A while ago, my partner LiZhen turned me onto a TEDx talk by Deborah Frieze. In this talk, titled “How I Became a Localist,” Frieze said something that really made me think: “You can’t fundamentally change big systems. You can only abandon them and start over or offer hospice to what’s dying.”

She went on to explain that systems — our educational systems, economic systems, criminal justice systems — are nonlinear and incredibly complex. These aren’t machines but living systems. And as with anything alive, they go through a natural cycle of rise, peak and decline. It’s the nature of life. In breath, out breath. Expansion, contraction. Birth, death. The inevitable cycle of any living system. Frieze shared her belief that our big systems are on their death beds. I agree. Our medical systems make us sick. Our food systems create malnutrition. Our educational systems are failing our kids. Our criminal justice system makes our communities less safe. Our democratic systems are run by a select few. Our economic systems continue to create poverty. And, of course, our ecological systems are collapsing all around us.

Frieze’s talk made me think about how we would design our public actions differently if we viewed part of our role as being death doulas to dying systems, empires and worldviews. “Death doula” is a term consciously chosen to echo “birth doula” and bring attention not only to the fact that death, like birth, is labor, but that both are important transition points in life. Michelle Mondia, a death doula, told me her work “is about midwifery. We’re preparing them for another world. It’s the same work. It’s the death of the physical and the birth of the spiritual. Some of us call ourselves death midwives.”

I don’t believe we’re approaching the “end of the world.” But I do believe we’re approaching the end of something, and it’s something big. Whatever it is, I think it’s big enough that we’re all starting to feel its decay. What would it mean for us, as movements, to play some role in helping ease the transition to whatever comes next, even if that “next” involves the death of something? As I was almost done writing this book, I discovered “Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism” by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. The book offers a framing I find deeply resonant: Modernity as we know it is in its last days, and we can play a role in supporting its transition.

Just as our massive systems are failing, the governments and nongovernmental organizations we created to fill the gaps left by these systems are also going through extraordinarily difficult times. Many of our social justice nonprofits are falling apart. The exact organizations working on conflict transformation are collapsing under the weight of internal conflict, and groups working on racial justice have been pushed to the limit by internal racial strife. It makes sense, because nonprofit organizations are a part of modernity. As modernity is dying, all its tentacles are in the midst of collapse as well. We have to find ways to build movements where our relationships and shared purpose aren’t defined by some corporate charter or bylaws.

When a similar idea — that large systems around us are dying and we would be wise to consider the role of hospice — emerges simultaneously from different sources, I feel like there is something to explore. I ended up having conversations with over a dozen death doulas and hospice care workers to better understand their work. One such person, Gwi-Seok, a yoga teacher and death doula based in Hawai’i, told me, “As a society, we’ve forgotten how to die.” We’ve forgotten how to accept that death is inevitable and to go into it gracefully. Instead, our society grasps onto life at all costs. All sentient beings want to live. But this clinging — this attachment we have to something as impermanent as life — causes incredible suffering.

In all the conversations I had, the importance of normalizing death emerged as the most common theme. Death is one of the most natural aspects of life. We experience it every single day. As many as 50–100 billion cells die each day in our bodies alone. There is nothing more normal in life than death. I learned from Jeanne Denney, hospice worker and founder of the School of Unusual Life Learning, or SoULL, that death is not in opposition to life. Death is an integral part of life. But in our death-phobic world, we’re taught there’s life, and then there’s death. This false duality creates the delusion that death is not a part of life. Part of what we need is to remember not all death is undesirable: As I learn to undo the patriarchy that lives inside of my body, the part of myself that grew up with toxic messages of how to “be a man” is dying every day. As I entered into fatherhood for the first time, my identity as someone who had never been a parent died.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been around several people accompanying their own loved ones in their final days. I’ve seen the potential that opens up when someone looks at and begins to accept the inevitability of their own death. It is perhaps the hardest thing for us as human beings to do, but there’s incredible liberation in the work of accepting our own mortality. Of course, this process can create complicated feelings. I’ve known people who accompanied abusive, hurtful parents and caretakers and been with people suffering so much it came as a relief when they finally passed. Because of our binary worldview, it can be hard to reconcile feeling love and anger or grief and relief at the same time. Even when accompaniment is complicated, people found it possible to be present with love and compassion.

Many of us have wildly mixed emotions toward the systems, cultures and worldviews dying around us. Can we lovingly accompany and support these systems and worldviews in their final days, even if they’ve caused us so much harm?

When people don’t accept their own mortality, their final days can be filled with great fear. This fear, often expressed as grasping, is a desperate energy that can lash out and cause harm. Our systems, empires, and worldviews are dying. Many of us are too scared to accept this reality. Fear blinds us, so we continue to live in the delusion everything is okay. But in that unacknowledged fear, our systems are grasping too, refusing to acknowledge the inevitable. And that grasping is leading to an escalation of harm, which we can see manifested in the increase in political violence, hostility toward those we see as “other,” and growing apathy and indifference toward the horrors of war and the worldwide refugee crises. Throughout their life cycles, our systems have grown so massive and powerful that if we aren’t careful, their grasping and thrashing could take down everything we love and hold sacred. We are called to become interventionist death doulas, to bring ease, skillfulness and wisdom to this transition.

In nonviolent resistance work, “pillars of support” is a common analysis tool. The idea is you’re trying to take down a dictator (or CEO, politician, etc.), propped up by many societal pillars: the police, the military, the courts, the media, etc. The dictator is at the top of a pyramid held up by these pillars. If we can identify and knock down a couple key pillars, the entire house may come crumbling down.

Movements need to be spirited, but they also need to be strategic. Tools like this will always be important. But think about this visual for a second. We’re all still living under the systems we are trying to take down. If we simply topple these pillars and the whole house comes crashing down, it’ll crush us all. The work of a death doula isn’t to go to people who are dying and knock them down so they transition quicker. It’s to accompany them, to help them be with what is inevitable, to breathe deeply through discomfort, to help heal any relationships while there’s still time, to support those around them who are in pain, to ease suffering, and support dignity in a precarious time of transition. Even in the final moments before death, it is still possible to heal, affirm life and create beauty.

