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Summary written by claude.ai
The Medicine We Need Right Now
I had the absolute joy of being a guest on The Daily Whatever Show this week with Dana Dubois and Lawrence Winterman, and the conversation went to places that made my whole nervous system light up.
We talked about Minnesota. We talked about what it actually means to welcome refugees and immigrants—not as some abstract political concept, but as living, breathing humans who bring their whole hearts with them.
The Somali people staff our hospitals. It’s impossible to show up in a Minnesota hospital without being cared for by someone Somali who walks in saying “Hi mama, how you doing?” and means it with everything they have. They pull their whole hearts out and gush that love over every single patient.
Here’s what people don’t understand: trauma survivors know how to show up for others because they’ve survived needing that showing up themselves. The Somali people have been through so much trauma that they’re more sensitive, more alert, more deeply connected to what it means to care for another human being.
My best friend died in January 2020. She fell and broke her neck, and I spent six months feeding her breakfast every morning in hospitals and rehab centers. Every single day, Somali people served her, washed her, cleansing her, loving her. Every one of them brought that mama energy—that deep, unconditional care that only comes from having lived through suffering.
That’s why Minnesota welcomes refugees. Because they bring medicine our world desperately needs.
My St. Paul mayor, Kaohly Her, is a Hmong immigrant. She posted videos of herself making egg rolls in her kitchen, saying “I’m going to take these out to the demonstrators.” Then another video: “Well, I was trying to take them, but my car won’t start because it’s cold.” Even our political leaders are humble and human.
That human impulse to feed and nurture—that’s the medicine. Trauma survivors show up with care, with food, with love, even when their car won’t start in the Minnesota cold.
Lawrence and Dana asked me the Gen X question: What’s the most Gen X song of all time?
I didn’t even hesitate. “The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston.
Because after everything we’d just talked about—the trauma survivors caring for our sick, the immigrants feeding demonstrators—isn’t that what we all need? To believe we’re loved enough that we can love everyone else?
The greatest love truly is learning to love ourselves. And when people who’ve survived trauma love themselves enough to keep showing up with care for others, they teach the rest of us what’s possible.
This conversation reminded me why I do what I do. Why I show up for other sensitive people. Why I believe our sensitivity—that heightened awareness, that capacity to feel everything—is mystical intelligence, not something to fix.
The people who feel too much are often the ones who’ve been through too much. And they’re the ones staffing our hospitals, making egg rolls for demonstrators, caring for our dying with their whole hearts.
That’s the medicine we need right now. More feeling. More sensitivity. More heart. More of the greatest love of all. . . the courage to let our sensitivity guide us toward care, connection, and love.
