Smuggling Grace

4041.2 Miles Total

In September 2023, I bought an e-bike, and I named her Zelda Zoomie. Since that time, I’ve been biking to every street in Ann Arbor in alphabetical order. I just finished the G Streets. Every time I complete a letter, I write a reflection on place.

“You tend to have future thinking,” someone once told me. He meant it as a compliment, but he was also encouraging me to become more rooted in the present moment. That was good advice.

He wasn’t wrong in that observation. I do think about future outcomes often, and I tend to engage the present moment as a springboard toward what is possible. In life chapters that are overwhelming, that can take the form of anxiety. But most of the time, when I’m grounded, I am often thinking about what can be built — what can be created based on what’s happening, who is present, and what visions seem to be emerging.

While that is more typical for me, over these last few years, I’ve tried to challenge myself to think in the opposite direction: How many past moments have led to this present moment? How many paths are meeting up right here? How does this moment represent a variety of culminations?

That’s always true, too.

And so with that in mind, as I’ve biked around streets beginning with G, I keep thinking about all the culminations that Ann Arbor has brought into my life. All these past moments — 13 years of them — have brought me to a place of identity, and I’ve discovered that most clearly in the connections with people who have shaped me. There are innumerable culminations.

A mentor of mine sometimes says this about his own mentors: “There is no me without [insert person’s name].” In other words, he would not be the version of himself that he is without the care and influence of people who have names, faces, and histories. So if I am thinking about time, and I am thinking about people, I also have to think about place.

There is no me without Ann Arbor.

A zillion moments — gifted with, by, and for people — have led me somewhere. And culminations are interesting because they don’t always land you in the place you planned.

I initially moved to Michigan for a job I wasn’t able to stay in. (Thankfully, in the end, I kept those relationships, too.) And I now have a vocational life I never expected to have. Twists and turns led me to the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan. I didn’t expect nonprofit work to be a new career. I didn’t expect that alongside the work I get to do, it would heal my own younger heart and provide me with a community that has revolutionized my life. A gorgeous culmination.

I didn’t even expect to have a bike and be pedaling around so much beauty. Or have the friends that I have. Or know people who inspire me with their activism. Or savor meals and treasure the summers I get to eat them outside. Or have bunnies in my backyard.

And my Ann Arbor life hasn’t all been puppies and roses. Barriers, unexpected turns, and far too many “unprecedented” and “out of an abundance of caution” moments in this era could have undone me. While living here, I can name four different experiences that would each have been the most painful season of my adult life had any one of them happened on its own.

And you know what? That’s about place, too. Culmination, too. Formation, too.

There is no me without Ann Arbor.

And while I do keep thinking about futures and what is possible – my friend was right; I do like thinking that way – I’m also grateful to reverse that process and think about how the present became possible because of the past.

I’ll close with one of my favorite quotes. It’s from Frederick Buechner in his book Wishful Thinking: A Seekers ABC. He says,

“In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.”

Time. Relationships. Place.

Grateful for them all.

—Renee Roederer

On July 4, a friend shared several quotations from Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. Roosevelt was a complex historical figure with accomplishments, shortcomings, and controversies of his own. Even so, I found these particular words worth reflecting on.

How do you receive them?

“It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company.”¹

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts… To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”²

“Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men.” … “Especially as regards the laws relating to marriage there should be the most absolute equality between the two sexes. I do not think the woman should assume the man’s name.”³

—–
¹ An Autobiography, Chapter X, “The Presidency.”

² “Sedition, a Free Press, and Personal Rule,” Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918.

³ “The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law,” Harvard senior thesis, 1880.

—Renee Roederer

Interesting!

Back in March, I wrote about a chiropractic center that often has anti-medication slogans on its marquee. At the time, I shared a picture of that marquee. It read,

“Pain and sickness are not a drug deficiency.”

My response is, “And what if they are?” For many people, that is the case.

They have changed their sign in a few different directions. But this sentence is back this week. Seeing that sign again recently reminded me of a memory from high school.

For about a year, I babysat intermittently for a family in my neighborhood. One day, after I had spent time with the children, I got a call from their Mom. She had found a pill in the house and wondered whether it belonged to me.

It was an Advil. Nothing especially significant. And granted, I shouldn’t have left medication lying around. I think it had simply fallen out of the bottle.

But what really stayed with me wasn’t the pill itself. It was how quickly her mind spiraled over the possibility that I was someone who took medication. She even voiced the quiet part out loud: “Oh, I was worried that you take medication.”

