If you haven’t watched Episode 50 yet, start here.

In our sister-to-sister chat, Pastor Dr. Manita Fadel, a former pediatrician turned full-time minister, shared her journey through midlife insulin resistance. She described discipline as a spiritual practice and the importance of showing up for your body as you do for your faith. She revealed the joy she finds in stewarding her body through diet and exercise.

Dr. Manita practices what she preaches. We’ve seen it firsthand. She firmly believes disciplines like diet and exercise set her mood, create balance, and give her energy and room to plan each day. That’s because she’s experienced it.

“Eating the right things and doing the right exercise gives you that spark. It gives you that joy….”

We promised to share videos of Dr. Manita’s three-day-a-week strength training routine with our subscribers. Here they are. She has never shared these videos before. These are the real sets from her personal routine. As you use them, we hope they get you started on your journey to experiencing discipline as stewardship.

I’ve been reflecting on America’s 250th anniversary for some time now — turning it over in my mind, trying to name what I feel. Past. Present. Future. Honestly, I’ve come up short on words more than once. I’m not in a celebratory mood. And if I’m being honest about why, it comes down to one elephant in the room: the American Church, and the role we have — or haven’t — played.

Then I read a piece that gave shape to the burden I’ve been carrying. “Working Out the Grand Experiment,” by Justin Giboney — an ordained minister, attorney, and head of the And Campaign — published in Christianity Today. It didn’t resolve my mixed feelings, but it gave them language. I finished it less discouraged than when I started. It’s a piece written with a shepherd’s heart: honest about the Church’s failures but unwilling to let go of hope for what we could be.

A few of his ideas resonate with me.

We’re fighting the wrong battles. Giboney names something painful and true: at the very moment the Church should be leading — on AI’s opportunities and dangers, on the childhood literacy crisis, on the loneliness epidemic driving a war between the sexes — we’re stuck relitigating arguments the abolition and Civil Rights movements already settled. We keep hoping a party or a president will save us, as if government could repair what only healed families and communities can. Meanwhile, on the issues that matter most, we’ve made ourselves nearly irrelevant — spending more energy defending ourselves than confronting evil, more attention on the next election than on our neighbor.

Unity amid difference is our proof of concept — and we’re failing to offer it. America needs to see that common ground is still possible across real difference. That’s supposed to be the Church’s gift to a fractured nation. Instead, too many of us are discipled more by our algorithms than by Scripture, and we end up despising fellow believers over politics and race the same way the Corinthian church tore itself apart over loyalty to Paul or Apollos (1 Corinthians 3:1–4). It’s worth remembering: Jesus deliberately called twelve disciples who disagreed sharply — a zealot and a tax collector at the same table — because following him mattered more than their differences.

We’re called to more than resistance. This is the line that hit me hardest. Every American, of every background, is capable of excellence — not just survival. As Christians, our calling isn’t only to resist what’s wrong; it’s to love, to build, and to help redeem the world we live in. Resistance alone keeps us defined by our grievances. That’s too small a purpose for people who follow a Savior who already overcame the world.

We need both critique and appreciation — held together. Giboney points to two towering witnesses here. Frederick Douglass could call the Constitution a document of glorious liberty in one breath, and expose American Christianity’s hypocrisy as a corrupting lie in the next. Fannie Lou Hamer diagnosed the nation as sick and called the Church to be its doctor. Neither of them chose blind patriotism or blanket cynicism. They held the tension — naming what’s broken while still believing in what could be redeemed. That’s the posture this moment demands of us too.

The real question isn’t what our opponents will do — it’s what God could do through a united Church. That reframe alone is worth contemplating.

Here’s where I land: the Church is more divided today than at any point in its 250 years on this soil. As a Black woman of faith and a bridge builder, that divide breaks my heart daily. There are many reasons for it — history, fear, comfort, algorithms, all of it. But race and racism are major ones. I want to speak directly to my white brothers and sisters in Christ: please don’t look away from the struggles of your Black and brown siblings in the faith. Ask yourself honestly — can you picture the Church as Christ intended it, without all of us fully in it, fully seen, fully heard?

We only move forward together. There’s no version of a whole, healthy Church that gets there any other way. It’s hard work — the kind that requires humility, proximity, and courage in equal measure. But this nation has always been at its best when it dared to imagine something better than what it currently is. If the Church isn’t at that table, united, I worry about what future we’re left imagining instead.

I believe we’re called higher than this. Called to do better. Called to be better. It’s past time we answered.

Read the full original piece: “Working Out the Grand Experiment” by Justin Giboney, Christianity Today.

With you on the journey. 🌿

— Morenike

I came to Juneteenth late.

Growing up as a daughter of both Africa and Black America — my father an immigrant, my mother a child of the segregated South — I spent my earliest years on the African continent. American history was something I inherited in pieces, assembled slowly over time.

Juneteenth became real to me only recently. And when it did, it hit hard.

Here is what I keep reflecting on:

Black Americans endured 400 years of brutal chattel slavery. That alone is almost beyond imagination — the scale of it, how it was woven into law, land, and language.

But then consider this.

President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Freedom was declared. On paper, with the full authority of the presidency behind it.

And yet.

In Confederate-held Texas, enslaved people were told nothing. Two and a half more years passed. Two and a half more years of bondage after freedom had already been promised. Two and a half more years of being told — by silence, by force — you are not worthy of this. You do not get to know.

