Reading · Someone Should Do Something

On the morning of May 24, 2022, I trudged my way through school drop off with a surgical dressing on my neck. I was nine days post-op from spine surgery and there were only two days left before school let out for the year.

I planned to rest and heal before the chaos of summer break ensued. Instead, I spent the morning reading the news. There was a shooter at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.

A three-hour drive from where I sat alone that morning scrolling, Robb parents were trying to force their way into the school to get to their children.

I reloaded the news waiting for updates on those kids, slowly rocking back and forth in my son’s white nursery chair.

My babies who so recently had spent hundreds of hours with me in that very chair felt—impossibly far away.

In the days that followed, messages from friends and colleagues poured in, all essentially saying, “Someone should do something!” I agreed, but I also felt something else churning in the pit of my stomach.

I read dozens of posts on social media saying, “Thoughts and prayers are not enough!”

“Neither is re-posting that phrase”, I thought. “Why don’t you do something?” I spat at no one.

I was angry at everyone.

Including…

Myself.

Could I have done more?

I knew lashing out was not the answer. Everyone was grieving. So I opened a Google Document and began writing down what I wanted to say. The words spilled out in a barely coherent stream of consciousness. You are someone. We are all someone. Do something.

Eventually my raging thoughts slowed. I refined the sentences I had typed. Within a few hours my rant evolved into an OpEd.

I submitted it to the Austin Chronicle. I felt a rush of dopamine when they accepted it for publication almost immediately. There. Now do something. I metaphorically dusted off my hands.

When the piece ran a few days later, I felt self-satisfied.

My complacency wore off as soon as the DMs on Twitter began though. Now, in addition to hearing from my friends and family, I was getting messages from strangers.

They had read my piece. And they agreed with me.

But they all had a very familiar demand. Someone, they said—

Someone else, they implied—

Should do something.

All day I read messages and tried to thoughtfully reply, growing more frustrated with every carefully worded message.

By 9pm I was exhausted. Rather than go to sleep, though, I was lying in my bed still staring numbly at my phone. With the kids and Jawad already asleep, I was searching for connection in my grief.

Everything I read felt hollow.

From a place of frustration, sadness, and impulsivity, at 9:12pm (12 minutes past my bedtime) I rattled off what I would soon decide was the worst tweet of my life.

Today seems like a good day to start #100DaysofActivism. One tangible action each day for the next 100 days. Small, consistent action towards a better world. I’ll share them here. Who will join me?

I was going to do the thing I was telling other people to do. Take real action.

The next morning I woke up full of regret. I did not have time for this. Besides, wasn’t I already doing enough?

But real people had read my promise. There was no turning back.

Over the next 100 days I squeezed in daily acts of advocacy as I juggled work and mom duties. I put up yard signs, encouraged people to vote, attended rallies, and met with legislators. Even when I questioned everything, I kept showing up, and sharing as I went along.

Slowly, the worst tweet of my life became something else entirely.

By day 100, I had raised my voice in new places and in front of new people, stepped into my power, and learned to be brave in all the ways that matter. I made new friends, found a community, and came to understand that advocacy isn’t the occasional grand act of a hero. Instead, it’s the small choices we make every day to improve the world around us.

In a dark time, through tiny actions, I found hope.

Last week Moments of Zenner wrote something I cannot stop thinking about,

“No my friends, hope is not something to be sought as an end in itself. As the wise activist indicated, it is a byproduct of doing the right thing — in the face of so many evident structural wrongs; in the times when people may be watching, and always also regardless of whether they are, in the times when they’re not. Hope is supervenient on action.”

Hope is not the starting line.

Action is.

Life has felt dark lately.

At 1am last Sunday, I was laying in the hospital call room when a friend from Seattle texted me. We are both hospitalists and therefore awake at weird times, but it was unusual to see her name pop up on my screen at that hour.

She was letting me know she was safe.

She had almost gone to the festival where three people had been killed. She narrowly dodged a mass shooting that had not even crossed my radar.

Massacres now too commonplace to warrant a breaking news update on my phone.

That same night marked 100 days until Midterms. And this feels again like the perfect opportunity to do the right thing. 100 days in a row.

I’m not sure what I will discover this time around—if anything at all—but I know I’ll wake up on November 3rd confident I did everything I could to move us closer to the world I want to create for my kids—and everyone else’s.

I’m not posting my 100 days on social media. Mostly because I accidentally locked myself out of my accounts while at my writing retreat in Portland… and it was actually kind of delightful.

I’m in no hurry to get logged back in.

But here are a few of the things I’ve done so far.

Signed up for a relational organizing meet up
Attended the meet up and promised to recruit others to join! (please join an upcoming training)
Adopted five NC voters with VoteForward
Rotated my Yard Signs
Hosted my mom activism group virtually
Wore one of my (many) campaign t-shirts all day.
Set up a recurring political donation.
Organized and hosted a Civic Co-working group. Join me!
Signed up to write 100 postcards
Bought 100 stamps.
Wrote 15 of those postcards.
Gave a LONG talk on advocacy to a WHOLE BUNCH of pediatric hospitalists.
Gave a shorter talk to a much smaller group of pediatric hospitalists.
Posted my tiny action list on Substack! (Hi!)

I would love to hear what you are doing for the next three months. I need approximately 86 more tiny actions to add to my list.

Please reply or comment with the tiny (or not so tiny) actions you are taking.

Start here!

September 19, 2025

Where some kids go to camp, others spend their summer scrubbing other people’s toilets.

It’s the best place to understand what this is and why it matters.

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The Worst Tweet of My Life

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