, make it challenging for these men to invest money and time equally for all their children.

What leads to more engaged fathers?

The fact that nonresident fathers do not live with their children poses obvious obstacles for staying engaged in their lives. Frequent and meaningful contact with children gives fathers the opportunity to engage as teachers, advisors, playmates, and disciplinarians. Nonresident fathers often pack as much activity as possible into the limited time available during visits.

In our own research, we have found large variability in both the quantity and quality of father engagement among nonresident fathers. Nonresident fathers’ engagement in their children’s lives depends on multiple factors that often don’t align: intentionality of birth, prenatal involvement, race and ethnicity, the quality of parental relationships, whether mothers repartner, and payment of child support.

Whether the child was planned strongly relates to fathers’ engagement with their children. Fathers’ desire to father a child influences their commitment to care for and stay involved in the baby’s life. Intentionality, however, is not the only factor that matters. The quality of the couple relationship can be key. A study of Mexican American infants and their parents revealed that mothers’ desire to have a baby, rather than fathers’ desire, was related to greater father engagement (e.g., caregiving). However, when couples disagreed about wanting the baby, fathers were more involved when they were also happy with their partners.

There is also some evidence that fathers are more likely to leave their families when they are less involved during the pregnancy period, referred to as prenatal involvement. The prenatal period is an important context for men as it is the time when they begin to think of themselves as fathers and make plans for their future child. We conducted a study and found that low-income fathers who were engaged in prenatal activities (e.g., attended prenatal classes, saw a sonogram of the growing fetus) were more likely to be involved in their child’s life at age five because they had moved into a stronger relationship with their partners, such as moving from cohabiting to married. 

Research on frequency of contact indicates that certain demographic and psychological characteristics either facilitate or hinder contact, including ethnicity or race. A study with a nationally representative sample of babies and their parents found that Black toddlers generally have more frequent contact with their nonresident fathers than white children.

In cases where everyone is on the same page, finding opportunities to spend time with children can be relatively easy. In other situations, contentious relationships among noncustodial parents and others make it difficult. Nonresident fathers who remain in romantic relationships with the mothers of their children are more likely to be involved than other nonresident fathers. Having a positive relationship with the child’s mother—romantic or not—is an important predictor of how much time nonresident fathers are allowed to be engaged with their children.

Positive relationships often underlie some form of economic support. The ability to pay child support is an important source of conflict between parents that can diminish father–child contact. Fathers with child support arrears are less likely than those without arrears to have contact with their children or to be otherwise involved in their children’s lives. Of course, causality can be the other way around. Poorer-quality relationships with mothers explain much of the association between high arrears and lower father–child contact, and both poorer relationships and poorer paternal mental health account for much of the association between high arrears and low levels of informal support provided by nonresident fathers.

Lastly, mothers’ repartnering is a strong indicator of involvement. Recent studies focusing primarily on never-married nonresident fathers show that children are less likely to have contact with their nonresident fathers when their mothers have repartnered. However, the role that repartnering plays appears to be conditioned by fathers’ ethnicity. Latino mothers report very few changes in family structure (repartnering) compared to Black mothers.

Nonresident fathers’ involvement helps children’s development

Fathers who do not live with their children have driven much of the public policy on families because their children are more likely to live in poverty. The policy focus is on their financial contribution. However, nonresident fathers’ love and emotional support of their children is just as important as their economic support. In some states, nonresident fathers have visitation rights, but these depend on multiple factors, so it’s not always granted. In general, we define visitation and engagement as what fathers and children do when they have contact, and responsibility as the degree to which fathers take responsibility for meeting children’s basic needs.

Although research on how nonresident fathers matter to their children’s well-being is comparatively limited relative to the research on resident fathers, it has provided strong rationale and empirical evidence that all fathers, including nonresident, play a significant and long-lasting role in their children’s development. One central point: It is entirely possible to be engaged and deeply involved with children who do not live with you. Physical residence is not a necessary condition for engagement. Examining how much time, the quality of the time spent with children, and the myriad ways to be engaged helps researchers understand how fathers make a difference in their children’s lives.

Spending time with children in fun activities, such as social play, doing errands, and shopping, helps fathers get to know children and develop a genuine connection with them. These activities support children’s cognitive development, as well as their social skills, executive function, and self-regulation. Exposing children to manageable stress—such as climbing a tall ladder or joining a new group of kids to play—promotes trust and gets children out of their comfort zone. Fathers are key in showing compassion, conflict resolution skills, and positive ways to deal with disappointment.

Studies involving observations of nonresident father–child interactions offer the most compelling evidence that the way nonresident fathers interact with their children promotes children’s well-being, in the quality, not just the frequency, of contact. In a study using families enrolled in Head Start, children whose fathers showed high levels of participation through activities such as reading demonstrated greater increases in mathematics readiness than children in the control group.

There is some empirical evidence that showing love and affection to children connects to better outcomes. In a study of Early Head Start children, Sheila Anderson and her colleagues found that the quality of observed father–child interactions (especially fathers’ encouragement and teaching behaviors) was positively associated with children’s later language skills. Fathers’ affection, responsiveness, encouragement, and teaching during father–infant interactions were positively connected with children’s behavioral skills later. Each fathering behavior during infancy was positively associated with emotional regulation among four year old children. Finally, teaching during father interactions with three year old children was associated with stronger emotional regulation among four-year-old children.

An important dimension of fathering is that fathers, more than mothers, encourage their children to take risks during play, especially during rough-and-tumble play. The extent of this type of play has been measured by the degree to which father behavior, child behavior, and their dyadic interactions display warmth, control, sensitivity, winning and losing, physical engagement, and playfulness. One study selected 25 Early Head Start father–child dyads, both resident and nonresident, that frequently engaged in rough-and-tumble play and examined associations between the quality of interactions at two and three years and later child outcomes. It is notable that neither measure was significantly correlated with demographic characteristics, such as father’s education and residence, and, after controlling for the mother’s supportiveness and intrusiveness, both measures showed small (negative) correlations with prekindergarten aggression.

Showing warmth, affection, and joy are important ways to bond with children and make them feel cared for and loved. I’m reminded of a young white father who said that he had no problem hugging and kissing his daughter, but he expressed less physical warmth with his son. He thought his interactions with his son were warm, by saying, “Hey bud, how’s it going? Give me five!” It never occurred to him that his son also wanted to be hugged and kissed until the leader of a focus group pointed out that all children—boys and girls—need to feel loved and protected. He said when he next greeted his son with a hug and a kiss on his head, the little boy cried inconsolably and hugged him tightly. This was a powerful moment for him, when he realized that he did not have a memory of his own dad showing affection to him.

In summary, the evidence we have on how nonresident fathers show up for their children reframes the perception of these men from “deficient fathers” to “constrained but motivated caregivers.” Most barriers to nonresident father involvement are not about lack of care or love for their children—they’re about access, relationships, resources, and recognition.

The evidence challenges the stereotype of the “absent” nonresident father and instead points to a more complicated reality: Many fathers remain committed to their children but face relational, structural, and economic barriers to staying engaged. Supporting their participation requires coordinated efforts across the multiple systems surrounding the child.