The gift of grief

Gwi-Seok also shared that we’re an “under-grieving society.” Unprocessed and unnamed grief shuts us down. We bury our grief in the depths of our unconscious, and it ends up controlling us. The work of “normalizing” death can be tricky. In our society, we normalize death all the time. We normalize mass shootings, we normalize murder, we normalize war. But I don’t get the sense this is what all those death doulas mean. We normalize killing; this isn’t the same as normalizing death as an inevitable part of the life cycle. Birth is a gift, but death is considered a curse. Normalizing death includes accepting the grief that naturally comes with it. If we bury grief, we don’t normalize death; we suppress it.

On May 24, 2022, a former student walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 students and two teachers. Eighteen others were injured, including his grandmother, whom he shot before heading to the school. The shooter himself was killed when the police finally raided the classroom in which he’d locked himself. I was in Southern California when I heard the news. I’d just finished facilitating a fierce vulnerability workshop and was on my way to another presentation, followed by a work retreat. It was a back-to-back-to-back week, and I didn’t have time to process the news. When I finally got home a week later, I could feel the tension in my body. LiZhen was overseas, so I was alone when I finally had time to process the news. I sat down on my bed and, with intention, looked up the names of each of the victims and read their stories.

I looked at each of their pictures, printed them out, and placed them on my altar. I cried. I grieved.

There’s a way in which it would have been easier for me to ignore the grief. But this would have meant normalizing their killings without acknowledging their deaths. I don’t enjoy crying and thinking about the loss of almost two dozen children. Yet I needed to do this for myself to be able to move forward. I have to have some balance. When I read the news, there’s something to grieve every day, and it could be easy to fall into a never-ending spiral. But if I don’t take some intentional time to grieve every once in a while, grief builds up in my system and cripples me. Once there’s built-up grief, it becomes harder for me to accept mortality. The more I suppress these things, the more I get buried under their weight and the more my awareness becomes muted and heavy.

Though I read the stories of the Uvalde shooting alone in my bedroom, I believe it’s critical we do grief work in community. We need our grief to be witnessed and reflected back. We need to know we’re not alone. Spaces for collective grief are transformative. When I’m around a community holding space for grief, it feels less scary. When I know I’m not alone, when I see grief modeled by others, when I know I’m in a space explicitly designed as a container to hold our grief, I can touch into it and find the richness there.

We’re used to imagining the “end of the world as we know it” as this terrible, scary, dark thing, thanks to so many post-apocalyptic movies. Maybe it will be that way. But it doesn’t have to be. We can create something more beautiful than we can possibly imagine. Accepting death is upon us may be the first step. Once we accept it, we can make conscious choices about how we want to accompany it. Grief is an emotion that, if left unattended, can live in your body for years and become debilitating. This is why I felt the need to read the stories of each child killed in the Uvalde school shooting and grieve their loss.

We need people activated at scale. It won’t be enough for small groups of activists and progressives to hold grief rituals on our own, though that’s an important start. We need public interventions — direct actions, if you still want to call them that — to bring grief to the masses. We live in a world filled with so much normalized violence and chaos. We don’t realize our bodies need to grieve every time we hear a story of a mass shooting or a climate catastrophe. We just continue with our lives. We turn on Netflix and move on to the next thing. And at times, maybe that’s what we need to do. Sometimes, the pain is just too much. It’s important to give ourselves time to prepare for grief. But other times, the inability to allow ourselves to grieve is toxic.

Francis Weller talks about “grief muscles.” Grieving is a practice, much like going to the gym. The more we grieve, the more able we are to grieve and to grieve deeply. Creating regular, explicit spaces for communal grief is like going to the gym and preparing our grief muscles for what is to come. Grieving, paradoxically, creates strength.

To serve life

So many systems — human-made systems like governments and capitalism, as well as natural ecosystems — are in the midst of collapse. Demise is a natural and sacred part of the life cycle. Accepting death and helping others do so by playing the role of death doulas and public mourners is part of the work we are called to do in this moment.

And throughout this book, I’ve continued to talk about the need to fight for, affirm and honor life.

Accepting death and fighting for life are not in contradiction to one another, because death isn’t in opposition to life. It’s a part of it. Only when we fully accept that reality can we honor the fullness of life.

Jeanne Denney helped me to see how much understanding and science there is around birth — there are so many related traditions, books to read, classes to attend, products for new and expecting parents to buy. But we don’t study death in the same way. Maybe we don’t think it’s “worth” it. Because, well, we just die, and that’s it. There’s nothing more to understand, and there’s nothing we can do to prepare. To the extent we study death, it’s only to study every possible way to prevent it. That’s not an honoring of life.

There are traditions that help us normalize death. The Mexican celebration of Día de Muertos, the Chinese Qingming Festival or the Japanese tradition of Obon welcome home the spirits of our deceased ancestors, giving us a closer relationship with the dead on a regular basis. Other cultures have a much stronger honoring of elders and of eldering. Many cultures celebrate not only the rite of passage of a young person becoming an adult, but of adults becoming elders. Elders are viewed and honored in the same way an old-growth forest is — with awe and inspiration, as opposed to people just getting older and less productive and useful.

When a whale dies and its carcass sinks to the bottom of the sea, it’s teeming with life within hours. When a giant tree falls to the forest floor, it doesn’t just disappear. As it decays, it becomes a nurse log, a home for countless seedlings. The 100 billion cells that will die in your body today will be replaced by 100 billion new cells tomorrow. So much life surrounds each moment of death. In the conventional realm, the work of hospicing and midwifing may be different. But in the ultimate realm, becoming a death doula to dying empires means we’re giving birth to a new one. The work of accepting death isn’t about giving up on life. It’s about honoring the fullness of it.

It’s a fair question. Our world is full of crises—from climate disaster to rising authoritarianism, increasing wealth disparities, war, famine, and genocide. For those of us in the U.S., the past few months since Donald Trump’s second inauguration have been pure chaos—green card holders being deported unjustly, a radical dismantling of the federal workforce, and escalating tensions with nearly every nation. And we’re only three months in!

