"It could be worse" and "you'll be fine" are not examples of empathic listening. Empathic listening is necessary for any courageous conversation that seeks to address conflict or connect with others on a deeper level. Empathic listeners don't just hear words, but seek to understand the authentic feelings behind them. One of the best ways we can show up for our colleagues, friends, and neighbors during difficult times is to listen with curiosity and empathy. When we truly listen, we build trust and create a space for others to feel valued, heard, and understood.

On Transgender Day of Remembrance (November 20), I’m standing in love and solidarity with my transgender siblings. Trans and gender expansive people deserve futures—and so much more: respect, acceptance, and equality. The best way to honor the memories of those who lost their lives to anti-trans violence is to build a safer, more inclusive, and more liberated world for people of all genders.

Texas's proposed Christian nationalist elementary school curriculum includes a “game” about Jewish genocide in a second-grade lesson on the biblical story of Esther. As someone with many family members who were murdered in the Holocaust, I'm appalled. How are we to understand what's driving this hateful curriculum, which could become a model for the rest of the country?

Many queer and transgender people, Black and Brown people, immigrants, workers, women, Jews, Muslims and Arabs and other groups are not simply sad that our candidate didn’t win. We are worried about our safety and the safety of our loved ones.

White people, it’s time to be honest about our addiction to white innocence. I’ve been revisiting Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, which was published just a few days before President Trump’s first inauguration. Dr. Dyson describes an America wounded by White people's anger, which propelled Trump into the White House in 2017. For those who benefit from white privilege, Dyson’s words may be difficult to hear. But his insights speak to our current moment with a powerful, chilling precision.

“Am I using my anger, or is my anger using me?” I love this question from Layla Saad. If you're dumping unprocessed trauma or information onto colleagues or strangers online, you may be overwhelming or triggering them without realizing it. During difficult times, we must reconsider our ways of being in relationship and community with one another while allowing each other to feel the terror, rage, and injustice of the moment.

It’s #WorldKindnessDay, so let’s talk about the difference between niceness and kindness. Niceness is superficial politeness. It is about the 3 C’s: comfort, control, and convenience. Niceness tends to be associated with people pleasing and avoiding conflict. It's less invested in authentic understanding than in maintaining the status quo. In contrast, kindness is a revolutionary practice of compassion, love, and justice. It’s motivated by genuine caring and the desire to understand. As an anti-oppressive practice, kindness is most effective when aligned with systemic solutions that center the needs of equity-deserving communities.

If you think it can’t happen in the US, you are wrong. Americans tend to believe that fascism was a foreign threat that the US bravely defeated. But before World War II, pro-Hitler fascists, white supremacists, and antisemites had more support than many people realize, and their efforts to overthrow the government and replace it with a fascist dictatorship posed a real threat. Today, Trump’s extremist and racist/xenophobic rhetoric --condemning “the enemy within” and promising the "largest deportation program in American history” because “America is for Americans” – is pulled straight from Hitler’s playbook. People of all political affiliations must come together to fight the growing threat of American authoritarianism.

It's our human obligation to pursue justice and preserve the lives and dignity of all people. "Whoever destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered to have saved the whole world." This is a Jewish and Islamic principle, appearing in both the Mishnah and the Quran. The escalation of violence in the Middle East shows that extremism, human rights violations, and bigotry are not the answer. As an American Jew with family in Israel, I advocate for the security and equality of all human beings in the region. The belief that Jewish safety must come at the expense of the people of Palestine is a falsehood I reject.

I'm sorry you feel that way is not an apology. We undermine our own efforts to apologize when we don't accept full responsibility for our actions, make excuses for ourselves, or attempt to shift the blame away from us. Unfortunately many misconceptions about apologizing persist. We’ve probably all had the experience of having someone say the “right thing” and yet their apology feels performative. Especially in today’s era of “sorry not sorry” non-apologies and performative public apologies, healing requires putting in real work. This means taking steps to ensure that we don’t cause harm again, rather than simply professing our remorse and willingness to take responsibility.

Leaders, don’t shift responsibility for creating LGBTQIA2S+ inclusion onto the very people who are most in need of your support. On #NationalComingOutDay, my social media feeds are full of my queer, trans and nonbinary siblings proudly celebrating their authentic selves and sharing the complexity and uniqueness of their journeys. What's invisible to many hetero cisgender people is the stories behind the selfies—especially the great price many of us continue to pay for living openly as a LGBTQIA2S+ human.

