I voted in my first midterm election in 2018. I was 36 years old. For the first 16 years I was eligible to vote, I sat the midterms out. I didn't pay attention. I didn't understand how much they mattered. I thought someone else would take care of it. I've learned a lot since then. Including this: Democracy is not something we achieve once. It's something we consent to with our actions every single day. And everything begins at home. With ourselves. Our families. Our friends.

Recently, I stopped myself in the middle of a ritual I've performed since I was a little girl. Scanning. And I don't mean the kind of body scan that somatic practices teach us—the intentional act of moving our awareness from head to toe, noticing sensations and reconnecting with ourselves. It's a 360-degree mental scan of my entire life. Looking for threats. Searching for vulnerabilities. Identifying everything that could possibly go wrong. What I recognize now is that I do t

For a long time, doing it alone felt like freedom. The first 15 years of my career were built inside of systems—and relationships—where my power was controlled by someone else. First, inside of corporate America. Then, inside of the first company I co-founded. I knew what it felt like to have my choices restricted by other people’s authority. To develop my ideas inside structures where they could never be fully realized. To depend on people and institutions for access, resour