It’s enough to overwhelm anyone’s nervous system. It’s easy to lose hope that justice is coming.

Yet, I find myself as hopeful as I’ve ever been.

It’s not just hope; I also feel fear, anger, and confusion. I see the suffering, especially in marginalized communities, and the escalating violence against them. These are real, painful truths. And yes, suffering will intensify as our world collapses. Because it is collapsing.

A grounding read for me recently was Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. The book argues that modernity itself is in collapse, with the systems and worldviews we’ve accepted as “normal” coming to an end. This resonated with me—it felt like an acknowledgment that we are not just seeing the decline of American democracy, but possibly the end of Western liberalism, colonial-capitalism, and even nation-states. The foundational ideas of individualism, human supremacy, progress, and control are all crumbling.

This can be destabilizing. Of course, when the systems we’ve relied on our entire lives are collapsing, fear arises. Watching the dismantling of government agencies, the erosion of rights, and the breakdown of democratic processes is deeply unsettling. But here’s the thing: We’ve been sold a myth. We’ve been taught that these systems are the only way society functions and that without them, we’d face a post-apocalyptic dystopian world.

The truth is, these systems have never truly served us. Our food systems create health crises, our economic systems breed vast inequality, our criminal justice system perpetuates violence, and our political systems concentrate power in the hands of a few. These systems aren’t maintaining order; they’re failing us.

The good news? These aren’t the only systems we have either. As modernity collapses, life-affirming systems are emerging everywhere. You won’t see much of this on the news, but if you look beyond the noise of social media and invest in community, you’ll notice these projects thriving.

There are land-based initiatives like Soul Fire Farm, the Sogorea Te Land Trust, Ekvn-Yefolecv, Earthseed Land Collective and the community that I live in, Canticle Farm, which are reconnecting people to land, reclaiming indigenous cultures, and creating new, sustainable communities. Many of these initiatives are part of broader mutual aid networks, where communities come together to care for one another, moving beyond charity to build new ways of supporting each other outside of modernity’s systems.

Spiritual centers are integrating faith practices into activism, as more people are leaving institutionalized religion and engaging in earth-based practices as well as joining communities like East Bay Meditation Center, the Faith Matters Network and Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

Cooperation Jackson are experimenting with solidarity economies, and initiatives like the Possibility Alliance and Nonviolent Global Liberation are experimenting with the Gift Economy. Healing practices, from plant-medicine journeys to somatic work and Internal Family Systems, are reshaping how we understand wellness. Healing justice projects, like Black Therapists Rock, the National Queer and Trans Therapist of Color Network, Freedom Community Clinic and the Fireweed Collective are making healing more accessible.

More recently, we’re seeing the rise of death doulas—individuals who support not only individuals preparing for death but also help communities cope with the “death” of ecosystems and larger systems. My own partner works with the School of Unusual Life Learning (SoULL), a space that fosters new ways of thinking about life and death.

There’s a growing movement within nonprofits to rethink power dynamics and organizational structures, as seen with the Sustainable Economies Law Center and the Nonprofit Democracy Network. Other groups, like the Good Grief Network, the Work that Reconnects, Holistic Resistance and Dinner Party are reminding us of the power of grief, while Ecoversities Alliance and modalities like Democratic Education and Unschooling are offering new ways of learning and teaching.

The emergence of these projects is accelerating. They are creating a world that will thrive long after the systems we’ve grown accustomed to have composted.

Some of these groups have been around for decades, but the rate of new initiatives has skyrocketed in the past 10-15 years. And these are the systems that will continue to care for us.

As Jeanne Denny from SoULL reminded me: Death is not the end. Death is not in opposition to life. Life does not end with at death. It is a part of life, and it signals the birth of new life. As we grieve the passing of the systems we’ve known, let us remember to breath and also notice the birth of so many new systems all around us.

A while ago, I worked with two dear friends, Celia Kutz and Sonya Shah, to organize a gathering called Because We Need Each Other. This three-day gathering, hosted by The Watershed Center, brought together 20 movement leaders together for a courageous and vulnerable conversation about a dynamic that has been ripping our movements apart.

While “Cancel Culture” is an overused, over-simplified and problematic flattening of a complex series of dynamics, we chose to use it because the term is a cultural touchstone of sorts.

The gathering was powerful, and multiple threads came out of it. One of them is this series of articles cowritten by myself, Celia, Shilpa Jain and Erika Sasson and co-published by Convergence Magazine and The Forge Organizing.

The series starts with four-parts. The first two are out now, and the others will be published over the next two weeks. We are currently working on a second four-part series, which we hope to work on in the coming months.

Please join us for this juicy, vulnerable, taboo, courageous and necessary conversation. Now more than ever, our movements need to learn to respond to conflicts in generative ways and find ways to stay together.

This year, we were joined by our little one, Yexin (who we call Yeye), who turned 11 months the day after the Jam ended. I was on baby-care duty a lot of the time, so I ended up missing quite a few of the sessions. But honestly, I didn’t feel like I missed anything. It felt like Yeye and I had our own Jam—woven into the larger one. Our time together came with its own lessons, tears, breakdown/breakthroughs, and moments of deep intergenerational healing.

Twice, I found myself walking with them asleep on my chest in the carrier, crying my eyes out lol!

I usually have the morning shift with them, which looks like an hour of play, breakfast, and then our daily morning walk. She usually falls asleep on me within minutes of being put in the carrier, and I walk for an hour while listening to a podcast. It’s become a sweet and grounding daily ritual for me—and, I hope, for them too.

The Quaker Center, where the Jam was held, has a beautiful labyrinth. On our first morning, I decided to walk it. As I approached the entrance, I was reminded of the many deep, spiritual experiences I’ve had walking that same path. So I turned off my podcast and stepped in silently, curious about what it might offer me this time.

As I entered and calmed my spirit, my mind naturally turned to loving Yeye. I do this often—focus all my energy on sending love to this little one sleeping with their head against my chest. I try to infuse every cell of their body with the knowing that they are deeply, deeply loved. I want every ounce of her to feel it.