Not worthy of the news. Not worthy of a history. Not worthy of a future.

I think about that and I don't have words for the cruelty of it.

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On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and read "General Order No. 3." The words were simple. The freedom they announced was long overdue.

250,000 enslaved Black Texans heard them anyway.

And then — this is the part that moves me most — they celebrated.

Not eventually. Not after processing the trauma. Not after the structures of their oppression had been fully dismantled. They celebrated immediately. In churches. At picnics. In their finest clothes, with special foods and drinks and the particular joy of people who had been told they didn't deserve joy and refused to believe it.

For over a century, Black communities kept that celebration alive largely without recognition. Just faithful, persistent, communal memory — passed from generation to generation, held in congregations and family reunions, kept burning because someone always decided it was worth keeping.

Congress finally designated Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021.

But Black America had already been celebrating for 156 years.

If I’m honest, there are moments in this season that feel uncomfortably familiar. Moments when it seems as though we have returned to 1863 — when history is being quietly rewritten, when the stories of Black Americans are being quietly removed from shelves, curricula, and public memory, when the promise of full belonging feels, again, like something being withheld.

A declaration exists. But enforcement is another matter.

I don't say this to spiral into despair. I say it because I think Juneteenth speaks directly, joyfully, to this moment.

Our ancestors did not wait for perfect conditions to celebrate. They did not wait for their freedom to be universally acknowledged before they gathered. They put on their Sunday best and walked into public spaces and said: we are here, we have always been here, and we are not going anywhere.

Every time we gather with purpose, we do the same thing.
Every time we resist the pull toward isolation and cynicism, we do the same thing.
Every time we tell the true story — of suffering and survival, of bondage and celebration — we make it harder to erase.

Our history cannot be completely erased. But it requires all of us to hold it.

That is why I celebrate Juneteenth.

Not just as a federal holiday. Not just as a history lesson. But as an act of defiance and hope — a reigniting of the same flame our ancestors lit in Galveston in 1865, passed forward through every generation that refused to forget.

I came to this story late. But I am here now.

There is too much at stake not to be.

With you in the journey, 🌿

Morenike

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, History.com, National Museum of African American History & Culture, GovInfo, National Park Service

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There's a concept in recovery — in AA, in NA, in most serious healing traditions — that the final step of your own journey is helping someone else. You can't skip to it. You have to do the hard inside work first: the grieving, the naming, the making peace. But when you get there — when you've done enough of your own work that you can hold space for someone else's — something shifts. Your wound stops being the thing that defines you. It becomes the thing that propels you forward.

That’s the arc of Simone Swartz’s life. And it’s the arc of this week’s podcast episode.

Simone is a U.S. Army veteran, author of PTSD and What Helped Me, and co-founder of Service Dog Strong. She survived military sexual trauma in the Army, spent nearly a decade managing the fallout without a name for it, and eventually found her way through a combination of counseling, faith, movement, and a service dog named Gunner who walked her back into the world one public space at a time. Today she advocates globally, writes, coaches, and speaks the truth she wishes someone had spoken to her sooner: PTSD is treatable.

One of the things that stood out most in our conversation was how she reframed the diagnosis itself. Trauma-informed practitioners, she told me, are increasingly using the term post-traumatic injury — not “disorder”. And she relates to that. An injury implies something happened to you. It implies healing is possible. It doesn’t make you a category. It makes you someone who got hurt.

She also said this:

“PTSD is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Your body is just continuing to try to protect you so that one trauma doesn’t happen again.”

The hypervigilance. The disrupted sleep. The inability to fully trust. She named overeating, overworking, over-shopping, being mean to people — all of it as potential signs of unaddressed trauma. Not as moral failures. As protection strategies that have outlived their usefulness.

We also talked about why healing has to be physical, not just cognitive or behavioral. About the documented science behind service dogs and sexual assault survivors — why the bond forms faster, why the dog can interrupt a panic attack faster than medication can. About martial arts as therapy. About faith as the ground that made it possible to believe any of this was worth fighting for or had a purpose.

And I opened up about my own story — something I don’t usually do in this space. It was because Simone made it feel right. And I felt it was the right time. Two survivors in the room, both finding our voices, both choosing to use them.

The episode ends with her vision of the world she’s building toward. I’ll leave you with it here:

“A world where there’s no shade for predators to hide under. Where we’re all at peace with each other, ourselves, and animals.”

Where darkness has no place to hide.

I hope you’ll listen and share it with someone who still thinks PTSD is something that only happens to other people. I hope it reminds you — as it reminded me — that healing is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the mission.

📘 Simone’s book and workbook: ptsdandwhathelpedme.com

🎙️ Listen here

With you in the journey,

Morenike

We were talking about the political fractures in his community — Augusta County, Virginia. People with wildly different worldviews, different fears, different flags in the yard. And I asked him: how do you stay connected when the ideological distance feels impossible?

He said: “When a conversation starts going south, I ask them about their grandma.”

Because everybody loves their grandma. Everybody has a memory of her in the kitchen — canning tomatoes, making bread, some recipe that still lives in the family. Food is where we find our common ground, even when everything else has fallen away.

That is permaculture. That is also the work of belonging.

Ryan came to all of this sideways, the way most of the best things arrive.