There wasn’t much curiosity or empathy about whether I might have needed it. There wasn’t gratitude that I had access to something that allowed me to feel better. Instead, there seemed to be concern that perhaps I had some kind of health condition.

I had always cared well for her children. Nothing about that had changed. I remember simply telling her that I had a headache.

That moment never sat quite right with me. Even then, I was beginning to sense that many people have this kind of relationship with medication and the people who need it.

But the truth is that sometimes medication is exactly what people need. It’s exactly what allows people to be present and active in ways they might not otherwise be — whether that’s babysitting children or participating fully in the many ordinary moments of life. Curiosity and compassion have always seemed like a better place to begin.

—Renee Roederer

I came home from a recent trip and was surprised and sad to find a hole in my deck. It’s just one board, so I thought, Okay… someone can probably repair that.

Well, I have a pretty good idea how that happened now, because a groundhog played peekaboo with me today.

It’s a literal game of whack-a-mole over here.

Today is July 1, and this means as of today, we are entering the second half of 2026.

I know that many people in our world — actually, probably most of us — have been living with more uncertainty than makes us comfortable. And some are experiencing these realities in the extreme.

But among the things we can impact, were there certain hopes tyou set for 2026 as you entered this year? People and places you wanted to see? Encouragement you wanted to provide? Art you wanted to create? Nature you wanted to appreciate? Goals you wanted to set? Values that you wanted to live?

However those are going, we can renew those hopes any time. Here’s the Second Half.

—Renee Roederer

Today I’d like to introduce you to the work of Tricia Hersey — poet, performance artist, and Nap Bishop.

For years, she has been inviting people to think differently about rest, not as laziness or something to be earned, but as a deeply human, restorative, and even liberating practice. Rest can care for our bodies, re-center us, and create space for imagination, dreaming, and healing.

At the heart of Hersey’s work is the recognition that this is especially true for people who have experienced oppression, and for communities whose ancestors endured violence, forced labor, and exploitation. She explores these themes in her wonderful book Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto and through her ongoing work with The Nap Ministry.

Today, I’d simply like to share a few of her quotes from Rest is Resistance. I’m passing along an invitation for us to see what resonates, what challenges us, and what invitations these words might hold:

1. “The Rest Is Resistance framework also does not believe in the toxic idea that we are resting to recharge and rejuvenate so we can be prepared to give more output to capitalism. What we have internalized as productivity has been informed by a capitalist, ableist, patriarchal system. Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of “productivity” leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough and that we must always be guiding our lives toward more labor. The distinction that must be repeated as many times as necessary is this: We are not resting to be productive. We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so.”

2. “I feel like a legacy of exhaustion resides somewhere in all of us, but specifically resides in the bodies of those who have melanated skin.”

3. “We are socialized into systems that cause us to conform and believe our worth is connected to how much we can produce. Our constant labor becomes a prison that allows us to be disembodied. We become easy for the systems to manipulate, disconnected from our power as divine beings and hopeless. We forget how to dream. This is how grind culture continues. We internalize the lies and in turn become agents of an unsustainable way of living.”

4. “You must resist anything that doesn’t center your divinity as a human being. You are worthy of care.”

5. “I want us to understand that nuance is freeing and freedom. There is no such thing as cookie-cutter healing. Everyone brings with them an origin story, a history, and identities that are interconnected. There is room to rest in the freedom of managing your own deprogramming journey. It is never either/or and always both/and. You don’t have to grind, hustle, accept burnout as normal, and be in a constant state of exhaustion and sleep deprivation. You don’t have to kill yourself spiritually or physically to live a fruitful life.”

What stands out to you?

—Renee Roederer

–Photos by Renee Roederer

I appreciate Melissa Kirsch, who writes The Morning, the Saturday edition of the daily newsletter from The New York Times. We typically expect a simple list of news stories (though the news is hardly simple), but she often begins the Saturday newsletter with a more reflective tone.

Over the weekend, she wrote about Serena Williams, who returned to Grand Slam singles after four years. When she previously stepped away from tennis, she shared that she had never liked the word “retirement. Instead, she said, “I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me.”

That’s a different way to frame transitions and change.

When we evolve toward something or away from something, we can open — and be opened — to new possibilities. And because we haven’t necessarily closed a door, we might also be able to evolve back, but as people who have been shaped by the time away.

Melissa Kirsch suggested making a simple list:

What are you evolving away from?

What are you evolving toward?

I appreciate that this isn’t simply a way of naming endings and future goals, as though one is completely finished and the other has not yet begun. In both directions, evolution is a process.

So how would you answer those questions? What are a few things you’re evolving away from? And what are a few things you’re evolving toward?

—Renee Roederer