Fear loses its power

A poem written from the intersection of grief, fear, identity, and hope.

This piece explores what happens when fear is no longer allowed to determine who we become or how we relate to one another.

It moves through anger, sorrow, and internal conflict toward a vision of collective healing—one rooted not in domination or retaliation, but in compassion, solidarity, courage, and love.

This poem was written during a season when fear felt unusually close.

Fear for people being harmed. Fear for the future. Fear of what could happen if I allowed more of myself to be visible.

At the time, courage felt less like confidence and more like continuing anyway.

What surprises me looking back is that this poem did not ultimately become about fear.

It became about relationship.

About the realization that being different was not something to overcome, but something that expanded my capacity to see and care more deeply.

And about the recognition that hatred becomes weaker when people continue choosing love, community, healing, truth, and one another despite it.

Fear may still speak.

But it does not get the final word.

I wrote this poem in response to the Club Q shooting in my home city of Colorado Springs on November 19, 2022.

In the days that followed, I felt grief, fear, anger, and a deep desire to respond in a way that honored the victims, supported my community, and refused to let hatred have the final word.

The tragedy also intersected with a deeply personal moment in my own life.

I had come out as gay during my 200-hour yoga teacher training almost exactly one year earlier. It was the first group setting I'd ever come out in. A few months later, I was invited to attend a new monthly LGBTQ+ workshop hosted by several teachers at the studio.

I attended for several months and found myself developing a genuine sense of belonging and community there. Eventually, I was invited to lead the workshop in December 2022—a commitment I had made months before the shooting. I was both excited and nervous. It would be the first time my name would be publicly associated with my queer identity.

Then the shooting happened.

I could feel the fear and grief rising. I felt outrage that anyone should be targeted simply for who they are or who they love. But beneath those emotions was something quieter: a growing conviction that I needed to show up for my community—not despite my fear, but alongside it.

So I wrote this poem.

It became a way to process my own emotions while offering the message I most needed to hear myself: that fear and hatred do not have to determine how we respond to the world. Even in the aftermath of tragedy, we can choose love, community, courage, and hope.

A few weeks later, I led the workshop.

Fear was still there.

I chose to show up anyway.