I often think about how so many people report feeling like time shifted in weird ways during 2020 and how, six years later (?!?), we’re all still kind of processing.
Did pieces of us get stuck back there?
Or, in some strange way, do you also feel like maybe we are returning?
I don’t know much about how to jump or skip timelines. The most I can offer I gleaned from watching “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” which is that the person who fails THE MOST in the multiverse is actually THE ONLY person who can save it from collapse! While I love this angle, particularly as one with a strong personal history of failing quite often, it doesn’t quite capture the feeling of return I’m trying to highlight.
I think about something a professor said about me to one of my friends in 2008. She noted, “The thing about Cori is that wherever she’s going, she’s already there.”
Surely this story would have faded into the irretrievable depths of my memory if I didn’t bring it up so frequently, but I wouldn’t bring it up so frequently if it didn’t feel so uncanny all the time.
Like, now. This is one of those times.
There have been several strange convergences lately that are looping me back to 2020.
In this update (which was almost two weeks ago), I mostly talked about two things I was simultaneously focusing on during the first two weeks of March 2026. First, a deep exploratory dive into what it means to be a good follower. Second, what it was like reviewing an applicant pool of people practicing liberatory leadership. There was also a third theme that emerged, which I will return to again at the end of all this, which is the theme of faith.
Good followers.
Liberatory leaders.
Faith.
If you’re interested in what I actually said about those three things, I hope you watch/listen to the recording. Because for this little write up, I want to process the (potential?) time jump that folded back onto 2020 related to all three things, at least as I experienced it. Perhaps there is a mystery unfolding in real time. Just in case, I want to make note of it.
Wherever we’re going, are we already there?
The first thing that caught my attention was when I heard March 13, 2026 would land on Friday the 13th, and that the last time we had a Friday the 13th in March, it was March of 2020.
Friday the 13th in March of 2020 was the last day before the COVID “lockdown” in the United States. I was supposed to be on my way to Los Angeles, but a few days prior I canceled those travel plans out of an abundance of caution, even though we hadn’t been issued a stay at home order just yet.
Rather than leaving Colorado for California, I was leaving my place of work after our last staff meeting to work from home for a couple of weeks (or so we thought). I loaded office plants into my car and shouted over my shoulder a strange ‘good bye’ to colleagues.
“This may be how I go mad!”
(What I didn’t know at the time was that I wouldn’t leave my house for nearly a year and half, I would never return to work in that office, and I would, indeed, go a little mad. More on that here.)
Madness, however, isn’t the weird thing that loops back into 2026. (I’m still mad, as we all should be by now.) The weird thing is related to why I was planning to go to California in the first place.
That weekend in March of 2020, I was supposed to give a sermon on love and social justice at a Unitarian church near LA. I was excited for the trip because I wanted to weep at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, like I do every time I commune with the west coast shoreline. But I was also excited because it was the first and only time I had been invited to give a sermon, and that felt like a potentially significant experience because of something that happened back in 2008.
Let’s do some more time travel.
You might recall that 2008 was another notoriously rough year — “The Great Recession” hit. Housing bubbles broke, banks were bailed out, and millennial college students like me were graduating with extremely limited job prospects, especially for those of us who majored in philosophy.
To add irony on top of economic collapse, my senior capstone seminar was focused on “work.” Our professor — who I really did not like then and am still petty enough to explicitly note that I still don’t like now — had us read “What Color is Your Parachute,” the 1970’s self-help book intended for job-seekers to find their most suitable career path.
Beyond consistently butting heads with the man facilitating this excruciatingly underwhelming educational experience whose politics were as offensive as his lack of philosophical depth (these are probably related), I deeply resented this assignment. What a way to say, “Well, kids, you were foolish enough to major in philosophy so take this personality assessment to identify a more feasible direction for your professional life.” I thought I was on my way to being a philosopher! Now I have to take some outdated quiz where ‘philosopher’ likely isn’t even a listed option?