He grew up making fun of farmers. He wanted Jordans and basketball courts. He got a Division I scholarship to Loyola, burned out, disillusioned by a coach who told him he was paid to play, not to think. He moved to Hawaii. He got on a surfboard every single day and felt — for the first time — the rhythm of the earth under him. Not domination. Partnership.

From there, through a poetry degree and a chance encounter with the work of Bill Mollison and Dave Holmgren, he found permaculture. And from permaculture, he found his way back to the community he grew up in — growing food, teaching children, and asking everyone who will listen to slow way down and start with one plant.

His journey is what I would call a testimony, even if he wouldn't use that word. The failure of the basketball dream led to the discovery of the land. The failure of the farm dream led to the integration of everything — basketball, farming, community, education, the helping professions — into the life he is living right now.

Dumb optimism, he calls it. I call it God directing your footsteps.

He loved that. He said: “I love the idea that God is a dumb optimist.”

Me too, Ryan. Me too.

What we recorded is Episode 4 of my From the Ground Up permaculture miniseries.

We cover a lot of ground — guilds and anchor plants, the human sector of permaculture design, and why 98% of permaculture projects fail because of people, not plants. We talk about why community building is hard (rupture and repair, rupture and repair — that's trust) and why that shouldn’t stop any of us from attempting it.

But what I keep returning to is what Ryan said about the political moment we're in.

He named the permaculture design principle he thinks matters most right now: Integrate, don't segregate.

He is, by his own description, an “old-school lefty”. He has neighbors whose ideas genuinely frighten him. And he asked himself: how can I be curious about the feeling that led to what I see as bad ideas? Because the feeling — the fear — is the place where a bridge is possible. Not the ideas. The feeling underneath it.

How are you feeling? That's the question.

I have been thinking about that question.

Ryan also did something in his book — Mulberries in the Rain — that I deeply appreciate.

He paid homage to the indigenous cultures whose land stewardship practices form the foundation of what we now call “permaculture.” He's going further than acknowledgment: he and a colleague have a paper coming out soon on moving beyond epistemological paralysis — the kind of paralysis where we get so afraid of offending that no relationships get made and no work gets done.

This is a thread I want to explore further later in the podcast. There are BIPOC farmers, indigenous land stewards, Black growers who have been in relationship with the land all along — just not under the banner of permaculture, which remains largely a white space. That matters. And it is a conversation this community deserves to have.

Here is your invitation for this week’s episode:

Listen to the episode. Then answer this question — in the comments, or just to yourself:

What is your one plant?

The one you already use, already love, already grow a little, or are simply curious about. Could it be Garlic? Tomato? Mint that's taking over your windowsill? Or, like me, the plum tree you planted during COVID and watched bear fruit five years later? (Hardly believing it!)

That's where permaculture begins. That's where relationship begins.

Start there. Go slow. Learn everything you can about that one plant.

My plant is my Santa Rosa plum tree.

🎙 Listen here:

With you on the journey,

Morenike 🌿

Six years after George Floyd's death, I'm returning to something I wrote two years ago — because some grief refuses to be left behind.

"George Floyd can breathe. But most Black people still hold their breath every single day."

— From my original piece, written on the fourth anniversary

I wrote those words two years ago, reckoning with the grief of a fourth anniversary that already felt like a forgetting. I had just returned from George Floyd Square in Minneapolis — a corner still frozen in time, still draped in weather-worn flowers and handmade banners, still waiting for a permanent memorial worthy of the man whose death moved the world. I was disappointed. I said so.

Today is the sixth anniversary. I'm revisiting that piece not just because the date calls for it — but because it is a painful reminder of how far we have fallen so fast.

When I first visited George Floyd Square, I was struck by how the scene looked just as it had on the evening news the night he was killed. Frozen. Like a stage set without actors. The mural around the corner moved me most: George Floyd at the center of a sunflower, names of other victims encircling him, and at the bottom, the declaration — I can breathe now.

He can. We still can't.

In the two years since I wrote that piece, I've watched DEI programs dismantled in real time — in corporations, federal agencies, and universities. I've watched book bans widen. I've watched the very language of belonging become a political liability. I've watched stories emerge that too closely echo May 25, 2020 — and watched the public cycle through outrage and exhaustion again, and again, faster each time.

I grew up navigating two distinct cultural worlds. I know what it is to adjust parts of who you are carefully, to read a room before you speak, to carry the weight of representation alongside the weight of just being human. My cross-cultural formation didn't make me cynical — but it did make me clear-eyed. I knew in the summer of 2020 that the fervor wouldn't last. I said so then. What I didn't know was how quickly the silence would feel like erasure.

"The door opened by the George Floyd summer four years ago has not closed — but the good work must go on."

I wrote that too, two years ago, and I still believe it. The door has not closed. Not all the way. States did pass police reform legislation. Workplaces did make policy changes that have outlasted the headlines. His daughter Gianna was right: Daddy changed the world. Not completely. Not cleanly. But the change is real, and it deserves to be named even in a maelstrom of rollbacks.

That's what bridge-builders do, I think. We hold two truths at once. We let ourselves grieve without surrendering to despair. We go back and read what we wrote in harder seasons and ask: what do I still believe? What does this moment require of me now?