And as I think about how much I love this beautiful being, I’m filled with joy. But emotions are funny - joy and grief often sit side by side. They can feel like two sides of the same coin, sometimes blending into one another. As I sat with that joy, a tinge of grief began to rise.

Since becoming a father, I found out from my mother that my own father—who died when I was eleven—never changed a single diaper. He had three kids—six, eleven, and sixteen when he passed—and not one single diaper. For some reason, that has stuck with me, and I’ve been talking about it nonstop for the past 11 months.

I’ve realized that it’s not just about the diapers. The diapers (or lack thereof) has come to symbolize something much larger: the ways that Asian/Japanese patriarchy stripped him of the ability to nurture, to be affectionate, to be silly, to express love in the ways that are natural to all human beings. It limited his ability to love us.

Of course, I don’t doubt that he did love us. But the ways he was socialized limited how he could express that love—and maybe even how deeply he could feel it.

And I realized that this is what I grieve every time I touch the depths of my love for Yeye. I grieve the kind of relationship I never had with my father. It’s not about the diapers. It’s about the affection and nurturing that were missing.

When I sing to Yeye, when I let my silliness run wild, when I kiss them as I tell them how much I love them, when I hold them as they cry—or cry while holding them—when I send love into every cell of their body, I’m overwhelmed with joy. And in doing so, I feel more whole. I tap into something deeply human—this innate capacity for tenderness and care.

And I grieve that I never had that with my father. That his love for me was confined to what was culturally available to Asian men at the time—buying toys, taking us on vacations. And while I cherish those memories, I have very few of him holding me. I never saw him cry. Even when he told us he had cancer and only six months to live, he didn’t shed a tear.

I used to feel angry. My thoughts sounded something like: “Fuck the patriarchy—I’m going to be a better father than that.” But the labyrinth reminded me it’s not a competition. I’m not angry at him. If anything, I’m angry for him.

Angry that he never got to fully express the love I know was in him. That he never got to cry with me. That he never got to tear down the walls around his heart.

And if I slow down enough, I can see that beneath the anger is grief. A deep sadness—not just that I never received that kind of love, but that he never got to give it. I feel sad for him, because it feels so good to love unflinchingly.

Walking the labyrinth, I realized the healing I need is not in my relationship with my father because my father’s pain lives in me. His pain and my pain are intertwined. As I heal, I heal him. As his pain softens, my body can soften too.

And all it takes to begin healing that wound is the simple, joyful act of loving my child. Imagine that. Just by loving, I get to heal. Not just for myself, but for him, for his father, and for all the generations of men who couldn’t fully love.

Many people have reflected to me lately that I seem more affectionate, sillier. And I can see it in myself. When I’m with Yeye, all I want to be is silly and affectionate. I sing and dance more carelessly. I feel freer. Yeye has helped me reclaim parts of myself I had pushed away. I used to be afraid people would think I was weird if I let my silliness out. Or judge my singing if I sang too loud.

But reclaiming those parts of me makes me more whole. And wholeness isn’t just about being silly or affectionate or nurturing. It’s about reconnecting and integrating with my father—and with all my ancestors.

Full, unhindered and active expressions of love are acts of intergenerational healing.

My father died when he was 43. I was 43 when Yeye was born. That still confuses me. My memories of him stop at 43, and I’ll always remember him as my father. I remember looking up to him, literally and metaphorically.

But he was younger than I am now when he told us he was dying. He was younger than I am now when he took his last breath. I still can’t make sense of that.

But the healing I’ve received from Yeye helps me begin to make sense of it. I am my father. In this interdependent world, he lives in me. And at 43 years old, a baton was passed. From that moment on, any healing I can do is healing that he never got to.

And all I need to do is the simplest thing: to love.

An interview with Foward Review

At two of the darkest moments of the past century, you may recall that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. practiced a nonviolent brand of leadership that changed the world. As we face the seemingly insurmountable challenges of climate change, political division, racial animosity, and caustic intolerance, it goes without saying that having a similar leader step to the fore would be a godsend.

Such a leader would soothe the harm being inflicted at both the personal and systemic levels, a deeply felt pain that is exacerbated by social media’s binary “us vs. them” worldview—exactly what is NOT helpful for healing.

Grounded in Buddhist philosophy and restorative justice work, Kazu Haga recognizes that the systemic global traumas have forced us all into a state of denial—a coping mechanism that is taking a huge toll. He believes the path forward must combine science-based advances in trauma healing with Gandhi- King Jr.-inspired nonviolence. In his new book, Fierce Vulnerability, Haga expands on that understanding and imagines a “movement that recognizes injustice as a reflection of collective trauma and embraces its role as a catalyst for collective healing through transformative action.”

Intrigued with his practical yet radical ideas, we assigned one of Foreword’s most sagacious writers, Kristine Morris, to catch up with Haga for the following conversation.

Your thoughtful, provocative book emphasizes the importance of both collective and individual healing if we are to address the critical issues that threaten human and planetary survival. How has your background in nonviolence work, Buddhist spirituality, and the influence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired both the questions you ask and your vision for building a future characterized by peace, fairness, justice, and co-operation?

My journey started at the intersection of Buddhism and nonviolence work, having spent a year and a half living in a monastery under the guidance of Buddhists deeply committed to nonviolent social change. Then years later, I discovered the teachings of Dr. King, and for the first time understood the depths of the word “nonviolence,” particularly within…

A conversation with Rev. Liza Rankow as part of her series, Healing Conversations from the Front Lines of Activism.

Dear Friends, I greet you with deep care in these times of so much crisis. In this month’s conversation, I am pleased to introduce Kazu Haga. Steeped in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Kazu works toward an activism that not only catalyzes justice, but fosters collective healing.

After some personal catching up, we ease into our interview as I often do, asking Kazu what arises for him when he hears the title of this blog, Healing Conversations from the Front Lines of Activism. His initial response is a bit of a surprise, “Actually, the first thing that it brought up was some mourning,” he says. “Just noticing how often the frontlines of activism is actually not a healing place, that oftentimes it can be an incredibly traumatic place. It makes sense because the frontlines is where so much of the harm is happening. For me, healing is the goal of activism. And so, I guess I notice the gap between what I feel like activism and healing has to offer us and what's actually present in a lot of frontline spaces.”