Unfortunately for my grudge, that dumb book presented one of the most interesting anecdotes of my young life that resurfaces for me almost as frequently as the notion of being “already there.”
Apparently, the colors of my parachute predicted compatible careers for me to be that of a photographer, teacher, chef, or writer. However, the most surprising and memorable result was definitely ‘religious guru/cult leader.’ I’m not a religious person and the connotations of cult leader aren’t the greatest, but in parachute terms, that might be just a few shades away from ‘philosopher,’ so maybe I was already on the right path after all…
Back to the present/past timeline.
Of course I was disappointed when I had to cancel that 2020 trip to LA and bypass my first opportunity for giving a sermon, but life has funny ways of unfolding. Six years later, on Friday the 13th of March 2026, I was feverishly writing and preparing to make good on my second-ever invite to give a sermon at the Unitarian church in Fort Collins, CO. Uncanny, right? It is weird!
(It was a good experience for which I’m very grateful. You can catch my main message about being a good follower by following the lead of those who know what it takes to get free here.)
And do we know what liberatory leadership looks like?
While writing that sermon during the first two weeks of March, I was simultaneously reviewing grant applications for a fund specifically designed to invest in the liberatory leadership of women, girls, and gender expansive people of color in Colorado. It’s a heavy lift for everyone involved, but it’s one of the most inspiring and encouraging committees to serve on. From the staff and committee members themselves to all the applicants who share insights into their work — this is a roll-call of nothing but brilliant, passionate, and committed community leaders.
When the world feels heavy, I strongly recommend looking toward examples of people who are already doing amazing things, even in these conditions. Not only do these folks show what’s already possible, but it becomes more obvious that we could also collectively direct our energies into making this sort of work easier for annyone already engaged in it.
For me, the element around liberatory leadership is key.
It’s a reminder to do our work from the energy we wish to create, even when existing systems are designed to make that seem impossible. The most impactful projects stem from a commitment to practice what we preach, to walk the walk and do things differently in ways that center values of collaboration, community, care, and knowing what we need. How we go about our work matters, and we are the ones who can and must bring better futures into being.
In full transparency, a couple of years ago at the start of 2024, I was shocked to receive support from this very grant. I never expected it, and of course, the investment in my own work and projects was nothing short of life changing. I created Liberation is Local to learn with others in my local community, which has since given way to Romancing the Revolution. I learned so much about what liberation looks and feels like. And it transformed how I do what I do ever since. (Watch me gush about it here.)
To find the loop back to 2020 on this topic is to acknowledge that six years ago, I was part of the initial framing committee who helped bring the vision for this fund into greater focus. Less than 1% of all philanthropy dollars are used to support women and girls of color (and one must assume even less for trans, non-binary, gender expansive folks of color), let alone with a spirit of trust and desire to invest in their leadership with as few restrictions as possible.
This grant has done so much since then to nurture leaders who are doing amazing things across Colorado. While my connection to the grant itself has taken many forms over the years, it is a profound privilege to be in proximity and collaborate with others who share similar visions and values around how we can better leverage and distribute resources. Of course, it is a profound privilege to materially benefit from this as a grantee, too. It’s true philanthropy and non-profits are generally problematic industrial complexes. However, whether naive or strategic, being so close to efforts that aim to push against norms and shift practices from within those existing systems is an experience that keeps me learning, inspired, motivated, and hopeful.
Systems are maintained by people with decision-making power who make choices. Those are the very people who can also transform those systems by choosing differently. It’s not always easy, and sometimes it can get messy, but I love knowing there are so many people who are at least trying to reshape the conditions of people’s lives, and it is incredible to see many among them truly succeeding.
Finally, faith.
It was a long time coming, but in 2020, I started to speak more openly and candidly about my relationship to faith. The first person to hear about this in depth was Sean Waters, thanks to several hours spent across multiple phone calls that year. While the raw recordings of our conversations have not been published anywhere, they do exist somewhere. I refer back to those conversations in this chat — one of our best — during late 2021.
