Stay Strong In the Middle!
Hope is a conscious effort.
Hi, it’s me.
Two summers ago when Bryan was going through chemo for colon cancer, we invested in a couple of inflatable stand-up paddle (SUP) boards for something fun to do during a season that was otherwise feeling dark and twisty. At the time, I was also going through physical therapy after an osteoarthritis diagnosis in my knee, and was beginning to feel strong and pain-free for the first time in five or six years.
At first I paddled around Green Lake straddling the board, then on my knees. The first time I stood up and held my balance was a victory of physical healing and emotional resilience. I did it! I had persisted in my strength training and overcame obstacles to leaving the house, things I struggled with doing in a swirl of depression, pain, muscle weakness, and undiagnosed Inattentive ADHD.
As I stood on my SUP in the middle of the lake, still a little wobbly and barely holding my balance, I saw a woman paddling nearby with a young boy sitting on the front end of her SUP.
“First time!” I yelled with excitement at the random stranger, wobbling again as I broke my focus.
“Stay strong in the middle!” she shouted back in the sweetest, clearest, most encouraging voice.
I nearly fell off but managed to stick it, holding my paddle horizontally to balance.
“Stay strong in the middle!” she shouted again, patting her tummy and slightly bending her knees to show me.
I did as she demonstrated, clenching my butt cheeks, tucking in my toosh, and slightly bending my knees—instant stability.
The woman waved and continued paddling across the lake, gliding steadily even with a passenger on board.
Her voice continues to echo in my head to this day, morphing itself into a mantra: “Stay strong in the middle!”
Generally, the middle sucks. There are too many unknowns in the middle!
The middle of cancer.
The middle of unemployment.
The middle of a constitutional crisis.
Is this going to end as a drama, comedy, or tragedy?
Who knows! We’re still in the middle!
I hate the middle.
It’s like the scene when Han Solo is frozen in carbonite, and I’m thinking to myself, “How the hell did I get to Cloud City in the first place?!”
But the reality is, every story has a beginning, and a middle, and an end. It’s not always going to be this way. I forget this sometimes and live with the dread that things will never change.
Like, is it always going to be hotter than the face of the sun? Is it always going to be raining? Is it always going to get dark at 4:00?
Is my body always going to hurt this much? Will I ever stop crying? Am I always going to feel this intense despair?
While in the middle, I just assume that yes, I will always feel this way, and metaphorically lie down in the street. It’s my cute but toxic Eeyore trait.
We’ve been here before.
I recently finished listening to the audiobook of Heather Cox Richardson’s, Democracy Awakening. It’s an excellent, easy-to-digest refresher on American history and our nation’s longtime struggle between individual vs collective power. I highly recommend it, even if you subscribe to her daily newsletter.
Democracy Awakening puts our current political moment in the context of a much larger story, one that reminds me we’re probably still in the middle, not at the end, of democracy. We've been to the brink before and managed to claw our way back.
But in recent decades, we’ve taken our political stability for granted and our hope muscle has atrophied.
For those of us not accustomed to experiencing oppression or threats against our personal freedom—who don’t get racially profiled, who don’t live paycheck to paycheck, whose life choices are not questioned or judged based on our cultural identity—this new reality might feel disorienting. We might feel a bit wobbly, standing in the middle of the lake, looking around for someone else to tell us what to do and how to feel stable again.
“Stay strong in the middle!”
I’m shouting this at you, right now and always. And I need you to say it back to me, loudly and often. It’s up to all of us to build our physical strength and emotional resilience, to clench our butt cheeks and bend our knees, to strengthen our hope muscle and holler across the lake to someone else who’s wobbling.
In her book, Richardson writes:
Lincoln made it clear that those who wanted the right to self-determination had always had to struggle—and would always have to struggle—against those who wanted power. “The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself,” he said. “No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
When Lincoln said those words in 1858, it was not at all clear his vision would prevail. But he had hope because, after decades in which they had not noticed what the powerful were doing to destroy democracy, Americans had woken up. They realized that the very nature of America was under attack. They were divided among themselves, and at first they didn’t really know how to fight back, but ordinary people quickly came to pitch in however they could, using the tools they had. “We rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach—a scythe—a pitchfork—a chopping axe, or a butcher’s cleaver,” Lincoln recalled. Once awake, they found the strength of their majority.
Friends, we’re still in the middle! Even if you’re just waking up to the current reality, even if you don’t know what to do, even if you can’t see how the story will end, we all have tools within our reach—words, a voice, money, connections, a platform, the ability to open doors—to fight using the strength of our majority. All of it matters when we pool our resources together.
“Stay strong in the middle!”
Whisper it to your neighbor, your friends, and your family like a secret password of solidarity and hope. Spread the word that we don’t have to accept that democracy is over. Hope is a conscious effort. If we’ve been enjoying a passive hope, now is the time to summon it.
Thank you, Encouraging Lady on Green Lake, for giving me a new mantra. You stay strong in the middle, too, wherever you find yourself.
Until next time,
Jen
What Now?
Stay strong, stay loud, stay together.
Do not normalize!
For a jolt of inspiration, find somewhere to watch the documentary The Last Class, featuring Robert Reich’s last semester of teaching at university. Or watch Jodi Kantor’s 2025 commencement speech to Columbia University graduates.
Support the next generation of activism! Our twenty-somethings are out there engaging local politics and issues that will have a lasting impact for their futures. “We need young people with fresh ideas and energy. If we expect to win votes back, it’s not going to be with the same ideas and people of the past.” - Nicholas Fandos on The Daily podcast, June 24, 2025 (listen on NYT website or Spotify).
What’s happening in my garden this week
Yay for paddleboarding! We should have a Substack meet-up in the middle of Green Lake next time :)
This is amazing, Jennifer. Such a good and hopeful mantra to adopt.