Why did I stay in churches that I didn’t like for so long? Why did any of us? Because we loved the people there, and we had been taught God was big e… - Lyz Lenz

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.

It’s worth pointing out that while studies show that women do more housework than their male partners, this work goes largely unobserved by men, half of whom statistically perceive themselves as doing equal work, while only 3 percent of women agree. Add in the fact that husbands add an additional seven hours of labor to a home — labor done by their wives — and it’s a bleak picture of domestic partnership.

We find significance in our sense of place. The way a New Yorker brags about the cost of a studio in Queens and the time he got punched on the subway, a Midwesterner brags about those two weeks the buses wouldn’t run because it was colder here than it was in the Arctic. Our pain is our significance. Our survival is our belonging.