He pauses briefly, then continues, “I think the deeper the harm, the deeper and more powerful the healing is. So, the times that I have experienced healing in frontline spaces, it's those moments that remind me of what we are capable of, and what healing could look like. And it's those moments that keep me going, that give me a vision of what's possible and remind me of why we're there.”

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Kazu migrated to the US with his family when he was seven. His activism began at the age of 17, when he fled a violent and tumultuous home life and joined the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage. For six months he took part in this 13-month prayerful journey on foot and by boat, through the Eastern United States, the Caribbean, Brazil, Cape Verde, West Africa, and South Africa, reversing the trajectory of the slave trade to foster healing from the legacy of enslavement…..

I’ve lived in the US since I was seven-years old, so most people don’t even realize that I was not a US citizen until a few weeks ago. I was born in Japan – a country that does not allow for dual citizenship. I’ve had a green card since I was young, so I’ve had the opportunity to apply for citizenship for many years, but because I would have had to give up my Japanese citizenship, I’ve always hesitated.

At some point, I realized that this was tied to my ego. I was attached to the idea of being a “Japanese citizen.” For one thing, it was always fun to half-jokingly live in the delusion that because I was not American, I could somehow maintain some distance from US policies that I opposed. That the politicians that I did not support were not “my” elected officials.

Secondly – as an immigrant who sometimes lived in majority white communities, I’ve had to fight hard to maintain my identity as a Japanese and Asian person. The overt racism I experienced everyday as a young person made me ashamed of my heritage, and it took decades of work to reclaim pride in who I am and where I came from. In elementary school, I even wanted to change my name to “Ken” because of how often people would make fun of my name.

So giving up my Japanese passport felt like I was moving one step backwards in my journey to accept who I am.

At some point I realized two things. One, that I actually have no interest in ever living in Japan again. My entire life is in the US, and I now feel much more comfortable here than in my home country. Second, the idea of citizenship is just a delusion made up by bureaucracy. It’s just a piece of paper, and doesn’t actually change the inner landscape of who I am.

But I still procrastinated. The amount of paperwork and the $800 application fee made it really easy to deprioritize it.

And then I started reading about Project 2025. I started reading about mass deportations. I started thinking about the possibility of another Trump presidency. I started thinking about all of the protests and demonstrations I might find myself in in the coming years, and what may happen under a Trump presidency if I ended up getting arrested.

So I bit the bullet, filled out pages and pages of paperwork, paid the fee and submitted my application. And shortly before the election, I received a notice that I was scheduled for my interview and civics test. The date was November 12th, exactly one week after the election.

To be honest I’m still processing the outcome of said election, and will be writing more about that in the coming weeks and months. But for now, I will just share that I went to my interview still in somewhat of a daze, trying to figure out how I am supposed to feel about becoming a US citizen under a second Trump presidency.

The Interview

I showed up for my scheduled interview on Tuesday morning, checked in, and proceeded to wait for about three-hours until I finally heard my name being called. I tried some light-hearted conversation with my interviewer as she guided me through a labyrinth of government hallways reminiscent of the endless doors in The Matrix Reloaded, but her professional demeanor left little room for a personal connection.

We sat down and she proceeded to ask me about my life, my desire to become a US citizen, my travels abroad and my criminal history. She then went onto ask me about my “oaths.”

Her: Do you absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom of which you have heretofore been a subject or citizen?

Me: Um, sure.

Her: Do you swear to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic?

Me: Yes.

Her: Do you swear to bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law?

Me: Ummmm…. Wait, what? Uhhh, not really? I mean, it depends? Wait, what did you just ask me? Do I have to say yes to this?

The question caught me off guard. I told myself going into this interview that I would not think too hard about the politics of this endeavor, and just provide the responses I know they needed to hear. But this one threw me off, and my immediate response was to yell “hell no!!! I will NOT fight for this country!!!”

Which threw her off. She was confused. Why wouldn’t I, if required by law, fight for the country to whom I am pledging my undying fealty to? Part of me regretted my response immediately. “Of shit, did I just screw up my chance at getting approved for citizenship?” I thought to myself.

We ended up having to take a 15-minute detour, with me telling her about my commitment to conflict reconciliation, my Buddhist practice, and how I have spent my entire adult life practicing nonviolence.

After some conversation and her googling my name, she received approval from her supervisor to let me off the hook of having to fight for the US. The oath she asked me to sign literally had that sentence crossed out! I wish I had taken a picture of it, as it was probably the proudest moment during the entire day for me.

After talking to her for well over an hour, she asked me, “so do you want to take your oath later today?”

This threw me way off again! I had thought that the oath ceremony happened months after the interview, and did not realize that I could do it later that same day!

While I was not emotionally ready to go through with this, I realized that because of my upcoming travel schedule, if I didn’t do it that day, I may not have a chance to until after the next presidential inauguration – when I would be looking at a picture of Donald J. Trump as I took my oath. I could not imagine how I would have felt to receive a “welcome message” from Trump.

While I am no fan of Joe Biden, it felt like a significant difference that it was worth taking the plunge. So I waited another three-hours, and along with about 50 other immigrants from all over the world, I stood up, said the oath and watched a recording of President Biden welcoming us as the newest US citizens…

The Privilege

I have such mixed emotions about it all. Losing my Japanese citizenship does hurt. I know it’s just a piece of paper, but it does feel like I lost a piece of my identity. 

And what does it mean to be “American” during times of such turmoil in this country? What am I “pledging allegiance to?” A country that Dr. King called the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” I don’t even believe in the concept of nation-states! So people “congratulating” me felt really strange. It didn’t feel like cause for celebration for me.

But as I walked home, I bumped into a community member who is mono-lingual Spanish speaking and does not have US papers. I told him what had just happened to me, and he was overjoyed. His entire face lit up, and he literally could not have been happier for me.

And it did hit me. The privilege I have of even having complicated feelings about it at all. For so many people in this country, it is not complicated. Their status means that they could get deported any day. That they could get separated from their families any day. That their entire lives could get upended any day.

