Building bridges of connection
*Originally published in my January 2026 Newsletter
Ooof. Is it just me or does every day feel like a punch in the gut these days?
Each moment, each headline, seems to usher in a new outrage, a new crisis, a new shocking display of racism, bigotry, misogyny, queer- and transphobia, cruelty, violence, apathy, distraction, finger-pointing, absence of accountability, shameless greed...
Each moment we are handed another heartbreak.
The firehose of endless calamity has us feeling so overwhelmed that we don’t even know where to begin. How do we heal our broken world?
The answer, I believe, lies within our broken hearts.
In the wise words of Fredrich Buechner:
Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meet.
When Fernanda rescued little Bruno, an 11-lb Chihuahua mix, from the streets of Cabo San Lucas, he was a scrawny, sickly little scrapper - flea-ridden, eating garbage, suffering from numerous infections, and terrified of people. She nursed him back to health, neutered him, and loved him back to life. Over and over, Fernanda has made this her mission, the thing she does to make change in her part of the world. She has decided that she can live with less, so that these animals can have more. Every spare peso she has goes to food, veterinary care, rehabilitating, and travel supplies and expenses to re-home these doggoes and kitties with families in Canada. And of course, adjusting to the cold climate requires purchasing sweet little sweaters like Bruno’s Rasta serape!
On my return from my and Victoria’s wondrous Embody the Elemental Retreat in the Baja, I committed to do one small thing, ignite one small spark: I volunteered to accompany Bruno from Los Cabos to Victoria. Fernanda and her Canadian compatriot, Kris, assumed all the arrangements with Westjet so that Bruno could travel with me in the cabin (bigger animals are transported in cargo) and offered to reimburse me for any additional costs such as baggage and immigration fees (I declined). All I had to do was be his “flight angel” and deliver him to his new doggy mama, who met me at the airport. To see his little wagging tail when he was united with Roberta was the reminder I needed that each of us, two-legged or four-legged creatures, deserves to hold joy and hope, even in these most harrowing of times.
We cannot do it all.
We cannot solve it all.
We also cannot live each day as though our efforts are useless.
What we can do is choose the thing that breaks our heart the most and do that. Let’s transform that which breaks our hearts into the spark that kindles our flame.
