I got new glasses in November… they’re pink metal frames and a little louder than my previous pair… I picked them up on a Friday the girls were with their dad, so when I Facetimed them that night was the first time they saw them. Sophia raised her eyebrows and asked, “Are those gonna be your every day glasses?”
I laughed and said “Yes.”
Berkleigh quipped back, “That’s a bold choice.”
I decided that coming from her, it was a compliment. So, when I started thinking about my word for 2026 and an enneagram 6 word list popped up, I noticed myself get a little excited by the word “audacious.” That could be fun!
I started down the process of looking up all the different definitions and the etymology and synonyms…. and this little “Did You Know?” blurb was at the bottom of the Merriam Webster definition…
[…] Since then it has developed several additional meanings, including the closely related “recklessly bold” and “marked by originality and verve,” as in “her audacious new album heralds the future of hip-hop.” Of course, with audacity (another audēre descendent) comes risk that fortune, despite the maxim, doesn’t always favor: as fungi foragers know, there are sagacious mushroomers, and audacious mushroomers, but there are no sagacious audacious mushroomers.
I had to laugh… several years ago my word was sagacious and I struggled to find anything on the modern use of the word… everything told me that it was essentially a dead word, and yet, it was the only word that communicated what I needed out of that year… I embraced the sagacious uprooting of my life… lol. I birthed my private practice in the commitment to hold space for others to do the same… I was committed to the deeply grounded work of spiritual, emotional, and mental discernment.
Not only do I have quite the love affair with sagacity, but I also have quite a deep affection for mushrooms as a part of the network that works in community with the trees to care for one another… This is not that post, but all that to say… it felt like a sign that this is definitely my word.
But here’s the thing about moving from sagacious (keen discernment) to audacious (willingness to take bold risks) when you have very sagaciously uprooted your life and done the work of tending to your roots—the audacity that comes from that rooted place is not reckless and destructive, but strategic and calculated and intentional. It’s the difference between an armed gunman firing a semi-automatic weapon into a crowd versus a a skilled archer with a handful of arrowed quills.
I don’t know about you, but it feels hard to exist in this world these days…. I often find myself in conversations with loved ones expressing the same sentiment—”How are we supposed to just keep working and parenting and living when the world is burning down?” Between the audacity of this administration and the the silent complicity that somehow still hovers like a fog, refusing to allow clarity to breakthrough the cognitive dissonance, it feels impossible to be awake and compassionate and doing anything but screaming in the streets.
And, when the goal is chaos and emotional dysregulation… the only way to fight back is staying grounded and clear—to meet the audacity of tyranny with the audacity of love. I am so grateful for the communities of people around me who know how to do this well and remind me that there is another way… feeding and clothing neighbors; standing watch to be on the lookout and alert neighbors of danger—and to be a witness to terror so that the world cannot look away from what is taking place; joining their voices and hearts in the streets to call out evil and tyranny; to gather for meals, singing, story-telling, laughter and joy; falling in love; raising children who love their neighbors and understand “good trouble”; using their gifts and talents and experience to fight the legal battles; finding creative ways to resist; creating art.
The audacity of love is contagious… and so much more effective than spiritual bypassing. It is so much more than saying “this too shall pass”—it is faith in action. It is believing that in order for this to pass, we must act. We must be the neighbor. We must call out evil. We must demand transparency and accountability. We must choose to audaciously believe that the world can be different than the one we live in and live into that belief.
This is what it means for us as community to live audaciously in this world at this time. We cannot all do everything—we must each identify what is ours. We must ask the questions, “What is mine to do?” “Who is mine to care for?” Resistance looks a million different ways and all of the ways we show up matter.