And now, I don’t have to worry about that. I never have to worry about getting deported – and that is an incredible privilege not shared by so many people.

My main reason for finally going through with this was my legitimate fear of getting deported – under Trump, and under the draconian policies of Project 2025. And that is an incredibly unfortunate reason for anyone to apply for citizenship. However, I cannot deny the incredible privilege, for which I do find a ton of gratitude in.

While my many complex feelings about this remain, I am also practicing simply being with that gratitude, and committing to utilizing this newfound privilege to fight as best as I can to defend those who do not have such privilege.

The Delusion

While the removal of the fear of getting deported is very, very real, I also realized throughout this whole process how much of a delusion things like citizenship and nation-states are.

At the start of my interview, my interviewer asked me to stand and hold up my right hand. She asked me, “do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god?” After repeating the mantra I am supposed to respond with (“I do”), she told me I could sit back down.

What does this silly little ritual do? How is it that she can trust my words now anymore than she could have 10 seconds earlier? It's all just theatrics—performative gestures wrapped in tradition that we collectively agree to pretend give them meaning.

The same could be said about the entire concept of citizenship: a construct that decides who belongs where, who gets to cross an imaginary line, and who doesn’t. It’s all made up, but these arbitrary systems still shape the course of our lives in very real ways. The absurdity is almost laughable—until you realize how much pain and division they can cause.

Even more strange than “do you swear to tell the truth” thing was the actual oath to become a citizen. It is the final step in the process, where we have to stand, face the American flag and repeat these words.

At the end, the person leading the ceremony says, “congratulations, you are all now US citizens!!!” and we all cheer and celebrate. Somehow, us saying these magical words changes so much in the material realm. We can not only vote, but we are now able to travel freely to many more countries, do not have to worry about getting deported, and our entire identity changes.

But on a deeper level, nothing changes just because we said some series of words. I am still the same person, standing in the same government building.

This whole process revealed to me just how much of our world is shaped by shared delusions. Words, rituals, and symbols—all of them carry power only because we collectively agree to let them. Citizenship is no different. It is not a universal truth; it’s a human invention, a story we all choose to believe in. A few sentences spoken in front of a flag transform you from "outsider" to "insider," granting rights and privileges that are otherwise denied. It's the adult version of a childhood game where someone shouts, "You can't play unless you say the secret password!" Only, in this case, the stakes are infinitely higher.

And as we imagine another Trump presidency, it is disturbing knowing how many of our communities will suffer, how many people will be mistreated, how many lives will be upended based on this delusion.

In the end, the ritual didn’t change who I am. But it does change how the world perceives me, and in turn, how I get to move through it. The delusions may be silly, but they are also profound, shaping lives and fates in ways we can’t ignore. My hope is that by naming the illusion, we can start to imagine a world where our shared humanity matters more than the lines we draw on maps or what color our passport is.

As naïve as it may be, I’ll side with John Legend and choose to image that world.

I will share some updates about what my need is, followed by the generosity I have received. My intention is to share this kind of update every quarter or so. Click here to read why I do this.

My Need

For the first time in over two decades, I find myself without a full-time salary. Which is scary and exciting. Here are a few highlights to give you a sense of my current financial need.

• In May of this year, I began a three-month leave to prepare for the birth of my first child (who was born May 7th!).

• We purchased a new (used), more child friendly car before our baby was born.

• I began working again at the end of July. However I am trying to work 3 to 3.5 days a week to continue to be able to be with my expanded family.

• My partner and I pay a mortgage on a small, two-bedroom house in Oakland.

• My elderly mother moved in with us a little over a year ago. We largely support her financially, including covering all of her bills.

• My partner is very slowly starting to work again, but I am mostly the main income earner for a family of four.

• We occasionally find ourselves supporting other members of our family who are in need.

• Our house is very old, and is in need of consistent repair and maintenance. We have not had a working heater in three-years. But now with my mother and a baby in our home, we will need to install a heat pump this year - something that could cost us $15,000-20,000.

• We plan to take a family trip to Asia in January of 2025, introducing our baby to extended family in Japan and Taiwan. We also plan to take a trip to Florida to visit other family over the December holidays.

• I have a pretty significant contract for this year (more below), but that may no longer be available after the first month or two of 2025.

• I regularly engage in projects for which I get paid nothing to very little. This includes some of my work with incarcerated communities and other grassroots communities who do not have the capacity to pay.

• I make an attempt to redistribute 10% of my income to movements I care about, communities in need and individuals that I support.

Generosity

I am so aware of the incredible generosity that allows me to live comfortably. I feel incredibly lucky and privileged in so many ways.

• I am a resident of Canticle Farm in Oakland - an intentional, multi-generational, multi-racial community of 45+ people living together, building community through the Great Turning and experimenting with the Gift Economy. This means many things, including:

  • Canticle Farm owns half of our home, which means we only had to pay for 50% of it - the only way we would be able to afford to buy a home in the Bay Area.

  • There are many other resources we have access to, including regular communal meals, produce from the land as well as our weekly food distribution program, etc.

  • In addition to those resources, we try to raise our children together and take care of our elders together. So we have perhaps more resources for childcare and elder care than the average family.

• In addition to Canticle Farm paying for 50% of our home, a donor also gave us $100,000 to pay off our portion of the mortgage.

• When I stepped away from work for parental leave, my partner and I held a GoFundMe since neither of us have a salaried job. We were so humbled to receive just over $16,000, which allowed me to not work for three months, and for my partner to still not feel any pressure to work.

• I am a Core Member of Building Belonging, for whom I work 20 hours a week. This contract runs through at least February of 2025, and offers me $50,000. They were generous to offer me 50% pay during my family leave.

• I get regular contracts for workshops and speaking gigs. Some pay nothing (literally), while others pay over $8,000 for one lecture. I have been humbled on more than one occasion recently with the generosity of some of my collaborators.

As I move forward, I plan on providing a more detailed breakdown of my needs and income. This is an ongoing experiment for me, as I am still in discernment about what information I share, and how much of it is actually useful to you - my community. I welcome any feedback you may have about what it is like to receive this information, what questions come up for you, and what other information may be helpful for you to see.

