I’ve always loved this country.

Not blindly. Not naively. But with a kind of fierce, tender devotion that sees both its promise and its pain. 

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My family has a very long history in this country. Along with having an Indigenous 2nd great grandmother, my immigrant ancestors have been here since the early 1600's. We were some of the original founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and early settlers in Virginia as well. We fought in the Revolutionary War and on both sides of the Civil War.

 

My Grandfather, who is buried in Arlington National Cemetary fought in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. My father and his brothers were in the military as well. 

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So, I feel like I have a lot of skin in this game! 

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Recently, I read a powerful reflection by Vishen Lakhiani about a road trip through the heartland of America that turned into a meditation on freedom. He spoke of standing beneath the American flag with his children, ready to post a photo with the caption “The Land of the Free,” and then… pausing. Something inside him whispered: Not entirely true anymore.

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That whisper lives in me, too.

I have stood beneath the same flag, hands over heart, tears in my eyes — not from pride alone, but from heartbreak. Because I know what we could be. And I see what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

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We were gifted a great myth in this nation. A radiant dream, stitched with rebellion and spiritual hunger — the idea that all people are created equal, that liberty and justice could be more than just words.

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But a dream is not a guarantee.
It is a living thing — fragile, luminous, and in need of constant tending.

And right now, that dream is calling out. Not to be remembered in nostalgia, but to be reimagined with courage.

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Let’s Tell the Truth: We Are Not As Free As We Believe

Vishen shared the sobering truth: the U.S. is no longer among the world’s top free nations. We rank 17th in human freedom, 57th in press freedom, and are labeled a “flawed democracy” due to our landing at #28 on the Democracy Index. From digital surveillance to political corruption, media consolidation to systemic racism, the structures we were told would protect our freedom are, in many cases, eroding it.

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But here’s what struck me most:

“Real freedom,” Vishen wrote, “is not fireworks and an anthem. It’s truth, agency, and dignity.”

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Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes!

Freedom isn’t something we claim.
It’s something we create.

It’s walking without fear — of bullets, of bills, of police brutality.
It’s learning without censorship.
It’s voting without suppression.
It’s healing without going broke.
It’s thinking without algorithmic manipulation.
It’s being who you are — fully, safely, unapologetically.

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This is the kind of freedom that exists not just in policy, but in soul. Not in the red, white, and blue, but in the ways we show up for one another, protect the Earth, and tell the truth even when it shakes the ground beneath us.

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The Spiritual Heart of Rebellion

To love America now is to engage in sacred rebellion.

Not rebellion for the sake of destruction, but for the sake of healing. Of becoming.

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I believe we are standing at the threshold of a national initiation. The old forms are crumbling — some with a whimper, some with fire. And we have a choice: cling to the illusion, or step boldly into a new dream.

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To “free America” means more than opposing censorship or corruption.
It means freeing her from fear.
From propaganda.
From apathy.
From the belief that this is the best we can do.

Because when we liberate our own thinking — and our own hearts — we become midwives for a new collective future.

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What If We Remembered Who We Are?

We are not the worst of our headlines.
We are not our gun deaths or prison bars or poisoned food.
We are not just red states and blue states.
We are the spaces between — the longing, the grace, the quiet knowing that we can do better. Be better. Love better.

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I believe that America’s soul is still alive, it may be buried beneath noise and neglect, but it is still pulsing, still pulling us toward a future of freedom.

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It lives in every parent working for safer schools.
In every artist who dares to tell the truth.
In every young voice that chants “Free Gaza” not to divide us, but to remind us what freedom is for.

This is the America I still believe in — not the myth, but the becoming.

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So I ask you: what does freedom mean to you?
Not just in the country, but in yourself?

Will you free your voice from silence?
Your love from limitation?
Your truth from convenience?

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May we each become agents of a deeper kind of liberty — one that cannot be sold, silenced, or stolen.

The future isn’t waiting for someone else to fix it.
It’s waiting for all of us to remember what we were born to build.

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With love, rebellion, and a fierce commitment to possibility,
Morningsong