And what does it mean for me personally to live audaciously in this world after the sagacious uprooting I have tended? It means being so very clear about what is mine to do in this world. In this season in my life, I am focusing on three things:
Audacious parenting. This requires me to center my children. It means I cannot be silent about the issues in the world AND it means that I have to choose safe ways to resist. It means I have to fight for a world that is safe and just to pass on to them. It means I have to resist in ways that teach them clarity around what is right and wrong so that as they grow up to understand the fullness of the battles we were facing, they will be proud of me and know that I was a part of the resistance.
So we talk about what is happening in the world, in age appropriate ways. I share with them about the actions I am taking. I call my senators and congressman to speak out about what I believe is important. I participate in community events where neighbors get together to talk about our common struggles and find solutions together. I stand in the street to protest tyranny and rally for community resistance.
I love my babies fiercely and encourage them to think critically for themselves, ask questions, and even question authority in respectful ways. I give them a safe place to land when the world is too much and encourage play and whimsy. I hold them when they cry and remind them they are loved fiercely and deeply. I teach them to have courageous conversations and advocate for themselves with friends and family—peers and authority. I teach them what a safe love looks like so they can identify anything that is not. I ask them before bed “Do you feel seen? Do you feel heard? Do you feel understood? Do you feel safe” Do you feel loved?” and trust that when they say “no” I’ll hear them and we can work through it.
Audacious healer. This is my work in the world—”the work my soul must have”. It is my job to be a safe place for people to be vulnerable and fall apart—to show all their cracks and remind them they are not broken, or crazy, or alone. It is my work to listen—to what is said and what is left unsaid, to see—to disarm the masks and welcome what is underneath, and to understand—it doesn’t have to be my experience to understand another’s grief and desires and hopes. My work is to hold the mirror for others to see themselves while they dig through their own roots to find what grounds them and what gives them life.
Audacious intimacy. I don’t do surface. I’ve tried—it is so very incredibly boring. It’s what makes social encounters so awkward. I don’t know how to do small talk and not every space warrants depth. I want to know what’s on your heart. I want to know what you’re passionate about. I want to know what scares you and what makes you rage.
It’s what makes relationships in this political climate so incredibly painful, because so much of the atrocities in the world are somehow political and when anything that “feels political” is off the table, there is an absence of intimacy that can’t be filled—a massive hole that holds all of the things we can’t talk about.
It’s also what makes dating so incredibly dreadful. So many people don’t want to be seen. They don’t know how to be known. They don’t know how to take off the mask and bare their soul and risk exposure—and if they can’t do that for themselves, they certainly can’t be trusted as a safe place to be seen or known.
The pastor this Sunday used an illustration in his sermon that hit home on many levels. He said a man asked his mentor why some do the work to seek a deeper faith and others settle for surface level religion. The mentor replied by telling a story about an outing with his dog, where the dog saw a rabbit and went chasing after it. When other dogs saw his dog chasing the rabbit, they joined in—all of them running around in circles, barking up a storm. One by one, the other dogs stopped chasing the rabbit, except his dog, who continued his pursuit.
The man asked his mentor “Why did the dogs stop chasing the rabbit? I don’t understand how that answers my question about seeking a deeper faith.”
He said “You aren’t asking the right question. The right question is, ‘Why did your dog stay in pursuit?’ The answer is that my dog is the only one who saw the rabbit.”
Audacious intimacy is not for the faint of heart. Not everyone is capable of seeing. They’re not interested or capable of depth, vulnerability, and holding space for the fullness of who they are—let alone the fullness of who you are. When it’s absent, the silence is deafening. And yet, when you find it… there is no going back.
I am so incredibly grateful for the relationships where we show up all the way—all of our insecurities, quirks, hopes, fears, struggles, dreams, inconsistencies, questions…
Relationships where we both show up full of curiosity and a fierce love that says,
“I see you. I hear you. I understand. You are safe. You are loved.”
… a safe love where we can hold each other accountable and grow together.
… a courageous love that doesn’t hide—but instead always shows up and says,
“I know you’re scared, I am too, but we can do hard things together.”
These are my people.
Uprooted 