My work — on this podcast, in my writing, in every room I enter professionally — is rooted in a simple conviction: every person is made in the image of God and is therefore worthy of dignity. That conviction doesn't let me look away from George Floyd's death. It doesn't let me look away from the rapid erosion of the progress it sparked. And it doesn't let me stay silent on an anniversary just because the world has moved on.

So today I'm saying his name. I'm linking back to what I wrote when the grief was two years fresher. And I'm asking you — wherever you are, whatever your background — to hold the weight of this day with me. Not in despair. In resolve.

George Perry Floyd Jr. — October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

"Do You Remember George Floyd? A Reflection and Invitation" — Elevating Good Podcast

My original reflection on what the movement sparked, what it cost, and what it still requires. Written May 2024 — still pressing in 2026.

https://open.substack.com/pub/elevatinggoodpod/p/do-you-remember-george-floyd?r=3h6oxi&utm_medium=ios

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I am the daughter of an African man who crossed oceans and cultures to build a life in a country that was not always sure it wanted him here. I am also the daughter of a Black American woman who grew up in segregated Mississippi — and spoke of the pain of watching her mother work as a domestic for a white family that she had to lower her eyes and voice to, to keep her job.

Growing up, I lived at the intersection of those two worlds. I learned early what it means to navigate systems not created with me in mind — and to do it with dignity anyway. I learned what it means to carry history in your body. To understand, without anyone having to explain it, that the rights this country claims to guarantee have never been freely given to everyone — and that every generation has had to fight to hold onto what the last one bled to secure.

That formation never left me. It followed me into law school and into federal agencies where I spent years as an EEO professional watching people fight — quietly, persistently, often alone — for the basic right to be treated as fully human in the places where they worked. I have sat across from people in pain. I have read the policies. I have seen how the law, in the right hands, can protect — and in the wrong ones, can harm.

So when I tell you that what happened on April 29 in Louisiana v. Callais is a five-alarm emergency, I am not speaking as someone who just read a headline. I am speaking as someone who carries Mississippi in her bloodline and Black experience in her identity — and who has spent over two decades watching how power moves, and what it does when it goes unchecked.

What Just Happened — And Why It Matters

The Supreme Court's decision in Callais guts voting rights by allowing states to legally dilute minority voting power through racial gerrymandering. In plain language: states can now draw district maps that mathematically swallow Black votes — spreading them so thin across districts that they cannot elect candidates who actually represent them.

This is not new. It is, in fact, very old. It is the same logic that built poll taxes and literacy tests. The same logic that kept my grandmother lowering her eyes in someone else's kitchen so that she could keep her job and feed her children. The methods have changed. The intent has not.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 — bought with the blood of John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, with the life of Medgar Evers, with the courage of women like Fannie Lou Hamer who was beaten for trying to register — was the legal firewall against exactly this. It was built for my family. It was built for yours. And it has been dismantled, piece by piece, decision by decision, until we arrived here.

Watch esteemed Civil Rights lawyer, Howard Law Professor, and former NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherilyn Ifill explain what this decision actually means. She is one of the clearest legal minds on this issue — and she speaks to it better than any headline.

To My Black Family

Your vote is not just a civic act. It is a declaration. It is the continuation of a struggle that did not end in 1965 — it evolved, went underground, put on a suit, and showed up in redistricting meetings and state legislatures and Supreme Court briefs.

My grandmother lowered her eyes and made herself small so that she could survive. So that her daughter could grow up and move north and build something. So that her granddaughter could go to law school and sit at tables her grandmother was never allowed to enter. That chain of sacrifice is not ancient history. This is my story. It may be yours too.

You are not paranoid. You are not overreacting. What you are feeling is real. And you deserve people around you who will say that plainly instead of asking you to be calm about your own erasure. Or worse, not saying anything at all.

To Everyone Who Says They're an Ally

I have spent my career building bridges. I believe — genuinely, theologically — that every person is made in the image of God and therefore worthy of dignity and belonging. That belief is the foundation of everything I do on this platform and off it. It was shaped in me by parents from two different worlds who modeled what it looks like to navigate differences with grace — and with strength.

But I have also learned that bridge-building is not the same as silence-keeping. You cannot claim to be in relationship with Black people — as a friend, a neighbor, a spouse, a colleague, a fellow congregant — and then go incognito when their civil rights are being stripped in real time.

This is the moment that reveals what your allyship is actually made of. Not an easy post. Not the moment when everyone else is already talking. This moment. The one that requires you to do something that might make someone uncomfortable — including yourself.

To Creators and Platform Holders

You have a microphone. I know what it is to build a platform from the ground up — to record and edit and write and promote and show up week after week, building trust one listener at a time. I know that reach is not given. It is earned.

Which is exactly why I am asking you to use it.

The algorithm rewards engagement. But your legacy will not be measured in impressions. It will be measured by what you said — and what you refused to stay silent about — when it mattered most.

A new civil rights struggle is not coming. It is here. And it is happening on your watch, on your platform, in your lifetime.

Which side of this moment will you be on?

Three Things You Can Do TODAY

✅ Inform yourself — and get involved. Learn what the Voting Rights Act actually protects and what its erosion means for your community. Then join the organizations fighting back on the ground: NAACP.org, LULAC.org, APIAVote.org, advancingjustice-aajc.org, and the League of Women Voters.

✅ Contact your representatives — at every level. Call your state legislators. Email your Congressional representatives. Show up to town halls. Demand they support the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 14) — named for a man who nearly died on the Edmund Pettus Bridge so that we could vote. The least we can do is make the phone call.