Thank you for reading!!!

Someone once told me that they know more about their friend’s sex lives than they do about their finances. And I think that’s generally true for most people.

Talking openly about our finances is incredibly taboo. And I have to admit, it feels really vulnerable.

When I’ve been with organizations that are committed to the Gift Economy, we have openly shared our budget and our finances. But now that I am trying to make it outside of the nonprofit-industrial-complex, continuing to practice this means I have to share my personal finances. And that feels so much more edgy.

But it is important to me. So my intention is to share about my finances on this site roughly every quarter.

My hope in this is two-fold.

First, I feel like being transparent about my finances keeps me accountable to the values that matter to me most. Not just the value of transparency itself, but other values like simplicity, sustainability, community and intentionality. In the world that we live in, it’s all too easy to slip into the capitalist mindset of more, bitter, faster, newer. Without intentional practices, it’s easy for me to start to mindlessly shop for things I don’t need, start to desire things I shouldn’t have and start to feel disconnected from my truest values.

One of my favorite quotes is from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, who said “we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” While I may have values that are in contradiction to those of capitalism, consumerism and individualism, they are the dominant paradigm that I have been raised in. It is how I have been trained. So I need practices like this to keep me honest. It is part of my training - a practice in reorienting myself to a different set of values.

Secondly, financial transparency is a necessary part of the information flow and feedback process in the ecology of the Gift Economy. Without it, it is hard to gauge how one might want to interact with the system.

When I was first learning about the Gift Economy, David Foecke, a board member at East Bay Meditation Center and the first person who taught it to me, told me that telling people to “pay what they can” is not how the Gift works. It doesn’t provide enough information to the giver to support their discernment in what might be a good amount for them to give.

In workshop spaces, when I have simply told people to give what they can, I’ve noticed that sometimes this causes people anxiety because they have no idea what a good amount might be.

David told me that when Buddhist monastics walk around the village asking for alms (traditionally, Buddhist monastics would go begging for their food everyday, and would only eat what was given to them), they would walk around with a large bowl. This way, the villagers could see how much food that monastic already had for the day. This information would help them discern if they want to give more to them, save some for the next monastic that might walk by, or simply keep the food to feed their own family.

He also taught me that, because we are all conditioned by capitalism to “look for the best bargain,” even those with good intentions tend to give the smallest amount possible that doesn’t make them feel guilty. This does not create sustainability. But when the recipient is transparent about what their need is, the giver is able to use that information to discern how much they may want to give, rather than being driven by their habituated and unconscious patterns.

None of this is a perfect system, since the way I am utilizing the Gift Economy is to act as a bridge between the world we live in now (a capitalist system), and the world I want to live in (a world fully in the Gift). However, I hope that if I can continue to do my best to practice these principles, we will move ever so closer to that world.

I’ve had long periods where I have not engaged with social media at all. It is not a coincidence that those times are also times in my life where I have been more present and less anxious. There was a time that I thought I would get off social media altogether and never look back.

But over the course of the last couple of years, I have become even more disillusioned than ever with the nonprofit industrial complex. I have worked exclusively in the nonprofit “sector” since I was 21-years old. After decades of experience, even with more radical organizations playing around with alternative organizational structures, I am convinced that nonprofit organizations are a part of modernity, and it is no longer a system that I want to tie my life and livelihood to.

So, I have decided to take the plunge and try to chart my own way, outside of by-laws and corporate charter. And in making that decision in 2024, I have to accept that utilizing social media is pretty much a necessity. Sigh…

Regardless of my own feelings about social media, I can’t ignore the reality that this is where the vast majority of the world is, and if I want to engage with the world, I have to have some relationship to it.

However – I can still make intentional choices about how I want to engage with a technology that I am convinced is a net-negative for the world. I do not, in any way believe that social media platforms are a neutral technology that can used for good or bad. I believe that they are tools of capitalism that is designed to be addictive, fuels isolation, cultivates polarization, escalates anxiety and creates a society that is less mindful.

My hope is that by outlining a few commitments I am making about how I will engage with it, it will give me some accountability to myself, as well as transparency for those who may be connected with me on social media. These are not meant to be hard and fast rules, so I may not always follow them, but I hope for them to be a guide for me as I utilize these tools.

Commitment #1: I will not post about my personal life. While the line between what is “personal” and what is “professional” is very blurry for someone like me, my intention is to use social media for my work.

While social media may help distant friends and family stay connected, it’s hard to deny that it has also fostered a more isolating society, where we may have thousands of friends but few who’d bring us soup when we're sick.

My commitment is to prioritize building, strengthening and maintaining personal relationships in real life and away from any algorithms that predetermine for me what updates from whom I should see.

Commitment #2: I will post mindfully about my work. My intention of staying on social media is to share my work with people. But even with that, I always want to pause and reflect on the “why” of each post. Is the post necessary? What is my intention behind the post? Am I looking for “likes” and external validation, or do I genuinely think that sharing this will be a service in some way?

My social media profiles are tools to get the word out. My profile is not me. I want to be very clear about that distinction, and not mindlessly post about something just because I can. I will not assume that the whole world wants to know every little thought I am having.

My commitment is to always pause and be clear about the intention behind each post, and to use my platform with care for myself and for everyone who is using social media.

Commitment #3: I will not post about current events. I may share blog posts I write about things that are happening in the world, but I will not share links to news articles unless I feel like it is critically important.

This is because I believe there is real danger in so many people going to social media for their news. We increasingly get our news from narrow echo-chambers that only push us further into division and reinforce bias. I encourage people to get their news from places like Allsides or ZZZ, that specializes in providing news from across the political spectrum.

Social media is also a place that is filled with misinformation. From misreporting and out-right conspiracy theories to outdated articles and attention grabbing headlines that creates confusion, it is clear that social media has not made our society more aware of reality as it is.

My commitment is to not perpetuate division or misinformation by being more mindful of my social media “share” trigger.