• Mothers and co-parents can facilitate consistent, low-conflict communication and recognize caregiving beyond financial support.
• Schools and educators can intentionally include nonresident fathers in outreach and everyday learning opportunities.
• Health care providers can engage fathers early, particularly during the prenatal period when parental identities take shape.
• At a structural level, policies that align child support obligations with fathers’ actual economic circumstances, expand access to employment and reentry programs, and protect visitation rights can reduce the tradeoffs that often push fathers out of their children’s lives.

Together, these efforts shift the focus from judging fathers’ circumstances to supporting their capacity to remain present in their children’s lives in meaningful ways. This positive and sustained engagement is beneficial for fathers but especially for children, who just want their dads to love and care for them—even if they do not live with them.

I woke up two hours later to my baby crying again. This time, he was kicking his feet as if trying to get them through his footie pajamas. I narrowed my eyebrows, got scissors, and carefully cut them off. And like magic, Zade fell back into a peaceful sleep. Today, Zade is 34 years old.

Our middle child, Dury, is now 30. When he was five, we took him and his brother to Walt Disney World. Refusing to walk when tired, I carried him for hours each day. He was a plump little guy, and I came back with my arms feeling detached from my body.

And my little “Nutmeg,” Demi, now 26, loved this bedtime ritual: I would draw gentle circles on her forehead with my thumb, and she would say while fading to sleep, “How does that work?”

What those stories have in common is how my brain was reshaped after becoming a father.

According to a 2022 article in Scientific American, fatherhood triggers significant structural and functional “rewiring” in the male brain, similar to mothers, to support caregiving and attachment. New fathers show changes in gray matter in regions controlling motivation, empathy, and emotion regulation, especially when they are actively involved in child care.

• With Zade crying all night because his feet felt trapped, my motivation heightened to solve the problem and cut off his pajama footies.
• With Dury refusing to walk when he was tired at Walt Disney World, my elevated empathy made carrying his 40-pound body manageable.
• With Demi fading to sleep as I gently rubbed her forehead, my emotional regulation helped me establish a loving bedtime ritual.

I have always wondered about this overwhelming love I have for my children.

From elementary to high school, they would come home with friends, and I would grab them by the cheeks and cover them with kisses for what seemed like eternity.

Their friends would look wide-eyed and ask, “What’s your dad doing?”

And my children would nonchalantly say while waiting for it to end, “He’ll be done in a minute.”

According to another 2022 study in Developmental Psychobiology, the arrival of my children increased levels of oxytocin in my brain, the “love hormone,” suggesting a neuroendocrine change associated with becoming a parent.

In humans, oxytocin is a hormone associated with social bonding and attachment. It doesn’t cause love, but its increase across the transition to fatherhood aligns with research showing changes in neural and hormonal systems that support bonding, caregiving, and emotional attunement.

Becoming a father to my three brilliant and beautiful children has taught me the true meaning of unconditional love—a love unlike anything else, rooted in that place reserved for sacred, sacrificial things. A love so vivid it resembles a river with fierce rapids, its waters brushing the banks, the trees casting dancing shadows in the breeze.

Am I a better human being since I became a father? I believe I am. My three young people matter to me more than life itself. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for them, and the beautiful thing is that they know it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Becoming a father does not turn me, or any man, into a perfect emotional navigator overnight. But it does explain why late-night lullabies and repeated soothing feel less like chores and more like instinct—our brains learning and adapting quietly.

To me at least, here is what that brain rewiring looks like. (Important to note here that while I mainly list the positive aspects of my becoming a father, I had my difficulties like everyone else.)

Empathy. Empathy and patience were never among my virtues, but I had to learn them when I became a father. The many sleepless nights are a good example. My three kids are four years apart, which means 12 continuous years without decent sleep. It was worth it. Science helps explain this change. Involved fathers experience a drop in testosterone, which is associated with shifts in caregiving patience and sensitivity. These hormonal changes align with broader shifts in brain systems involved in deeply caring about the state and feelings of others.

Tradition. When I was little, I used to hide from my strict mother in my father’s Abbaye (Middle Eastern camel-hair house robe). My children hid in mine when they were young. Another ritual was our pretend books, made-up stories while holding my palm up as the book. And every time I woke them up, I would ask them, “Did you go to the moon?” Most of the time, they would say no. But sometimes they would grin and say, “Yeah.” I trust they will pass similarly sweet traditions on to their own kids. There is a biological component here. Research finds that fatherhood changes levels of hormones such as testosterone and oxytocin and reshapes brain networks related to functions including empathy and emotion regulation, laying the conditions for bonding and the formation of comforting rituals.

Emotional intelligence. Research often finds that, on average, women show higher attunement to emotional cues, shaped by both biology and social experience. This sensitivity can make the emotional landscape of relationships easier to interpret, especially in moments of tension or change. Fatherhood helps here. Becoming a father nudges a man’s brain toward real-time emotional calculation. Studies of new dads show changes in brain regions associated with perceiving another person’s emotional state and responding appropriately. This doesn’t make us experts, but it boosts our capacity to tune in instead of tuning out.

Kindness. Fatherhood has taught me how to be firm without ever letting go of love. When my children broke a rule, reasonable discipline was part of the job, but I learned early to keep it kind. As they got older, it became less about correction and more about conversation, heart-to-heart, eyes locked, no distractions. Over time, I came to understand something science supports: Fatherhood is associated with changes in brain regions involved in attention and caregiving. Research suggests that these shifts, especially in fathers who are more engaged in hands-on care, may help them better attune to their infants’ cues. The result is a greater ability to balance structure with connection in responding to children.

Friendship. As my kids grew older, something shifted between us. We became not only father and children, but something closer and more reciprocal. I wasn’t the most popular father by any means, but many of my kids’ friends seemed to gravitate toward our home. They would linger there, talk, and laugh; over time it turned into a kind of open-door life where we enjoyed spending time together, even through the teenage years. Life feels at its sweetest when your teenage children start asking you deep questions, not out of obligation, but out of needing guidance. And that has continued as they became adults. Scientifically, these relational changes reflect how human bonds evolve over time. We are not built solely for fixed, limited roles, but for enduring attachments that shift as life stages change. Research on parent–adult child relationships suggests that as children mature, bonds often become more reciprocal, marked by greater emotional mutuality.

Perspective. When teenagers, they will do things that make you pause in disbelief, like getting a tattoo from a friend who did it with an electric toothbrush. Or staying out far past curfew and ending up in the emergency room after a night that went too far. Those happened to me. Eventually, my children became productive and stable adults, and somewhere along the way, I learned to lighten up. I once wore those shoes, too. What science now suggests is that caregiving is associated with changes in brain systems involved in social responsiveness. These shifts, shaped by experience and hands-on involvement, can increase a father’s sensitivity to social and emotional cues over time. In that sense, the brain shaped through fatherhood learns to notice both the subtle signals and the broader emotional landscape in which they occur.

And now, the one that matters the most . . .