✅ Register to vote — and bring someone with you. Visit Vote.org. Register yourself if you haven't. Then register your neighbor, your cousin, your coworker, the person in your small group who keeps saying their vote doesn't matter. It matters now more than ever.

Every action you take makes a difference. 

On the right side of history, there are no spectators. There are only those who moved — and those who did not.

Please share this post. The algorithm is not neutral. Neither is silence. 🤍

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I didn’t plan to bring this episode back.

But then the news came. And kept coming. And I found myself asking the same question so many of us are asking ourselves right now:

What is happening to our men?

Jason Tuttle joined us in Season 3 to talk about losing his son — a grief journey so profound, so unique, that most men walk through it entirely alone because no one has given them a map to navigate it. Jason gave us one.

He talked about what grief actually feels like when you’re a man. How it shows up differently in you. How it gets misread by the people who love you. And how one person willing to listen and sit with you in it, can be the difference between breaking and a breakthrough.

The conversation mattered when we recorded it. It matters more right now. In a time when headlines are surfacing painful truths about men's mental health, grief, the silent weight so many men carry alone, and the tragic impacts men who do not get adequate intervention can have on their women, children, and homes.

So, we’re bringing it back. And we’re bringing something else with it — something we’ve never released before.

🎙️ Now Available: Season 3, Episode 3 — One Man Processes Grief featuring Jason Tuttle (Original Video)

🎬 Exclusively for paid subscribers: The raw, unedited video footage from the original recording. First time it’s ever been released. No cuts. No edits. Just Jason, the conversation, and every unscripted moment in between.

If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading your subscription, let this be the reason.

Listen to the episode

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We have now shared seven never-before-seen video excerpts from Bambi Lynn’s episode of the Elevating Good Podcast. We wanted to honor her life and all she gave to help others living through trauma.

We started with a baby girl born into rejection. We walked through the accumulated wounds of childhood, the abuse that was never supposed to happen, the bridge at 16, the surrender that changed everything. We sat with the butterfly and the ashes and the 24-hour pity party rule. We heard her name herself as a statistic — and then refused to be defined by one. We felt the weight of the family she was still trying to reach to tell her truth.

And now, in the final excerpt, we arrive somewhere unexpected.

We arrive at friendship.

What a Broken Woman Brings to the Table

Even after everything Bambi had survived and rebuilt, she carried a quiet doubt about her own worth to the people who loved her.

She describes it with the same uncompromising honesty she brought to everything else: for a long time, she believed that she — a broken woman who had been through so much — couldn’t possibly be bringing anything meaningful to her friendships. She was intentional about who she chose. She surrounded herself with people who were beautiful and intelligent and good, people she wanted to grow toward. But she assumed the exchange was one-sided. That she was the one receiving.

And then her friends told her what she had given them.

“Never thinking that I was bringing anything to the table — and being told you have no idea what you brought into our lives.”

There is something in that moment — the moment when the story you have been telling yourself about your own worth is quietly, firmly, lovingly corrected by the people who have been watching you all along — that is almost unbearable in its tenderness.

Bambi Lynn, who had spent decades learning to see herself the way God saw her, still needed her friends to show her what they saw. And they did.

The 10-Minute Friend

She also gave us, in this excerpt, what may be the most practical description of transformative loving friendship we have ever heard:

“You need friends in your life that give you 10 minutes — say Bambi, I’ll give you 10 minutes. Scream, yell, curse, throw your hands up to heaven. Do whatever you need to do. But then after those 10 minutes, I’m going to tell you the truth of who you really are.”

Ten minutes. Not unlimited. Not enabling. Not sitting with you indefinitely in the story that is keeping you small. Ten minutes of full permission to fall apart — and then the truth, delivered with love.

Bambi was this friend. To more people than she probably ever knew. She was the one who made space for the mess and then held up the mirror. The one who showed up in the middle of the night. The one who stayed available when husbands said the friendship should end.

She gave people their 10 minutes. And then she told them the truth of who they really were.

A Fitting Close

We could not have chosen a better excerpt to end on.

Because the arc of Bambi Lynn’s life — across all seven of these excerpts — is not simply a story of surviving trauma, or finding God, or building a mission. It is a story of a woman learning, gradually, painfully, and with the help of people who refused to give up on her, that she was worth knowing.

That she had always been worth knowing.

That the broken woman at the table was, in fact, the one who changed everything. Her friends knew it. Now, because she dared to tell her story on this podcast, the world gets to know it too.

▶️ Listen to Bambi Lynn’s full episode here — released in video for the very first time, in her honor. If her story has reached you across these seven excerpts, share it. Pass the first aid kit forward. Be someone’s 10-minute friend. Tell the truth about who the people you love really are. That is what Bambi would want. That is, in the end, what she lived for.

Rest in peace, Bambi Lynn. Thank you for the difference you’ve made in our lives!

Miss the other 6 episodes? Here they are:

Honoring Bambi Lynn

Episode 1: She was Rejected at Birth. Then Spent Her Life Healing Others.