Disability isn't a costume. On Halloween, remember that conflating impairment or disfigurement with ugliness, evil, or horror causes real harm to people with physical and facial differences. As a young girl with scoliosis and kyphosis, the only images I ever saw of people like me were “hunchbacks” in the movies. These were typically ugly and "deformed" men with extreme spinal curvatures like Quasimodo.…. If you're dressing up for Halloween or costuming your kids, please remember that how you represent what's "frightening" has a significant impact on people with bodily, limb, or facial differences. From the Phantom of the Opera to the Joker to Wonder Woman’s Dr. Poison, scarred and disfigured villains have been a persistent trope in Hollywood cinema.

For many years, silence separated me from the person I yearned to be and isolated me, but I thought surrendering a part of myself to silence was necessary for my safety and survival. It took me many years to discover the price of keeping silences and power of voice as a political demand. Women, Global Majority people, and gender expansive people of all ethnicities, classes, ages, sexualities, religions, and abilities all struggle (in different ways) against the tyrannies of silence. It is by recognizing our shared journeys to find language for our truths that we can face our fears, decolonize our minds, and create spaces for healing, authentic connection, and collective liberation.

“Jews will not replace us." Remember that chant from Charlottesville in 2017? The idea that Jewish people push "anti-white racism" to weaken the West—an antisemitic trope promoted by white supremacists and Christian nationalists —is simply a contemporary version of a virulent anti-Jewish conspiracy theory that goes back centuries. At the root of this brand of antisemitism is the Great Replacement Theory: a belief that Jews, who only "pretend" to be white, are plotting to exterminate or "replace" white Christians.

The bravest thing I ever did wasn’t leaving the security of academia to launch my own business as a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging consultant, although I’ll admit that was terrifying. It was deciding that I didn’t care what other people thought of me. In 1985 I came out to my family and was disowned. I was devastated & no longer had money for college. In 1986 I “went straight” & transferred to a new university. Life in the closet was soul-crushing. I struggled with my health for years.

Lately I’ve been finding that the term “ally” doesn’t resonate with me. How can we recognize our shared struggles when we’re working within a militaristic paradigm that (1) centers those with power and privilege and (2) reinforces the binary logic of ally vs enemy? Progressives rarely admit it, but saviorism is definitionally built into allyship because, when we say that we're striving to be an ally, we’re saying “this work is not mine.” Another shortcoming of allyship is its individualistic focus, which tends to privilege personal journeys over collective justice work.

If you celebrate Christmas, would you feel included at work if your colleagues scheduled important events or meetings on that day? Now imagine that this didn't just happen once or twice but regularly. In fact, every year someone would try to schedule something on Christmas and you had to politely remind them that this holiday is kind of a big deal to you and, no, you won't be available. After you say this, no one ever reschedules the events so that you can be included.

Welcome to my world.

"Just tell me what word to use." Whenever I hear this from a busy leader, I point out that inclusive language is about much more than substituting new terms for outdated ones. Being afraid of saying the wrong thing is something we all experience. But inclusive language is less about getting things "right" or "wrong" and more about centering the humanity of others, celebrating difference, and welcoming multiple perspectives.

Yesterday my oncologist gave me a heartfelt hug and said she hopes to never see me again. The staff congratulated me and I walked out the door for the last time--teary, relieved, and deeply grateful. I have officially made it to the ten-year milestone without a reoccurrence! Paradoxically, breast cancer made me more fearless and willing to take risks. As a survivor I learned to tap into my inner strength and dare to do things I had previously only dreamed of. Most of all, I discovered how to thrive by living and working with joy, courage, and authenticity.

Supporting your Jewish team members and neighbors is neither pro-Israel nor anti-Palestine; it’s about recognizing our shared humanity. For thousands of years, Jews have been scapegoated as evil. And it's still happening on social media. I see antisemitic conspiracy theories and anti-Jewish tropes on LinkedIn and other platforms with alarming frequency…. When you fail to call out biased, false, and misleading anti-Jewish rhetoric, you are contributing to a normalization of hate that endangers me and my community.