Love. Show love. Communicate love. Offer love. In the unconditional and abundant offering of loving care, something quietly accumulates. The Center on the Developing Child’s “serve and return” framework describes how responsive back-and-forth interactions between father and child help build the developing brain. Each moment of attunement and each response to a child’s signal strengthens neural systems involved in emotional regulation, attention, and connection.

For fathers, this is not a one-way process. These repeated acts of caregiving also shape the caregiver. Over time, consistent engagement with a child’s emotional world is associated with changes in the brain systems involved in emotional attunement, social cognition, and emotion regulation. The father learns to read cues more finely, respond more steadily, and remain present.

When love flows with no limits, then practiced repeatedly, it becomes embedded in the neural patterns through which both child and father learn attachment itself.

It lingers, this attachment, in the small, ordinary moments long after they stop needing you in the same way. In the silence between conversations. In the way they still look back when they leave the room. In the quiet knowledge that what you built together does not disappear; it settles into a new form, and fatherhood reveals itself as the gift it was always meant to be. And if you are lucky, you realize it was never just something you were teaching them. It was something they were teaching you, too.

When you look closely at the life experience and biology braided together, you begin to see a quiet truth: Fatherhood is not only lived in moments; it is etched into the architecture of love.

Happy Father’s Day, and don’t forget to take the footies off their pajamas so they can fly, even if it means watching them leave the ground without you.

One group drops seafaring formalities and coalesces around collective survival. They tend to each other, work together, and split what they have. Each person’s subsistence is tied to the other’s.

The other crew maintain their maritime hierarchy, compete for power and status, hoard resources—and ultimately turn on each other.

Everyone from the first crew survives. Most from the second group die from various ailments and unfortunate incidents, including cannibalism. 

That’s a scenario based on real historical examples that is sketched by John Cacioppo, Harry Reis, and Alex Zautra in their 2011 paper entitled “Social Resilience.” In this article, the authors explain their approach to developing a training program for U.S. Army personnel meant to help them function better in teams.

The premise? Human survival depends on being able to turn toward each other under difficult circumstances and join forces to identify, avoid, or address challenges and catastrophes. Our ability to coordinate effort in response to shared threats is an evolutionary mandate for ultrasocial creatures like humans. Born helpless and lacking physically dominant features like giant apex predator teeth, the authors write, “Our remarkable accomplishments as a species are attributable to our collective action, not our individual might.”

Stephanie Brown of the Stony Brook Neuroscience Institute attributes this collaborative sensibility to “fitness interdependence”: my survival depends on yours, theirs, and, to some degree, ultimately, everyone’s. Because the harm from some threats to survival and reproduction is distributed to everyone (like crop dusting to cull agricultural pests), our human nervous system is sensitive to others’ vulnerability, and so driven to protect the group from shared threat.

The biological and psychological processes underlying these features include being able to synchronize our bodies and behaviors (e.g., empathy), feeling innately compelled to share joy and relieve each other’s pain (e.g., social capitalizing, compassion), and celebrating heroic virtues like helping one another and working to make the world a better place. Serving each other’s welfare through caregiving, protection from harm, and relief of suffering, it turns out, is fundamentally rewarding and healthy. Many studies have reported activation in the brain’s reward pathways that signal pleasure after behaving generously—the “warm glow.” People who spend more hours volunteering experience less disease and live longer, for example. Like any other ability, prosocial and altruistic tendencies are also shaped over the course of life by culture and context, both of which can increase or suppress how prominently they show up within any given person, society, or period of time.

According to Cacioppo, Reis, and Zautra, each person attending to their own needs and being able to cope with and protect themself does not ensure group success, and can actually lessen the probability of individual success over the long run. It’s wrong to assume that each individual’s resilience will naturally ladder up to group-wide resilience.

Instead, they call for social resilience, which means acknowledging and documenting stress and harm coming from higher-order, even existential threats, beyond the sum of how each person might feel about their own lives. Further, it means investigating and tracking sources and contributing factors that are often systemic (policy, neighborhood design), invisible (culture, historical precedence), or vast (climate, natural disasters). Once we understand causes, we can work together to help the group recover and ensure future well-being. 

Other scholars have also used the term social resilience since this 2011 paper, though disciplines tend not to define it in the same way.

In public health, for example, social resilience often refers to aspects of a person’s environment and resources like whom they live with, what their level of income is, or whether they have access to health care and education. There are well-established links between these factors and an individual’s resilience—that is, their capacity to recover from or learn and grow from stress and adversity in healthy ways. Many people have dedicated their lives to improving equitable access to these resources for the betterment of humanity.

Articles also use the terms “community resilience”—measured by survey questions like “People in my community help each other during crises”—and “national resilience,” which refers to a group’s ability to handle crises. A 2013 paper by Markus Keck and Patrick Sakdapolrak offers this high-level definition: “Social resilience is the ability of social entities, that is, individuals, organizations or communities, to resist, adapt to, and recover quickly from disasters.”

Studies suggest that social resilience is not unique to humans. The prosocial underpinnings of social resilience were alluded to by none other than Charles Darwin, who concluded that “those communities [of animals and other creatures], which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”

For example, insects are the most populous species on earth, and the most populous insects are ants. Ants rapidly adjust and adapt to demands and threats to the colony in seamlessly coordinated ways: They’ll make a raft from their bodies for all to survive a flood. While humans, too, can detect, monitor, and band together to fix the existential crises we face, that’s a path we need to consciously choose and pursue.

Evolutionary psychologist David Sloan-Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University and founder and president of ProSocial World, thinks so, too. His work highlights the importance of interpersonal trust, a key facet of social resilience, for working together toward shared goals. Further, he describes how evolution has favored biological features that enable group-wide, collaborative, even amicable adaptation to environmental challenges:

Only when we could trust our social partners to work toward shared goals could we rely upon them to share meaningful information. Our ability to function as team players is reflected in anatomical features such as the whites of the human eye, which turn it into an organ of communication, and in basic cognitive skills such as the ability to point things out to others and to laugh in a group context, in addition to more advanced cognitive and cultural abilities.

More attention has been paid to investigating and strengthening resilience for individuals than for organizations or communities. Of course, individual resilience matters, and is certainly worth cultivating. For people who are more resilient, symptoms of stress don’t last as long, and upsetting personal experiences morph into fodder for meaningful learning and growth.

There are biological (e.g., greater heart rate variability), life context (e.g., safer neighborhoods), and behavioral (e.g., self-compassion, optimism) factors that influence a person’s individual resilience, and social life also plays a formative role. For example, people with loving, supportive caregivers early in life tend to get through hardship more easily, and people who have close relationships with friends and family tend to handle losses and setbacks more gracefully.

With some know-how and regular practice, most people can improve their own resilience. We can learn strategies for restoring calm and coping with difficulty, engage with uplifting activities, or adopt outlooks like gratefulness or optimism that buffer against despair. We can enrich and strengthen our interpersonal ties by offering and asking for compassion, and being more curious and humble.

But some sources of stress—like widespread ideological polarization, rampant social inequality, global pandemics, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and warfare—aren’t just about you or me. They’re inescapably about all of us. While it can be convenient or momentarily comforting to avoid or dismiss, harm to people in one place imposes stress on everyone, like stories of violent crime spreading through social media.

