About Stay Human - Shape Tomorrow
Interrupt Overwhelm and Build Resilience
My bestselling civic resilience toolkit Staying Steady 2.0: Practical Tools to Interrupt Overwhelm While Building Endurance and Defiance Under Authoritarian Assault, gives you over 75 pages of practical tools for facing authoritarian assault. Hundreds of satisfied buyers, 100% 5-star reviews. Pay what you want pricing to stay accessible. Short practices you can use in five minutes when shame, paralysis, or fog take hold. Stop spiraling, protect connection, build endurance and defiance.
One buyer said, “I’ve been so overwhelmed this past year with Trump back in office. I’m very active in resistance but it’s been getting harder to keep focused and hopeful. This toolkit is exactly what I needed. I told everyone in my local Indivisible group to get one and we are now working through it together as a group. It helps us be stronger and more grounded for the long fight ahead.”
What I Do
My work clusters roughly into these buckets:
Helping people stop blaming themselves for hardships they didn’t cause.
Helping people cultivate the steadiness to build and protect what matters: care, community, power.
Helping people find their place in a story of enduring social conflicts and shared joys that started long before them and continues long after.
Helping people figure out how to both survive and thrive during these times.
We’re figuring this out together. I don’t have all the answers. What I do have is decades of practice convening people to sit with hard problems until something gives — and a deep belief that the people in the room always know more than they think they do.
Who This Is For
This is for you if you’re tired.
Tired of feeling crazy when you’re seeing clearly. Tired of doomscrolling. Tired of resistance culture that mistakes exhaustion for commitment. Tired of being told meditation and self-help wellness fluff will fix the results of systemic assault.
You want to thrive, not just survive. You want to navigate this with others.
This is for people who refuse to be broken by things designed to break them. People who want to see more clearly and build what matters.
How I Work
My work synthesizes decades of training and expertise with what I’m learning from thousands of readers and consulting clients navigating authoritarian assault in real time. I start with what people are actually experiencing, then build helpful practices and tools matched to those conditions. Continuous feedback lets me adapt and improve practices as conditions shift.
About Me
40+ years: contemplative practice, community organizing, systems analysis, world-renowned policy scholarship, university professor, building community-based programs. MSW, PhD. Recovery survivor. Married to an immigrant. Struggling with aging and health issues in our crazy health ‘care’ system. Not writing from safety—figuring this out from inside the same fight you’re in.
I was fired three weeks before Christmas, 2024 for refusing to shut up about Trump targeting federal workers. I launched this blog soon thereafter. It’s my way of pitching in, standing in solidarity with you all, doing my part to help build a progressive future with justice, equity, security, and care.
What You Get
Free: Posts, Strategic Mindfulness audio practices, podcast discussions with readers and experts, Live Video commentaries.
Paid: Group Zoom meetings with me, join Substack group discussions, comment on posts and Live Videos.
Tools & Resources: A growing collection of free downloads and pay-what-you-want toolkits at my Payhip store:
Staying Steady: Practical Tools to Interrupt Overwhelm and Build Capacity Under Authoritarian Assault. 60 pages, 7 Practices, assessments, worksheets, advice, solidarity. Pay What You Want pricing keeps it accessible.
The Defiance Prayer
A reader favorite:
The Bottom Line
They want us isolated, reactive, exhausted, doubting ourselves.
We’re getting smarter together. Building skills. Staying human. Shaping tomorrow.
Join us.
Also Check Out My Other Blog…
Writing for Social Impact. For writers who want their work to help people—and help pay a few bills.
I cover three things: the craft of clear, persuasive writing; the practical use of AI and other tools; and the real economics of earning money as a values-driven writer.
Expect interviews, case examples, and candid talk about pricing, publishing, and building an audience without selling out.
This isn’t a tips blog about writer’s block or finding your muse. It’s a working space for writers who want to combine purpose, skill, and income in a sustainable way.