Episode 2: Bambi Lynn on Purpose, Darkness, and the Moment She Finally Saw Herself

Episode 3: She Stood on a Bridge at 16. Then She Surrendered - and Everything Changed

Episode 4: “Our Children Paid the Price” Bambi Lynn on Wounded Parents, Family Truth, and Desired Reconciliation

Episode 5: The 24-hour Pity Party Rule and Other Wisdom

Episode 6: “Not a Death Sentence - a First Aid Kit:” Bambi Lynn Names Her Mission, and Leaves it to Us

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If you have been following along with these excerpts, you have watched Bambi Lynn move through the full terrain of her life: the rejection at birth, the abuse, the bridge, the surrender, the complicated love of a wounded parent, the daily choice to find beauty in the ashes.

In this excerpt, she gives her mission statement.

And it is one of the most quietly devastating things we have ever heard someone say about their own story.

The 8-Year-Old Who Already Survived

Bambi opens by sharing a passage from Viola Davis’s memoir — a moment in therapy that stopped her when she read it. Viola’s counselor tells her:

“Your 8-year-old self already survived. Your 8-year-old self already battled everything that needed to be battled. All she’s calling you to do is live your life.”

Bambi heard that as her own story. The little girl born into rejection. The child who absorbed wound after wound before she had any language for what was happening to her. That little girl fought. That little girl held on.

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This is the fifth excerpt we are sharing from Bambi Lynn’s episode of the Elevating Good Podcast.

We started at the beginning — a baby girl whose father said he didn’t want her, born into a family already fractured by alcoholism and unspoken pain. We walked through abuse, a bridge, a surrender. We sat with the complicated truth of a wounded mother trying to reach her own children and her own mother at the same time.

And now we arrive here: in the light. The light of someone who walked through every bit of the darkness, looked it in the face, did the work — and came out the other side with something to say.

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By this point in Bambi Lynn’s episode, we have heard about the wounds she was born into, the abuse she survived, the bridge at 16, the surrender that changed everything.

In this fourth excerpt, the story turns — and gets, in some ways, even more honest.

Because here, Bambi is not just the one who was hurt. She is also the one who caused hurt. And she says so plainly, without deflection, without burying it under her healing journey or her advocacy work.

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Content warning: This post includes Bambi Lynn’s own account of childhood sexual abuse and multiple suicide attempts. It is shared to help to others in crisis. Crisis resources are listed at the end of this post.

There is a version of Bambi Lynn’s story that stops before this excerpt. A version that shares the butterfly metaphor, the divine purpose, the mirror moment — and leaves the darkest chapter unspoken.

Bambi didn’t tell her story that way. And we won’t tell it that way either.

Because the people she spent the last years of her life serving — the survivors of childhood trauma, of sexual abuse, of domestic violence, of suicidal despair — they do not get to skip those chapters. They live in them. And Bambi believed they deserved someone willing to walk into the dark with them, not just exit when it was convenient.

So here is the part of her story she was brave enough to tell.

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I started 2026 with a manifesto — and it was exactly one word long.

FOCUS.

Two words would’ve been too many. Maybe you know why.

We live in the midst of the most complex distractions. Every app, every alert, every scroll is engineered to fracture your attention. To split it among things that matter least until there’s nothing left to give the things that matter most.

So I am grateful for the basics. One. Word.

And the more I sat with it, the more I realized — the battle for focus isn’t just personal. It’s spiritual.

The number one war we fight is distraction. The number one commodity the world wants is your attention. The number one command of Christ was an undivided love for God. The number one threat to our humanity isn’t a regime — it’s indifference.

These aren’t coincidences.

When we lose focus, we don’t just lose productivity. We lose presence. We lose purpose. We lose hope. We lose our way back to what we hold dear.

Here’s what I keep coming back to. FOCUS isn’t just a word — it’s a whole theology hiding in plain sight:

Follow One Course Until Successful. Freedom Only Comes Under a Spotlight. Finding One Core Understanding Satisfies. First Offering Compassion Undermines Stress.

Pick the one that speaks to you.

Fear overwhelms. It consumes. It undermines everything quietly — like a slow leak you don’t notice until you’re running on empty.

But focus? Focus is life-giving. It is an act of resistance. An intentional declaration that this matters more than the rest of the noise.

So here’s my question for you:

Where do you need to follow one course until successful?

Not five courses. Not a vision board. One thing. One direction. One act of devotion.

The world will keep demanding more. That’s guaranteed.

Your job is to keep returning to One.

There is a moment in this audio excerpt where time seems to stop.

We are blessed to have captured Bambi Lynn’s voice when we did. Now silent, her voice meant so much to the community. In this video excerpt, she paints a rich picture, describing a caterpillar. Not as a metaphor, but as her life.

She talks about how the Monarch butterfly lays an egg, and what hatches is a caterpillar. And how that caterpillar must spend time in the darkness — in the process of transformation — before it can emerge and recognize itself for what it always was.

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Some people walk into your life — or into your podcast feed — and change something in you permanently. Bambi Lynn was one of those people.

Bambi Lynn passed away last week. Out of love, reverence, and honor for her, we are releasing, for the very first time, the video of her Elevating Good Podcast episode.

Bambi was a tireless advocate for survivors of domestic violence and childhood trauma. She understood their pain not from a textbook, but because she had lived it herself — and she refused to let that pain be the end of her story.

In this first video excerpt, Bambi takes us back to the beginning, to when she believed her trauma began. With her parents, who married in distress. Her father grew up in an alcoholic household, one of six children. And on the day Bambi was born, he walked into the hospital room, drunk, and said:

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We share this with heavy hearts and with deep reverence.