Resilience to these broader shared threats requires more than what it takes to be individually resilient one person at a time. It requires us to clearly see the hazy collective weight that we all, regardless of privilege or power and to different degrees in any given moment, bear from shared sources of harm. It involves channeling our pooled stress toward teaming up—coming together to confront, document, address, and solution-find for the benefit of us all. It also involves documenting and accounting for the true costs of ignoring or escalating the sources to shared harm, such as extractive or exploitative practices or profiteering at the expense of collective well-being.

But how do we humans cultivate social resilience? In their paper, Cacioppo, Reis, and Zautra offer a list of nine personal resources for social resilience that can be strengthened with practice. I think their suggestions can be distilled into three actionable steps each person can take to contribute to social resilience.

1. Tune into, trust, and connect with people

Exercise your empathy muscles by paying more attention to other people’s expressions, noticing how this feels in your own body, and trying to understand what the others are feeling and why. Try to assume goodwill and look for common ground and shared humanity with others. You might even make a list of qualities, characteristics, or experiences you share with others, or reflect on times when you supported someone, or someone supported you. Marvel at all the ways that people seamlessly coordinate effort to make everyday life both interesting and full of opportunity. Make time for open-minded and honest conversations about meaningful issues, topics, and life experiences with people. Join group or community activities centered around creative expression, play, or activism that addresses unmet needs.

2. See the struggle, and do the best you can to help

When you encounter harm, try to discover ways that it may also harm you. Notice how that feels deep down. Ask how it reduces prosperity and the common good (such as loss of potential and progress, or costliness of repair). While honoring the self-protective urge to avoid or escape, aim instead to direct your inner tension toward approaching and doing whatever you can to remedy the situation. Try to offer help, even if it feels inconvenient, costly, untimely, or unpromising. Be more curious and humble about the context of harm and how you can be most helpful. Ask yourself: “Can I leave this shared circumstance, system, or space better than I found it?” Let the meaningful belonging gained from actively contributing to your community strengthen your heroic impulse to fix the world’s vexing challenges together with other people.

3. Constructively problem-solve and reconcile

Hone your cooperative mentality. In whatever settings you find yourself, try to work together with people to learn what each other’s pain points and threats are, and openly discuss where they might be coming from. Inquire and analyze how existing structures, policies, systems, and settings affect day-to-day experiences among the people you encounter, and crowdsource ideas for improvement. Exercise skills like labeling feelings clearly and authentically, and offering an effective apology to learn, grow, and deepen interpersonal connections even after disagreement or conflict. Ask for help, knowing that most people feel uplifted and honored by the opportunity to do something that matters. Uplift group morale and creativity by encouraging shared positive emotional experiences like moral elevation and amusement, and celebrating team successes. Leverage the varied perspectives and strengths from a diverse group to discover truly collaborative, innovative, and effective-long term solutions to shared challenges.

There are also contextual opportunities for scaffolding social resilience within a neighborhood or city, like designing free and inclusive spaces for people to gather in recreational, celebratory, and awe-inspiring ways (e.g., parks, community events). Safe, inviting opportunities for storytelling and public dialogue around key issues and concerns also improve social resilience. Increasing social resilience, in turn, can shape civic institutions in ways that benefit everyone. According to the “Well-being and State Effectiveness” chapter of the 2023 World Happiness Report, countries that routinely channel resources toward common interests (e.g., improving social well-being) score significantly higher on a composite measure of national prosperity that includes per capital income, collective capacity, and more peaceableness.

Social resilience, like individual resilience, takes practice. As a bipedal species, we are equipped with the innate urges to roll, scoot, crawl, then walk, but if we want to walk bravely into older adulthood, we cannot just passively expect it. We cannot just sit comfortably all day. Regular physical activity is crucial to lifelong health and longevity. The same goes for social resilience: Getting better at seeing the shared burden that broader, more pervasive problems impose and prioritizing coming together to support one another and find solutions take regular practice, which may not always feel easy or convenient.

Rejuvenating and investing in social resilience means explicitly studying and documenting the shared harm of widespread, existential threats and joining forces to solve them—to preempt avoidable destruction, and to help each other recover from painful disasters. Would systematically measuring, educating, and optimizing for social resilience promise a better, smarter, less wasteful future? Leaning into how we naturally synchronize emotionally, perceptually, and behaviorally—and using our inborn “forest in the trees” capacity to see the world through a more global, long-term, course-of-human-survival lens—social resilience could amplify our potential to mobilize together to address threats and find fixes that can, while minimizing harm, protect and uplift us all.

Buddy the dog and Snuggles the bunny are two of the five resilience habit animals that children at a Milwaukee school are learning to help themselves thrive. Buddy reminds kids they are not alone, and Snuggles represents kindness.

A violence prevention grant brought me into kindergarten through third-grade classrooms in early 2025 to help children use mindfulness and self-compassion practices to self-regulate, and we just wrapped up our time together. In my work as a teacher, I found myself learning just as much from them as they did from me about how these skills take root.

If you are a parent, teacher, or clinician, you might wonder how to translate abstract concepts like mindfulness and self-compassion into something a seven year old can actually use. Over a decade of teaching these skills in classrooms and with families, I’ve found that playful animal characters, when practiced in relationship, can become a voice children can carry inside to help them face hard moments with kindness.

Identifying your animal character

When I teach a lesson, I observe what causes children to lean in, and what makes them push back or disengage. One major thing I’ve observed is that kids love learning from animal characters and other kids. A group of children helped me create the Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Workbook for Kids, which features animal characters and real kids sharing their experiences throughout the two-volume series. Children also taught me that they enjoy activities that are playful and authentic.

This has been true across different contexts, including the Milwaukee school I’m working in, where 97% of students live in poverty and 1 in 5 have a special education plan. In my first year in the school, there was a large second-grade classroom that had a lot of self-regulation challenges and diverse reading abilities. Nonetheless, when I shared images from the workbook of animals or real kids talking about their feelings, students’ hands would soar in the air to read their quotes and share their own experiences on the interactive whiteboard.

We started our lessons each school year with an animal quiz. Our first year, kids did the Feelings Habit Animal quiz to uncover their habits around feelings. During our lesson time together, kids learn about five different patterns: Bear explodes with feelings, Beaver obsesses about feelings, Chameleon hides feelings, Deer feels ashamed of feelings, and Flame the dragon has a mix of these habits. The feelings habit animals offer children the opportunity to observe their patterns around feelings without judgment.

Sometimes at the beginning of a lesson, we play games of charades to playfully act out the animal habits. Kids feel affection toward the feelings animals, and they also know that each animal represents feelings habits of themselves and their classmates. Observing their own behaviors through an animal lens provides cognitive distance that can pave the way for wiser choices over time.

Once children have a way to notice what they are experiencing, the next step is learning how to respond. Our second year, students took the Resilience Habit Animal quiz to identify the animal habits that felt helpful when they struggle. Kristin Neff describes self-compassion as having three core components: mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. In my work with kids, these components come to life through three resilience habit animals: Spots the giraffe helps kids notice their feelings, body sensations, and five senses; Buddy the dog reminds kids they are not alone; and Snuggles the bunny represents kindness.

