We are with you: processing, grieving, baffled, shattered, grasping desperately for light.
Here is what we know: unspeakable harm was done to Paris tonight; unspeakable harm will be done to people of Muslim faith and people of color by people who take advantage of tragedy to act on their hatred; people across the world - ourselves among them - are shaken to their very core; this is not the first time; we cannot say it will be the last time.
And so much of this feels intensely personal.
It seems that the list of safe spaces torn apart by violence grows every year: schools, movie theaters, schools again, places of worship, places of community, venues for live music. We grow up hearing that stories are escapes only to find demons in our safest havens.
And so we cannot blame those whose lists of personal safe spaces narrow in parallel. Your feelings are valid, your reaction is valid, and we urge you to follow your gut, to seek what safety means for you.
But if you feel safest in the very places terrorists - in Paris, in Columbine, in Aurora, in Newton, in Charleston, and on and on and on - have devastated, know you have not lost them. If anger boils in your stomach, know nothing can come from meeting their hatred with your own. The most powerful thing we can do every time we move forward from unthinkable loss is to hold on to love and to hold on to what we love.
This is not easy. But it is so important.
The places we love - movie theaters at midnight, libraries where books changed our lives, venues where we sang late into the night - have given us not just entertainment, but spaces to make sense of the world, spaces to make sense of ourselves, crowds to be distinctly and lastingly unalone in, lifelong friendships, lifelong magic, homes to carry with us.
We cannot and will not let them take any of this from us.
Here is how we move forward: keep loving; keep fighting; celebrate story; laugh, dance, sing - with your friends, with strangers, with every single person who keeps showing up when the world tells them not to; resist hatred; resist cynicism; know none of this is foolish; know that it is necessary;Â protect and defend those who - not for the first time - will be victims of hatred falsely carried out in the name of justice; give love and light to those around you and those around the world; be excellent to each other; be good.
Always, always, always: the weapon we have is love.
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