Bambi Lynn Makowski passed away suddenly last week at only 56 years old. She was a beloved sister in Christ and a former guest of the Elevating Good Podcast. Her passing leaves a profound sadness in those of us who were fortunate enough to know her — and we believe her story is too important to keep silent about.

Bambi’s life was not easy. She survived rape, child abuse, sexual abuse, spousal abuse, and infidelity. The weight of those words alone is staggering. Yet when you met her, what struck you first — disarmingly so — was her joy.

I’ll be honest. The first time I met her, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Her warmth and cheerfulness seemed almost too Pollyannaish to be real. I was wrong. Bambi Lynn was the real deal — a woman of extraordinary substance, whose joy was not naïveté, but hard-won grace.

She wasn’t perfect. She never claimed to be. But she faced her imperfections honestly, and she chose, over and over again, to love well despite them. That is a rare and beautiful thing.

Bambi’s life stands as a testament to three truths we need desperately right now:

God’s grace is real. Courage in adversity is possible. Love can overcome hate.

At Elevating Good, our mission is to elevate what is true and lovely — and Bambi Lynn Makowski embodied both.

In the coming posts, we’ll share video clips from her podcast interview with us, so that her voice, her story, and her spirit can continue to reach people who need it most. The full audio interview is available here on Substack.

If you know someone walking through trauma, darkness, or despair — please share this series and podcast episode with them. Bambi’s story might be the light they need.

As I reflect on the ongoing suffering of countless innocent people—especially the children of Gaza, and others facing oppression or unlawful acts here and around the world—I’m reminded of a timeless anthem that has transcended generations. “We Are the World,” written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and performed by USA for Africa in 1985, still resonates today, perhaps more than ever.

The message of the song is simple, yet urgent and powerful: We are all connected. We are all part of the same human family, and when one suffers, we all suffer. As global citizens, it’s not enough to stand by and hope someone else will take action. It’s time to lend a hand, to give, and to make the world a better place—not just for us and our kind, but for everyone, for all mankind.

"There comes a time when we heed a certain call, When the world must come together as one."

This call to action has never been more urgent. As we watch the heartbreaking scenes of starvation, death, and despair unfold in Gaza, as we hear the stories of immigrants being inhumanely treated or residents and citizens unjustly detained in ICE raids, DEI and Civil Rights being rolled back, and as we witness the growing violence and oppression against so many around the world under authoritarian regimes, it becomes clear: we cannot sit idly by.

The song’s lyrics remind us that “there are people dying, and it’s time to lend a hand to life—the greatest gift of all." This is a reminder that we all have the power to make a difference. Every act of compassion, every moment of solidarity, adds to the momentum needed to create a brighter future.

"We can't go on pretending day by day That someone, somehow, will soon make a change.”

Change doesn’t come from ignoring pain or waiting for others to act; it comes from the collective will of individuals who decide that enough is enough. We’ve seen the effects of silence, apathy, and inaction too many times. History is filled with examples of how when the world turns a blind eye to suffering, it escalates. In the end people ask themselves questions like “How could ordinary people become part of such glaring atrocities?” But history is also filled with examples of courage, kindness, and unity that have sparked profound change. We are capable of that change.

Each of us holds a piece of the puzzle. The smallest gesture—whether it's donating to a cause, speaking out against injustice, or simply offering a moment of compassion—contributes to a global shift. It looks scary when we face things alone but when we come together it’s not as terrifying. When we each act with love and empathy, we strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity.

“We are all a part of God’s great big family, And the truth, you know, love is all we need."

It’s all about love. Love is indeed the common thread that unites us all. It’s the foundation upon which peace, justice, and compassion are built. The current struggles faced by the people of Gaza, by immigrants, and by those persecuted around the world are not isolated events—they are part of a larger global crisis. To truly address these crises, we must start by recognizing that we are all connected. If one part of the world is in pain, it is our pain too.

We can’t allow ourselves to ignore the cries for help from those whose voices are too often silenced, no matter how tempting it may be. We are the ones who can make a difference, who can create a brighter future. The song urges us to start giving—to act, to love, to support. And by doing so, we create a better world for everyone.

"We are the world, we are the children, We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving."

It’s time to choose to act. Silence is not an option. It’s time to give—whether it’s our time, resources, or simply our voices. Start with the areas where you have the greatest interest or that disturb you the most. Then seek out others who are like-minded. The change we seek doesn’t happen passively. It happens when we stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and work toward a future where compassion, justice, and peace are the foundation of our societies. This song calls us to action, and its message remains just as powerful today as it was in 1985.

"Send them your heart so they’ll know that someone cares, And their lives will be stronger and free."

It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of global crises, but the truth is, God has designed each of us with the capacity to make a difference for good. When we offer our hearts—whether through direct action or by sharing awareness—we become part of a larger movement. We become a part of the solution.

Through the power of collective action, we can lift up those who are struggling and give them the hope they need to keep going. We can show the world that love, compassion, and unity are not just ideals or worse, evils to be resisted—to the contrary, they are actions that when taken have the power to change lives for good.

“When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all, But if you just believe, there’s no way we can fall."