Play is the language of children, and this is especially true for self-compassion. While kids are generally uninterested in practicing self-compassion when it’s called self-compassion, they are often eager to try the “Spots habit” or the “Buddy habit.” Not only are kids more engaged in the practices, but some kids report imagining the animals’ voices in their minds when they are struggling. This is true both in the classrooms I teach in as well as in research on the Mindfulness and Self-Compassion for Children and Caregivers program, which I developed as an adaptation of Neff and Christopher Germer’s Mindful Self-Compassion program.

Each year, I saw students eagerly engage with the quiz to find out which animals they had an affinity toward. Once they did, they felt more curious about the animals’ habits, and especially connected to “their” animals. While I didn’t know it at the time, there’s research that suggests that using animals to teach children can help them acquire social-emotional skills at an early age.

Animal stories, role plays, and songs

Modeling and practice between sessions are essential for building these habits, but without time for educator training, I had to get creative about helping kids practice more during our time together. I partnered with Brienne Barrows-Gallardo, a gifted early education teacher who works with preschoolers with autism, to help me develop engaging materials kids could use to practice.

We wrote a story for each resilience habit animal so kids could see the helpful habits in action. Then my own children helped me create story videos and songs, which aided kids in internalizing the resilience animals’ voices. I also made role-play kits with different phrases each animal could say.

For example, in one story, Flame the dragon was feeling upset, and Buddy reminded her that everyone feels upset sometimes. Because Flame can have multiple feelings habits, kids were able to choose how she responded using the choices in the role-play kit.

The children also had a picture of Buddy the dog to decorate or color, along with phrases that Buddy might say to soothe them.

As kids colored, the classroom teacher and I moved about the room engaging in role plays with them. One of my favorite moments was hearing the teacher pretend to be Flame with big Bear feelings, and a kindergartner responded, “Ms. B., it’s OK to feel like this. Everyone gets upset sometimes.”

Another week, after talking about how Bear has big feelings, the kids and I did a group role play on the carpet helping Bear with the Snuggles habit. Then the kids had the opportunity to decorate Snuggles the bunny while we rotated around to practice. A child who often has big feelings didn’t like how she was coloring her page, so she ripped her paper in half and threw it on the floor. I walked over to her desk, and acknowledged that she was having big feelings. She looked up at me, and her eyes flashed with recognition. She was having the Bear habit! Instead of spiraling, as she often does, she picked up her paper, and we taped it back together. This is the power of awareness.

The feelings habit animals not only help kids with awareness (the Spots habit), they also help kids to feel less alone with big feelings. Kids know that other kids share their feelings habits, and, in this way, common humanity (the Buddy habit) is linked with the animal.

Barrows-Gallardo also created social stories that could be used with the children with autism in her classroom. Research suggests that using animal characters can help children on the autism spectrum learn social-emotional skills. In the classrooms, I noticed that a number of neurodivergent children were highly engaged in learning about the resilience and feelings habit animals. One child astutely observed that we didn’t need to practice the feelings animal habits because they are already “built in.”

Children also loved embodying the action-oriented resilience animals, like Super Snuggles and Doodles the dolphin. Doodles encourages kids to take helpful actions like moving their body and trying their best.

When they step into these animal roles, children aren’t just learning the habits; they are becoming them. Research has found a similar effect: When children imagine themselves as strong or capable characters like Batman, they are more likely to persist through challenges.

One parent whose son did the Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Workbook for Kids told me that her son, who also had the Bear habit, had to do vision therapy. He had a little stuffed bear that represented the bear from the workbook that had big feelings. When he felt frustrated with his vision therapy, he would look at his bear, and it would comfort him. For him, seeing his bear feelings animal helped him remember “I am not alone” and “I can handle this.”

The role of the caregiver

As beautiful as it is to see children practicing self-compassion with the animal characters, I know it’s not enough for the practice to fully take root. The work we started through the violence prevention grant will only go deeper if the teachers understand, practice, and reinforce self-compassion next school year. The principal of the school and I are trying to arrange inservices for the teachers next year to help them grow their own self-compassion practice and support students with continued practice. This is because my relational four-step framework for helping kids grow self-compassion begins with the caregiver.

As parents, teachers, and caregivers, the best place to begin is with our own mindfulness and self-compassion practice. We can do this alongside a child, or on our own. When we model being mindful of struggles, it helps kids remember that everyone struggles sometimes. And when we model self-kindness, it helps kids learn to do the same. Children learn from watching us say, “I feel upset, and I know that everyone gets upset sometimes. I’m going to be OK.”

Kids also internalize how caregivers speak to them. We want to be the voices of Buddy and Snuggles, reminding kids, “You’re not alone. I care about you.” There are many ways to help kids grow self-compassion in daily life, and our presence is just as important as our words.

Self-compassion takes root through supportive relationships and playful animals that bring it to life. From Sesame Street to Daniel Tiger to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, children have always learned emotional skills through the characters they love. Over time, these characters can become something even more powerful: a compassionate inner voice that children carry with them for life.

Unsurprisingly, they were initially nervous to meet unfamiliar teens from places like Kansas and Louisiana—people they viewed as living lives far different from their West Coast upbringing. But, in just a few days, when it was time to return home, she saw these eighth graders were nearly teary-eyed at having to say goodbye to their newfound friends.

Far too many of the stories about teens in the media suggest they are all emotionally fragile and ill-equipped for in-real-life interactions because they’re anxious and constantly doom-scrolling on their phones.

Our recent “Bridging Differences for Teens and Parents” video series shares stories similar to this teacher’s. Last summer, Anaconda Street Productions brought together five families—parents and their teens—from a range of backgrounds to connect across their differences. They were guided by Dhaarmika Coelho, founder of Camp Kindness Counts, a nonprofit organization that empowers young people, adults, and families to embrace their authentic selves, encourages them to make a positive impact on their communities, and inspires them to become courageous, compassionate global citizens.

While teens today are growing up in the midst of an organized movement to activate an “Us vs. Them” mindset, decades of research points to an alternative where teens can bridge differences with people across culture, ethnicity, race, faith, or political orientation.

“Bridging differences involves seeing the humanity of people from different groups and seeking to understand their perspectives—it’s in opposition to dehumanization,” explains Juliana Tafur, Greater Good Science Center Bridging Difference program director. Our “Bridging Differences for Teens and Parents” video series highlights five ways for parents and teens to build skills to be open to and connect across differences.

In the series, we meet Lee and his 15-year-old son Noah. They’ve had their share of communication challenges despite having a loving relationship. “I’ll stop talking and I’ll just feel like he’s not really listening and he doesn’t want to actually talk about it,” explains Noah about how his conversations with his dad sometimes go. In the video, Lee and Noah learn a new way to have a conversation about an ordinary, everyday topic.

In the next video, 15-year-old Tymofiy and his mother Olena share some of the hardships they experienced as immigrants to the United States from Ukraine. Olena and Tymofiy learn that having a mindset that views people’s attitudes—including negative assumptions about others—as changeable helps us be more open to interacting with people rather than writing them off.

