Good trouble

I met a woman whose husband passed after a long and brutal illness. I encountered her in the liminal space between things-no-longer-being-the-awful-but-familiar-same and things-not-yet-having-changed-enough-for-there-to-be-less-pain. It’s where people so often exist after loss, sometimes for a long time. 

I asked her about her life before it became small and constrained by hospitals and dying. 

The woman had stories. Adventure, activism, motherhood, social work, fervent learning, getting her hands dirty. I told her I was amazed. Intimated and inspired.
I asked her:  What is the secret.
And she told me:  Just be willing to get in trouble now and then.

She died recently, I learned. 

I wish I could tell her how often I think of her, that she gave me something to carry forward. However the soul— that indestructible energy of spirit— lives on, may some of hers live on in me and what trouble I get in. 

This crucial and cresting moment in our country, our world, is begging all of us to be willing to get in some good trouble. So let us stretch ourselves; let us take chances and make moves— in the name of justice and freedom.
In the name of life.