Commitment #4: I will not scroll mindlessly. Most of us scroll through our feeds almost unconsciously. Which means that we are giving our minds and consciousness over to algorithms built to keep us addicted.

When we scroll mindlessly, we give up power and agency. We give up presence. We give up what’s right in front of us, on the other side of that screen.

My commitment is to use social media as a tool, one that I control and not the other way around. This means that I will most likely not be monitoring comments, responding to tags, etc.   

Commitment #5: I will rarely be in the comments.

This is related to commitment #3. I intend to use social media to share information about my work, and not as something that replaces actual dialogue and relationship building.

Social media, let’s all acknowledge, is also the worst place in the world to engage in any sort of conflict. As tempting as it may be to jump into the fray of the latest twitter debate, conflicts on social media always seem to be disconnecting and reductive, with a complete lack of nuance and empathy.

My commitment is to rarely engage in back-and-forth conversations in the comments, and almost never in conflicts.

Commitment #6: I will post this blog in the comment of each of my social media posts. This will remind me of my commitments each and every time I post something. I hope this constant practice will help to build healthy social media muscles.

Because I will be posting more than I have been in recent months, I want to be transparent about why and how I will be on these platforms.

I hope that these commitments can help to make transparent why you may not see me replying to your comments, engaging in conversations or responding to direct messages on social media apps. If you’d like to get a hold of me, please look for me in the real world, call me, send a text message or reach out to me via this website.

Hope to see you in the real world!

I have to be honest, I am a little surprised to be here. For the longest time, I thought that I would never create a personal website. While I’ve been grateful and humbled to have the successes I’ve had in my life and work, I’ve also tried my best to de-center myself and not make it about me. I’ve tried my best to lift up the organizations, movements and communities that I’ve been a part of.

I always felt like having my own website would turn the spotlight directly on me as an individual, and feed my ego in a way that I felt uncomfortable with.

However, two things have shifted in the last few years for me and I’ve decided to change course.

First: I’ve decided that I no longer want to be an employee of an organization as part of my core identity.

After working in nonprofits for close to 25-years and running my own organization for 10, this is a huge shift. But it’s one that I have been thinking about for years.

I have become more and more disillusioned by the nonprofit industrial complex. And while my last experience with an organization attempted to build radically different systems that were grounded in our values, I was amazed at how powerful the momentum is towards hierarchy. I was humbled by how easily our habitual patterns of domination, professionalism and bureaucratization can creep in and take over our commitment to collectivism, relationship and emergence.

About 18-months ago, I had the honor of being a guest for a couple of nights at Engaku-Ji, a nearly 800-year old Zen monastery in Japan. I had the opportunity to sit with Rōshi Yokota Nanrei, the head abbot there, and he told me something unexpected.

Engaku-ji is a beautiful site. Nestled in the beautiful and historical mountainside of Kamakura, it is considered to be one of the most important temples in Japan. A complex that actually houses 18 different temples, it is being proposed to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sitting inside one of it’s ancient tea houses, Rōshi Yokota told me, “I think we should burn this temple to the ground.”

He went on to explain that at some point, a temple becomes so large that the monastics spend so much time maintaining the structures and lose site of the purpose – the practices that are supposed to be happening inside of the temple. In fact, the temple, now both a famous pilgrimage and tourist site, becomes a hindrance to the practice.

“We should burn this to the ground and be reminded why we practice,” he taught.

I realized in that moment that I got too comfortable. The structure of the nonprofit made my life easy, and I was no longer challenging myself to be in the practice.

Decades earlier, when I was a teenager living in a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, I had a fantasy to give up all my worldly belongings except for the clothes on my back and my prayer drum, and just walk around Asia drumming and praying. To give myself fully to the practice and live in unwavering faith that if I stayed true to my path, the universe will get me to where I am meant to go.

I have not given up my worldly possessions. Far from it. However, I realized that I wanted to be in a deeper practice again. I realized that while its nice having a salary and the safety of working in an institution, I actually don’t feel free when I am bound by workplans, by-laws and corporate charters, when my accountability is to a Board of Directors rather than to spirit.

I wanted the freedom to do my work, to fulfill my vocation, and to be guided by intuition. And the weight of a nonprofit wasn’t allowing me to do so.

Of course, I want to embark on my own personal journey in a way that is responsible and accountable. Which brings me to my second shift:

Two: I want to own and be transparent about leadership.

I’ve always been challenged by leadership. It’s something I’ve never sought, and always feel uncomfortable with. But I also realized that whether I admit it not, I do have a platform, however small it may be. I do have people who follow my work. And not talking about it can actually push the power that comes with it into the shadows. And when power exists in the shadow, it can seep out in unskillful ways.

I want to relate to whatever leadership, power and platform I have in ways that are transparent and accountable, intentional and hopefully skillful. And I can’t do that if I keep pretending that it’s not there.

I remember this being a real challenge during the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement continued to say that it was a “leaderless” movement, but of course in reality, large groups of people can never organize without some people playing leading roles. People who knew how to put up camps, facilitate meetings and organize groups of people were obviously part of the movement.

The idea that the movement “had no leaders,” while coming from a place of good intention, created a toxic situation where there was no transparency about who had power, and therefore there was no way for accountability to happen either.

Humility is an important value for me. And… so is transparency and accountability. I realize that being transparent about the reality that I have a platform is not in contradiction to trying to walk in the world in ways that humble me.

Owning that a lot of the work I do is “my” work is not about ego (at least I hope it is not. That is something I will have to be in ongoing discernment about). It is about learning not to hide behind an organization, and trying to be even more intentional about how to be in relationship to whatever power I have.

After 25-years doing nothing but social change work, I feel like I have something to give. I want to follow my calling, and do work that I feel inspired by – not what anyone else tells me to do.

There is incredible privilege is being able to do this. Most people don’t get to follow their heart’s calling and at the same time survive in a capitalist world. I feel incredibly privileged. And I want to continue to utilize that privilege in ways that are transparent and accountable.

So here we are. Me taking the plunge to chart my own course. It’s humbling, scary, exciting and I have no idea what’s going to come of it. But I’m grateful that, if you are reading this, to some end you are along for the ride.