We also meet Legi, who is the mother of 14-year-old Samuel. They’ve experienced many changes in their lives as immigrants to the United States—and Samuel initially struggled to feel like he fit in with his peers. Legi and Samuel learn that exploring and better understanding their own identity can help them feel grounded and secure in knowing themselves—which, in turn, can help us feel better prepared to engage with other people.

Next, we meet 17-year-old Luna and her father Matt. Luna is eager to improve their communication. During a heartfelt conversation, they learn about one another’s vulnerabilities as they explore the role acceptance can play in navigating challenging emotions.

In the final video, Dhaarmika and her two daughters, Sonali and Nina, reflect on having been exposed to many people in their community from a range of backgrounds since they were little, and how that has helped them. They learn about the benefits of having a mindset that appreciates differences as worthwhile.

From these videos, we can distill at least five key lessons for parents (and educators).

1. Listen to teens with compassion. As our teens move toward becoming more independent from us, sometimes they tend to be less inclined to share personal hardships. When they do share, it can be a valuable opportunity to show them our love and desire to understand them. When your teens make a bid to talk to you about their challenges, respond by letting them know you’re available for them. Show that you’re really listening, with warmth and nonjudgment.

2. Help teens recognize our potential for change. Having a mindset that people are mostly set in their ways can lead us to view all people who have negative attitudes about others as forever “bad.” But there’s an alternative mindset: People can change. This belief in growth helps us to be more open to interacting with people who are different from us, even though it could be really difficult. A growth mindset can help your teen recognize that people with prejudiced attitudes will keep learning from their experiences and challenges, which may encourage them to meet and interact with people from different groups.

3. Encourage teens to unpack identity. Beginning to answer the big question “Who am I?” is one of the most important tasks teens face. As parents, we can help our teens learn about and develop positive feelings about the social groups they belong to—like their ethnicity, race, religion, gender—which can be an important way that your teen develops a positive self-concept. Unpacking identity involves parents and teens exploring social identities and reflecting on the ones that are the most important to how they see themselves.

4. Help teens navigate emotions. Meeting and having conversations with unfamiliar people can be exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. Teens may be drawn to try to understand the perspectives of people who are different from them because they value bridging differences—but feeling anxious can get in the way of that process. As parents, we can help our teens learn to navigate emotions by practicing “acceptance” of challenging feelings that can come up when they meet people who are different from them.

5. Nurture in teens a mindset that values diversity. It’s worth nurturing the belief that it’s worthwhile to notice and appreciate a range of backgrounds, experiences, and points of view. As parents, when we talk with our teens about times when different perspectives and life journeys have helped solve both small and large problems, we can help build up their awareness of why and how diversity is valuable.

By the end of their gathering, these families learned not only what it means to bridge differences, but also what it does not mean. Connecting across differences does not require that you put yourself in harm’s way, make convincing others your goal, or mandate compromise or consensus.

In her final reflections, Dhaarmika shares that her favorite part of the experience with these families was seeing the teens being able to bond in a short time. “To be able to hear their heart and their soul speak, it was very powerful for me,” she explains. “It reminded me of the importance of creating deeper connections with individuals and families who have very different life experiences than my own.”

About six months after they initially met, Dhaarmika reconnected with some of these families. The parents she spoke with reflected that they learned how important it is to notice times when there’s a greater openness to listening to begin to bridge differences. They also shared with her that bridging involves taking action. “You need to take your time, be slow, and come in calm,” one parent explained.

Can you teach someone to provide care that isn’t simply accepting of differences, but actually tends to all the ways those differences are impacting a patient’s health? 

The faculty at Samford University’s McWhorter School of Pharmacy can. In fact, they must. They’re required to do so by the accreditation body that sets the standards for the education of pharmacists.

In addition to teaching students information like the physicochemical properties of drugs or the mathematical calculations involved in dosing, pharmacy programs are required to help their students develop complex interpersonal skills such as cultural and structural humility, advocacy, and interprofessional collaboration. The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education requires that all pharmacy programs prepare students to provide “whole-person care.”

Whole-person care, according to the World Health Organization, requires that providers learn to see that a patient’s health is not just the result of biomedical factors. Psychosocial, cultural, and environmental forces also shape our well-being. Providing whole-person care means crafting treatment plans that address all of those forces. It’s impossible to provide this kind of integrated care without strong interpersonal skills. Graduates of accredited pharmacy schools—like other institutions that train health care professionals—must know how to “actively engage, listen, and communicate” and “to mitigate health disparities by considering, recognizing, and navigating cultural and structural factors.”

How, exactly, does an institution help students engage with each patient as a person with their own needs, beliefs, and cultural norms and as a person whose health might be impacted by structural forces like environmental racism or anti-fat bias? The McWhorter School of Pharmacy offers a helpful model in teaching people to care in complex, comprehensive ways for people who are different from them.

The “other culture” assignment

Jonathan Thigpen has come up with creative, impactful strategies for teaching these skills during his tenure as assistant dean of Samford University’s McWhorter School of Pharmacy.

Thigpen and his colleagues have crafted a curriculum in whole-person care that runs throughout a doctoral student’s time at Samford. One of the assignments he gives first-year students—the “other culture” assignment—is emblematic of this work. Thigpen created the assignment in response to an unsettling observation. Across many years of teaching, he noticed in his students a growing reluctance to get out of their comfort zones. He says he saw an “increasing unwillingness to try something new, to take a risk, to put yourself out there.” It was disconcerting because, as Thigpen says, “you have to be able to do that as a health care provider.”

The assignment involves:

• Visiting a site or event that is part of an “other” culture. It can be any culture about which the student is curious; it just has to be different from the student’s own background. The student should ask permission to attend if necessary.
• Staying immersed and present for at least one hour. The student must go have an individual experience. They can’t bring a friend or go with a group of people from class. The student must stay off of their phone and avoid taking photos, pictures, and notes or do anything else that might take them out of the experience or make them seem like a “tourist” in the place.
• Writing a two- to three-page reflection essay. The reflection should connect the student’s experience to topics they have discussed in class, covered in readings, or analyzed in other assignments. The results were remarkable. Samford is a private Christian university outside Birmingham, Alabama, and many of Thigpen’s students use this assignment as an opportunity to experience a new faith community. Protestant students have attended Catholic services. Catholics have attended Protestant services. Other students have chosen to experience events or spaces associated with classes, races, and genders other than their own. One young woman went to a car auction, an event that’s typically more popular with men. Another student who has a white-collar career ate lunch at a blue-collar cafeteria.

Sometimes the “other” culture a student chooses to experience is one that they’ve been taught to fear or avoid. One student grew up with a family member who had a gambling problem, and they had been warned of the dangers of gambling for as long as they could remember. They had never stepped foot inside a casino but harbored plenty of curiosity. This assignment afforded them the opportunity to better understand a place that held such charge for their family. 

Overwhelmingly, students report having positive experiences and share significant insights about the power of connecting with different people and cultures. An international student who chose to visit a cattle stockyard in Texas noticed there’s a big difference between consuming media about a place and interacting with it themselves. In their paper, they observed, “Even though I have heard and seen a lot about Texas, it felt so different when I experienced it in real life. I think to know a culture, it is not enough to just watch their movies or read about them in magazines. What we feel and experience when interacting with them or join[ing] some of their traditional events is so much more valuable.” 

