Sometimes your biggest freedom is found in your greatest fear: letting go. - Lyz Lenz

[T]his book is an attempt to sit in the brokenness of our nation and our lives and seek to find redemption. I don’t believe in bridges anymore. I don’t even believe in fixing all broken things. Instead, what I believe is that we need to stare deep into the darkness of loss and to see the divine.

In sum, we need women to buy into romantic partnerships so that they will become the social safety net that our leaders and politicians refuse to create.

Driving home to Iowa from Marion, Indiana, I went through Chicago, sure, but it was far easier to find a field than a town. Far easier to find empty spaces than people. Even in my town, Cedar Rapids, the second-largest city in Iowa, you are never more than minutes from a cornfield. It’s a bigness that can feel limiting if you are the only one of you that you see. But the internet is an equalizer — bringing together voices that once felt alone, realigning boundaries, creating spaces where there were none before.

There is a danger too of creating ideological bubbles. Of filtering out dissent. It’s a criticism that was leveled heavily against blue states after the 2016 election. But when you are in the minority — the voice that is silenced — you are never in a bubble, even if you try. And finding a place where you don’t have to fight for acceptance, where you can just be accepted, even if that is online is the difference between pain and hope.