Maybe it was all the time alone at home during COVID that did it. Or maybe it was watching the world be forced to collectively pause and recognizing everything was already going to be forever changed (maybe there was even a slightly less-than-conscious awareness that such a sudden tilt of our everydayness was perhaps enough to awaken much, much more dramatic revelations on the way).
Internally, something shifted in me significantly enough during the 2020 spring that I even adopted the project of developing my own faith as a priority. Still not religiously, but in a way that probably accords most with how bell hooks describes love by referencing ‘spiritual development.’ For me, (and maybe this is pretty standard across the board) my growing faith was reflected in a deepening relationship with something in which I really believe.
Personally, I believe in wisdom. (Philosophy is often broken down etymologically to be defined as ‘the love of wisdom.’ I wonder how many philosophers, themselves, actually love wisdom enough to truly believe in it…)
I describe wisdom as truth with lineage.
There are myriad channels and traditions that carry truths passed down through generations of people, and these truths, this knowing, these practices, all that wisdom is what animates my belief that things can be drastically different from our present. That anchors my faith it will happen, eventually. We have always had all we need to bring that world into being.
I believe another world is not only possible, but inevitable.
I will likely not live to see this world fully realized — a world without oppression, a whole world that breathes with the loving power of liberation, where all beings live in balance and safety from undue harm, nourished by care, community, culture, and connection, responsibly rooted in the past and future — but I recognize pockets and slices of it every day. I see what is on the way all the time.
Liberation is always possible. Here and now. Yes, even in these conditions.
It happens when we live it, practice it, create it, and become it. To get more free every day, we use our freedom to open up more freedom for others. It’s like a recipe, a simple maxim, really. As Assata Shakur said, “We must love each other and support each other.” We should move in the energy we wish to create.
I have faith in the wisdom that shows us the way.
In that sense, maybe I am a little loose with what I mean by ‘faith,’ at least when it comes to my relationship with it. If faith is a matter of believing in something for which we do not have concrete evidence, that doesn’t exactly apply here.
Liberation is not only possible, it is present, particularly in the actions of those who move with love, from a place of liberation, not driven by fear, but fully in their freedom. Given the current state of things, more likely than not, they actually are oppressed. Sometimes the most oppressed. And that’s precisely why liberation must be understood as far more than the negation of oppression. It’s not merely what exists in oppression’s absence.
Liberation is a reflection of our existential freedom, our will.
We get more free through the choices we make, the actions we take, the ways of our own very being, even and especially in these conditions. Fortunately for us, there is so much wisdom available to guide us in the many examples of people have been, were, and are already in touch with what it means to get free, in spite of everything.
[Note from me, on March 30th, 2026: It’s been nearly two weeks since I recorded the live update. Clearly, writing about it took me way longer than I anticipated and plenty has happened during the time in between.
On the world front, it was the hottest month on record. Israel just passed a law that makes it “legal” for them to execute Palestinians who are unjustly detained in their prisons, all while still terrorizing the West Bank and ethnically cleansing South Lebanon. The United States has been starving Cuba, normalizing the presence of ICE agents in airports, and brazenly touting with typical jingoist bravado about this war on Iran (and it recently has been leaked that the United Nations is allegedly considering a nuclear attack). The Epstein class remains unchecked. Nebraska has been on fire. Hawaii flooded. Around 8 million people marched this past weekend in the third “No Kings” day without a list of clear demands. Oh, and we’re entering a severe global energy crisis and food storage. But that’s not even close to everything significant.
Personally, I’ve been thinking about death a lot. My grandmas. The wild lack of access to decent healthcare in this country, dramatically rising rates of colorectal cancer among young people, what happens when we know we’re going to die, and how something — like an accident or a fall — can suddenly change everything for the worst. Macro and micro. Hospice is still on my mind.
I wish I had it in my to write something profound or thoughtful or honest to conclude. But this month was great and hard and a really heavy lift and I’m tired. So, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. I really appreciate it.]