When a white student visited a Black church, they realized that encountering other cultures can be easier than expected. They noted, “This experience taught me that all my anxiety about being in a different cultural setting was my own issue. I was surrounded by people different from me, yet everyone treated me like family. No one cared about the color of my skin, and I realized that my initial fears had been unnecessary. I had worried that my presence might be disrespectful, but, instead, I was welcomed with kindness.”

After administering the “other culture” assignment for many years, Thigpen made an unexpected observation. Students don’t need to encounter a dramatically different culture or bridge an emotionally charged divide in order for the cross-cultural experience to have a deep impact. Sometimes crossing a small bridge can create big change.

Take Briana Watson’s story. Watson decided to visit a European antique store that happened to be owned by a member of the Samford faculty—a white woman of European descent. Watson is Black and hails from a small town a few hours outside of Birmingham.

Watson recalled feeling a bit guarded as she first entered the store. Her body remembered childhood excursions to stores full of delicate items, being told to hold still and don’t touch anything. But when she stepped through the doors, her professor warmly welcomed her and the tension melted away. Watson and the professor struck up a conversation and discovered they share more in common than they expected.

“There was so much to unpack beyond the antiques,” Watson said. “She comes from a military family as do I,” she remembered, “so really connecting over the understanding of service and the love of service and the work ethic that comes behind that started to bridge the gap.”

Watson started the day thinking I’m going to see my professor, but, by the end of the visit, she had a level of connection and trust that became the foundation for a deep, long-lasting relationship. Watson ended up returning to the store many times. This professor became one of her most trusted mentors, and they even went to Spain together on a study abroad trip.

The experience helped Watson develop an awareness of the ways in which the roles of professor and student or pharmacist and patient can create a structure or hierarchy that isn’t always useful when you need to build trust or ask for support. She explained, “I think when we’re always in these structured learning environments, we tend to look at our relationships as that structured dynamic, too. After breaking away from that and . . . getting to know more about her culture, we’re more inclined now to ask her questions if we need help. We’re more inclined to just sit in her office and talk now.”

The experience also gave Watson a chance to reflect on how someone creates an interpersonal encounter that actually feels welcoming and fosters connection. She wants to carry those lessons into her work as a pharmacist. “What stuck with me the most,” she said, “is how I have to be intentional about creating that space with anyone, whether it be a friend or a patient. . . . It’s more about leaning in and asking the follow-ups and being intentional and also having the humility to accept viewpoints that are different than your own. It’s like, OK, this is the person that I want to be in the world and I’m going to make strides towards that.”

Noticing who we want to be in the world and taking repeated action to become that version of ourselves are important components of character development. It’s clear that Watson engaged with the “other culture” assignment as a character-building experience. That’s no accident.

Designing for character development

Character scientist Elise Dykhuis notes several features built into Thigpen’s assignment that make it more likely that students have a character-building experience instead of a simply memorable one, whether you’re looking to strengthen your own capacity to care across differences or you’re responsible for helping develop the character of others.

Establish trust and relevance. If you’re designing an experience for someone else and especially if you’re making it mandatory, like Thigpen does, take the time to build a foundation of trust. All Samford pharmacy first-year students take the “Foundations of Health and Pharmacy” series, and this assignment comes toward the end of the semester, after students have been through lectures and readings about bias and cultural humility. Thigpen has had time to build trust with his class, demonstrating the curiosity, intellectual humility, patience, and empathy that he wants his students to exercise.

He has also introduced why this experience is relevant to their professional development. He establishes it as an opportunity to do something that researchers call “self-expansion.” Research finds that there are many benefits to understanding difference not only as something to tolerate or to manage, but as an opportunity to learn, to broaden one’s perspective, and to expand the self. When people have strong motives to self-expand and they anticipate growth from an interaction, they report greater interest in engaging with people from different groups and they show patterns consistent with more high-quality contact in their interactions with people from different groups.

Leverage curiosity and autonomy. This assignment is driven by curiosity. Thigpen asks his students to consider their own curiosities. Are there cultures or groups of people that have stoked their curiosity? Curiosity gives students the leverage to get over the barrier of discomfort and take the first step. Students are also afforded the autonomy to choose the experience they want to have. Dykhuis explains that, according to self-determination theory, autonomy is one of the key factors “when we’re thinking about what we can use to promote intrinsic motivation in the long run, which is what we really need as adults in order to change something about ourselves or develop ourselves.”

Reflect. Thigpen’s reflection paper is key to the assignment’s efficacy. Dykhuis notes that multiple literatures about self-development stress the importance of reflecting on an experience right after it happens, but we often struggle to provide ourselves with the opportunity to do it. If we pause, reflect, and make meaning after an encounter, we’re more likely to let ourselves be changed by it. 

Prioritize encouragement and enjoyment. Thigpen’s assignment is a one-time experience, but there are things we can add to the experience to help encourage longer-term development. As Dykhuis and her colleagues explain, the personality and character change research says if we want people to change or develop on their own long-term, encouragement and enjoyment are key. Encouragement comes from being integrated into a community and forming relationships. When we’re part of a community of other practitioners and practitioners-in-training (like the pharmacy students are), we’re reminded to stick with it. When we build connections to people whom we care about, they help keep us accountable. Plus, we’re surrounded by people modeling the attitudes and skills we want to develop.

Don’t forget the fun. Many students report that once they muster up the courage to try their first formal bridging encounter, they realize that it’s not as hard as they thought it would be. It’s actually quite enjoyable to connect with people who are different from them and to have new experiences.

No one is going to learn how to provide whole-person care over the course of one semester. It could take an entire career of deep dedication to live up to the standard of care that professional organizations like the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and the American Pharmacists Association set for their fields. The systemic factors that shape social determinants of health are complex and dynamic. The contexts in which health care providers meet and tend to patients are ever-changing. However, when we focus on developing the character strengths we need to connect across differences, we can keep building our capacity to meet and care for people where they are, in their full complexity. And, as a bonus, we get to bring the courage, curiosity, intellectual humility, patience, and empathy that we’ve cultivated into other areas of our lives, as well. How fun is that?!

To my right, a friend of Jamie’s struck up a conversation with my mom. They looked like an incongruous pair: a five-foot-tall Chinese American grandmother, with short silver hair, and him a six-foot-plus-tall white young man, bending his head so he could hear her faint voice over the music and party chatter. I leaned closer to listen in. She inquired about his undergraduate major in economics and philosophy, and shared that she’d received a Ph.D. in economics herself, with a focus on demography.

Their conversation struck me at the time as an anomaly. He listened with courtesy and interest, asked polite follow-up questions about her demographic interests, and didn’t seem the least bit eager to cut it short to join his peers. Did he realize that Gen Z wasn’t supposed to behave this way? According to social media and many commentators, they are supposed to be scared to talk to strangers and buried in their phones, too stunted by social anxiety and naval gazing to engage with the world around them. After all, this generation grew up in a “challenging and constantly changing global environment,” as Nisreen Ameen and colleagues note in a 2023 paper—which is one of the factors that led them to experience higher levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness than prior generations. 

