Breadcrumbs for the Ones Coming Next: Refusing False Comfort in an Age of Erasure
Hope Infusion Newsletter - June 1, 2025
June is already here, can you believe it?
Lately, I've found myself circling a single question: What stories have I been telling myself about the arc of history and my place within it?
After the emotional whiplash that was May, I found myself in a moment of deep reflection. Not the tidy kind, but the kind that rises up uninvited in the middle of the night, or in this case, while soaking in a bubble bath, thumb-typing through the fog of fatigue.
What follows is not an answer but a poetic reckoning. A reflection shaped by nearly six decades of lived experience, decades that refuse to romanticize the struggle or smooth the jagged truth that history often doubles back on itself. This piece emerged raw, unfiltered, demanding to be shared.
Breadcrumbs For The Ones Coming Next
I've been writing stories and poems since before my thighs met the curve of womanhood, since before I had breasts or ballots, back when my biggest worry was whether anyone at lunch would notice the new words I'd hidden in the margins of my math homework. A few years ago, I found 700+ yellowed pages, chronicling my life from 1979-1983, a time capsule on a garage shelf that remembered who I was before the world told me what parts of myself were disposable. After a thirty-year leave of absence from writing I returned again. Pen on some days. Keyboard on others. Still trying to shape this wretched now into something that defies despair, as if lyrical language could soften the blow of watching history erased in real time. I'm no longer content to pretend that poetic resistance is enough, that framing oppression in metaphor redeems its impact, that fighting today ensures my descendants won't have to fight again tomorrow. Because my parents told themselves that falsehood. So did their parents. And now I, a 59-year-old woman, the first in my family BORN with the right to vote weep often as I watch the same rights they bled for struck down by a signature on a desk far removed from justice. I won't stop writing. I won't stop fighting. But I am done with denial, done with gaslighting, done with repeating mantras about progress while standing in quicksand. I can't speak for all of history, but I can speak for 59 years of it. And six decades demonstrate clearly that the arc doesn't always bend toward justice. Sometimes, it snaps back on itself with the full weight of empire behind it. So no, I won't lie to myself. And I won't let anyone else lie to me. But I will write. Because someone has to leave breadcrumbs for the ones coming next. Not to promise them it will be easier, but so they know they are not crazy, not alone, not the first to see clearly and refuse to forget.
Parting Thoughts
I'm not seeking easy hope, and I won't offer false comfort. What I'm learning is that clarity is its own kind of comfort. To see the truth, name it without shrinking, and still choose to show up with pen in hand? That is no small thing!
If you've ever felt the weight of repeating history press heavy on your chest, you're not alone. And if you've questioned whether your voice still matters in a world intent on erasing memory, I hope this reflection reminds you that your refusal to forget is a form of resistance. Regardless whether or not it changes the world, it changes the record, and sometimes that's exactly where legacy lives.
If you found this post engaging or inspiring I invite you to comment, like, or share. Each small act assists with my ongoing effort to build a burgeoning community of the hope-minded!