Belief in the possibility of change is the first step toward making that change a reality. And it’s that belief that sustains us when we face adversity like we are facing now. Yes, the road ahead may be difficult and it may be long, but we cannot let fear or doubt hold us back. It is through standing together as one that we can create a better future, a future to enjoy and not lament—not just for those who are suffering now, but for generations to come.

"Let us realize that a change can only come when we stand together as one."

We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones who can make a brighter day. So let’s start giving. Let’s choose to take action, to be the change this world so desperately needs.

The world is watching, and our future is waiting. Now is the time for us to act with compassion, love, and solidarity.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/michaeljackson/weretheworldusaforafrica.html

Dad died on June 9. I miss him. Ninety years and eight months is a long time to live, but I only fully experienced his existence for the last 50+ of them. Selfishly, I wanted him to stay around much longer, but God had other plans.

Dad was a retired history professor; he’d taught history for fifty years. Through my dad’s life, I felt like history came alive. He was like a walking Artificial Intelligence (AI). You’d ask a historical question of him, and he’d answer complete with an opening paragraph, sub bullets, and a conclusion. This was a man who encouraged his kids to read the dictionary to learn words!

Regularly, he'd launch into humorous stories of people in the past and lead with “Did you know that…?” Then he’d share some obscure but interesting facts using gestures and voice for emphasis. You were drawn to listen by his tone, but also by his warm smile and the twinkle in his eyes. He was always connecting with other people around him and had diverse friends from academia and beyond, of many nationalities and backgrounds. I think years of innate curiosity and training made him like that. Knowledge tends to puff people up, but that wasn’t true of Dad. His weakness was also his greatest strength; he often seemed to question things and himself. Yet despite seeming self-doubt, he knew beyond a doubt what mattered most: family, faith in God, service to mankind. These were the strongest through lines in his life. His brilliance wasn’t in his book knowledge, but in how he applied it steadily and consistently to make change everywhere he went.

Curiously, although he loved music and culture, he wasn’t bound by tradition. For a Yoruba man of his generation, that was unusual. He would be the first to do away with burdensome practices like the formalities of dressing a particular way for events or organizing his space just so, to meet some standard, but he valued tradition when it mattered most. He was, like his forefathers, spiritually and emotionally sensitive but also courageously committed to taking on the mantle of leadership. Unlike his peers in the “Silent Generation,” Dad was not silent. He spoke and wrote freely and frequently about what he felt were the good, bad, and ugly of society and his experiences. For that, I’m grateful. If he hadn’t shared his life openly, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with genealogy and history. The dogged determination to research and interpret people and the past and connect with them, I got that from him.

Together with mom, there was a 58-year-long partnership. As a child, I recall waking early in the mornings to lively but muffled conversations coming through the walls. The two of them together would solve the world’s problems and dream big from the comfort of their bed. My dad allowed my mom to be a strong force, to shine, but she always counted on him to have her back. They pushed each other forward to act where they were each the strongest, but you could never underestimate them. If you thought you could take advantage of one without the other knowing and defending them, then you’d be wrong. They were protective of one another and of us as a family. Toward the end, I believe the burden of managing the school and health struggles chipped away at some of this, but the core of their faith, belief in family, and in serving humanity remained strong, unwavering.

Dad was a Methodist through and through because of his strong faith upbringing. He fully relied on those networks for his entire education, from scholarships to training, to work-study, summer jobs, and his faith walk. In his autobiography American Boy, this is very clear. In preparing to write this tribute, I did some digging — surprise! Both schools that bookended his education had powerful Methodist mottos. Methodist Boys High School had Non Sibi Sed Aliis. Not for us but for others. Northwestern University also had Methodist Episcopal roots, and its seal refers to Greek scripture from John 1:14 (NIV):

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Those are the key words — GRACE and TRUTH. The school’s motto also states in Latin: Quaecumque Sunt Vera. “Whatsoever things are true,” taken from Philippians 4:8 (NIV) which reads in full:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

I was stunned to learn the happy coincidence of these facts and how they connect with and defined my dad. Not only was Dad’s heart to serve others, but he was also a curious truth seeker who lived what he believed with integrity.

Dad was human and humane, innately empathetic. I recall once when I’d broken up with a boyfriend and bawled my eyes out, he comforted me, saying, “Boys are like buses, there’s always going to be another one coming along.” When I was severely asthmatic as a child, coming close to dying several times, he was the one who’d put his ear to my chest to see if I had the tell-tale signs, sounds of wheezing. He rode with me in the ambulance to the hospital and/or the doctor's home. He schooled me and my sister on Yoruba customs, language, and culture. He helped me pick out my first car. He suggested vitamin supplements, and both he and Mom always jogged or exercised daily. Dad touted the benefits of exercise: “Just keep moving; you don’t have to do a lot as long as you do some sort of movement every day,” he’d say. He laughed with us and cried with us; he warned us sternly and also hugged us warmly. He had an occasional temper, and you didn’t want to get on his bad side, but he was just who he was, and I loved Dad for that.

Dad, I could go on and on, but I want most to say well done. I picture God welcoming you home after a long jog. You pushed boundaries and pioneered your way in life to the end. You served your purpose to your generation, helping open new worlds to the Soremekuns and many others. Now it’s our turn. You laid a firm foundation; now we simply need to build on it with truthfulness, grace, and integrity. God is our Helper. Quaecumque Sunt Vera. Non Sibi Sed Aliis.

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