But over the course of the weekend, I encountered young person after young person who seemed open to learning and evolving. They were engaged in creative discovery and expression, seeking to change their community for the better, deeply caring about their peers and the relationships they had made in the previous four years.

“Obies” (as Oberlin students are called) aren’t alone. A series of in-depth interviews on multiple college campuses found that “the typical Gen Zer is a self-driver who deeply cares about others, strives for a diverse community, is highly collaborative and social, values flexibility, relevance, authenticity, and non-hierarchical leadership,” according to research led by Stanford University professor Roberta Katz. A McKinsey & Co. analysis of the newest members of the workforce, a few years ahead of this year’s graduating seniors, describes them as “socially progressive dreamers” who are pragmatic, seeking purpose, and deeply concerned about climate change and inequality.

As these new graduates navigate the months and years ahead, I reflected, these characteristics will serve them as well as any of the facts and figures they’ve learned in college. I left the graduation weekend thinking that, perhaps, the future is in good hands after all with the newest generation of workers and future leaders. Could it be that the reinforcements have arrived?

A gloomy future?

This graduation season has been marked by doom and gloom. Amid the bleak job market, disruption from artificial intelligence, and global violence, new graduates could be forgiven for embarking on their foray into the working world with trepidation. Indeed, commencement speeches on the promise of AI drew boos from the graduating seniors at other universities, such as the University of Arizona, where former Google CEO Eric Schmidt received a not-so-warm response.

I admit that I’ve harbored some fears about how my children will navigate the future, too. After all, I wrote an entire book about the dramatic increase in mental and behavioral disorders in this generation, and spent over a decade in journalism covering how economic disruption affected working families and their pocketbooks.

It’s a perfect storm of uncertainty: social, economic, geopolitical, and technological change like a black cloud over this time of transition. One student told me that she’d sent out over a hundred resumes, with not a single response. Throughout the graduation weekend, I resisted asking seniors I encountered about their plans for the future, for fear of bringing up an anxiety-laden topic. It gave me a pang to sense the unease in the air, when I’d wish that new graduates feel the world is at their feet, with many possible promising paths ahead for career and life.

Oberlin holds a unique place among institutions of higher learning, being the first to admit women and the first to admit Black students. The tradition of social action continues today. The college achieved a goal of carbon neutrality in 2025 and hosted student demonstrations against the war in Gaza over the past two years.

Students continue to push the administration on divestment from war, support for undocumented and immigrant students, preventing sexual assault, and supporting student-run housing and meal cooperatives. They complain that the college leadership focuses more on revenue and growth than Oberlin’s core values, both the president and the board of trustees, which denied the student divestment proposal.

At this year’s graduation ceremonies, when the chair of the board of trustees took the stage, the graduating class stood up and turned their backs to him. For the duration of his remarks, they held white pieces of paper in the air bearing a variety of messages, such as “Protect Trans Students” and “Divest from Genocide” and “Become a Sanctuary Campus.” When they crossed the stage to accept their diplomas, a number of students handed the paper to Oberlin President Carmen Ambar before shaking her hand. I was impressed at the respectful display of their principles, a compromise between outright boos and doing nothing.

At a picnic hosted by the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association, I saw this confident leadership on display again. The student-run, non-profit corporation feeds and houses many Oberlin students, including my son, serving up giant vats of lentils, trays of bread, and other hearty fare three times a day through the school year. The commitment is significant: five shifts a week on a planning, cooking, or clean-up crew, and shared decision making.

Jamie had already told us about the experience of voting on policy changes, which had to be unanimous—meaning deliberations could truly drag on. His coop involvement made sense with our family’s values of hard work and community service: My husband Brian served as a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service, which paid for the vast majority of Jamie’s college tuition, through the G.I. Bill.

The outgoing OSCA president, a graduating senior, gave a speech as professional as any I’ve heard through most of my career, thanking that day’s crew for feeding hundreds of alums, graduating students, and families; sharing the organization’s mission; and updating the assembled picnickers on lease negotiations with the college administration. She thanked her leadership team and her mother, and her poise gave me a flash-forward of the future day when she might be leading a political campaign or acknowledging donors to a nonprofit.

Creativity and connection

Art and music threaded throughout the graduation weekend. We walked through the senior art studios and photography lab, admiring the innovative collages, black-and-white photography, and textured prints exploring a range of themes: identity, relationship, nature, and design. At a showcase for graduating film students, we watched short films exploring interpersonal relationships, the impact of a hoarder’s death on her daughter, and an Oberlin conductor’s connections between his Venezuelan roots and the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, who composed under the thumb of the Soviet government.

One short documentary about couples who met late in life, filmed at the Kendal retirement community abutting the campus, struck me in its portrayal of how these relationships can be ones of convenience or deep love, depending on the situation. I felt surprised that a college student would find old-age love a compelling topic, and that the filmmaker succeeded in drawing out 80-somethings to discuss their sex lives, loneliness, and other intimate topics. Talking later to the student, I discovered that her professor had encouraged her to trim the film to 15 minutes, but she couldn’t bear to cut any more portions of her interviews.

In the film showcase and throughout the campus, visual arts shone, as well: delicate animations that conveyed the passing of time and eye-catching graphics and murals. Our oldest daughter remarked that students generally seemed engaged in conversation, not buried in their phones. When festivities hit a lull, I’d often turn around to find my son and his friends engaged in a game of cards or Scattergories.

Their house seemed like a revolving door of housemates, relatives, neighbors, and friends, including recent graduates returning to celebrate the next crop of Obies. Everyone was unfailingly friendly and kind, greeting me and my parents with interest, engaging Jamie’s sisters in conversation, and open to getting to know anyone who happened to be in the same space. When tables or counters became crowded with dirty plates and cups, there always seemed to be a student taking out the trash or doing dishes. And they cheered each other on by attending each other’s screenings, recitals, concerts, sports games, and open studios.

I left the weekend feeling unexpectedly moved by the other students, in addition to seeing my own accept his diploma, of course. The thousands of 20-somethings on this campus aren’t alone in creating art and music that probes who we are as a society and what our relationships mean, or in taking action to change their communities. This is the generation that walked out of elementary school to protest gun violence and launched the careers of David Hogg and Greta Thunberg. This is what young people have always done, push human society to be the best version of itself. It’s often when times are the darkest and most uncertain that we turn to them for comfort and hope. Whether the writings of Anne Frank in the Holocaust or the voice of Joan Baez in the Vietnam War era, these voices carry unexpected and needed messages. The answer is in our relationships, in our commitment to and caring for each other.

As author Rebecca Solnit argues, the hero is often the collective, not a lone charismatic figure. We ignore at our peril “that individual actors and collective forces can suddenly emerge or implode, that history often takes sharp turns, that something that has held for decades or centuries can suddenly snap,” she writes.

Ultimately, none of us know what the future holds. We are building it in the present, every day. With these idealistic, creative, community-minded young people joining the ranks of changemakers, I feel optimistic for the first time in a while.