Dearest Unravelers and Unravelers-to-be —
I just watched something that stirred my soul.
Before I tell you about it — let’s talk about America.
Depending on who you ask, the political pendulum in this country started swinging wildly out of control, like an axe, with the successive elections of Obama and Trump. Talk about the personification of two opposing political and emotional forces. The pendulum was then shoved harder, and still harder, by the pandemic, George Floyd, (the still incomprehensible demise of) Roe v Wade, October 7th, DEI and its current undoing. The list goes on. It really does. The low-light reel barely does it justice. What we’re left with is not even ideology or politics, but rage and chaos. I know you feel it. Me too.
I have no idea what direction our nation will take next. My Magic Eight Ball doesn’t work on this kind of thing. What I do sense is coming is more atomization, more undoing, more Unraveling.
These questions are now coming up at my dinner table fast and furious:
Will things ever normalize again? What is normal?
Is this damage that is happening… permanent change?
How do I resist dehumanizing the people who chose this? Voted for this?
As for those Americans who invited this chaos, some of my own friends and family included, I ask again: What am I missing? I am listening. Please show me. Show me this isn’t the road to ruin. It's a request I’ve made in (honest to God) good faith before. I made it immediately after the election, and I got shoved right back, hard, just because I asked. I get to ask these questions, I told myself. I need to. I’m compassionate and curious. It’s how I’m built. So … shove away, I guess.
But I believe there is a way to be, to behave… and to feel. Stay with me.
Did you see Jane Fonda’s powerful speech at the SAG awards this year? It’s so relevant to all these questions. Listen for her line: “We are in our documentary moment.”
Empathy.
“A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is coming our way. And even if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent. Because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what’s coming at us.”
WE ARE IN OUR DOCUMENTARY MOMENT.
Welcome it all in. Include don’t exclude. Inclusion. Is that such a dirty word? Or are we capable of it? (There is no wrong answer.)
I wrote here a few weeks ago about doing exactly what Jane suggested. I called an old high school friend who voted very differently than I did this past election. We had a near two hour conversation which you can read about here. My conclusion was this:
In our collective Unraveling — could we try to open our ears and hearts a bit more? Get curious? Allow ourselves to not blow someone off so quickly? Y’all, I am right here with you — I am working on all of this as well. I’m not asking us to hold hands and sing kumbaya. Fuck that. What I am trying on, instead, is… curiosity, compassion and looking someone in the eye with whom I don’t agree.
Here’s the thing about me: I left CNN four years ago this month, and I’ve been thinking a lot about all of this. Thanks to my job as a journalist for 20 years, I had a front row seat to America. I’ve interviewed thousands of people. And now outside the confines of cable news — where I was expected to tow the line — I’m in a unique position to really get to that truth of what’s happening in America today.
Now I want to share my personal thoughts with you below — including what I watched that stirred my soul. Keep scrolling or subscribe to read and watch.
I started Unraveling. It has been messy and painful and also a gift. It’s a funny word — “Unraveling.” Don’t let the “un” fool you. There’s something about our human desire to use the “un” to emphasize something negative or bad. It’s actually the opposite. Unraveling is an act of creation which can only come out of destruction. To unravel is to unknot, to loosen, to free up. We’re free to become something else, to become anything, to discover the truth.
I am still Unraveling, but with the goal of raveling anew, into truth and integrity. And mostly in freedom. My experience has me thinking a lot now… about our nation’s Unraveling.
It’s 2025 — what is actually going on? What’s the real impact of being tethered to our phones and hiding behind our social media accounts? What happened to our empathy and compassion? Did it go away because of post-9/11 fear? The pandemic? Social media? 24-hour cable news echo chambers? And why have so many of us cut ties to friends or family who no longer think like us? I just had a 70-something year old driver flip me and Peter double birds. Americans are so damn angry.
What is the real, dark, raw truth of what ails us? I’d love us to be able to look all our neighbors in the eye, whoever they are.
And that brings me to the thing that stirred my soul today.
I was recently on a zoom with this brilliant guy Josh Seftel about a potential work collaboration. Josh directed this Oscar-nominated short film called Stranger at the Gate. It tells the true story of Richard "Mac" McKinney, a former U.S. Marine who, after returning home after serving multiple tours in the Middle East, experienced deep Islamophobia and PTSD — so much so that he made plans to bomb a mosque in his hometown of Muncie, Indiana. But when he visited the mosque for a sort of dry-run for his mass murder, the members of that Muslim community saw this preoccupied, troubled, different looking (to them) guy, and literally opened their arms, hugging him, welcoming him with kindness and compassion. Guess what happened? I’ve never ever heard this story before. Mac started showing up; he showed up the next day, and the next. He could feel his seething hatred ebb away, like the wrong idea. He felt the warmth and the heat of belonging of this community. And so, instead of committing mass murder, Mac underwent a profound transformation. He converted to Islam. He became not only a member of the mosque, but eventually became the president of the very community he once planned to annihilate.
Not politics. Not ideology. Warmth and belonging.
The panacea? Background aside, language aside, histories aside, Mac and this Muslim community met mid-span on the bridge of their humanity. That simple.
Here’s the trailer:
I felt like this film had exposed something so essential, so urgent, that at first I couldn’t name it. There’s a moment when a Muslim woman in the community talks about how she believes we should be even kinder to those who are troubled, whose beliefs don’t align with our own. We should open our arms even wider. This is a woman speaking about a man who she eventually learned wanted to kill her and the people she loved.
This reminded me of the Charleston AME Church where in 2015 a group of churchgoers invited a similarly troubled young man to join them and pray. He sat with them for 45 minutes, praying, then opened fire. I covered that story and was the first reporter allowed in the room where those nine innocent people (including the pastor) were shot and killed. To this day, it’s impossible to put into words what it felt like to be in a house of worship knowing such evil had been committed there. Where the most extreme forces collided, the light of hope and faith and dark pointless death.
But in Muncie, Indiana — instead of bloodshed, a bridge was built.
We so rarely hear stories like this. A “plot-thwarted” so rarely makes the evening news. But it should. Because in this case because the plot wasn’t exposed by an FBI raid or a drone strike, but by … love.
If this isn’t the meaning of life, then I don’t know what is.
I couldn’t help but wonder — if mass murder can be prevented because a man is suddenly moved by kindness, belonging and humanity, what else is possible? As a wise, new friend reminded me over a meal last weekend: “Change begins at home.”
As they say in recovery, “take the right next action.” My call to you — and I’m talking to myself too as I type this — is to think about your day today, your interactions with friends and strangers, your preconceived notions, your assumptions, your eye rolls and your connections. How can I build a bridge today?
When I was a kid, my mom used to say to me often: “Brooke, you should become a judge. You’re so fair.” As I got older I sometimes wished I wasn’t so fair — I wanted to be decisive, take a side, slice someone’s argument to pieces, pounce and win. Sure I did that plenty on live TV — but do you want to know the truth? I often hated it. Instead I wanted to ask my guest loads more questions and then listen. How did this person come to this radical belief? What about their upbringing led them here? Are they open to change? Turns out my mom was right — I am curious and fair. These days I’m especially grateful for those gifts.
And — perhaps just like you — I am also angry. As I’m sitting here Peter is reading a news story to me about how Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is being removed from the Naval Academy Library — while Hitler’s Mein Kampf is allowed to remain.
We are in an excruciating moment. People are losing their livelihoods. Important parts of the world are also wildly unstable. What is equally true is that the world has always been so. These moments come and go like waves even though these feel bigger and more destructive. I am trying to find a through line into all of it — past, present and future. And the one through line I will go to my grave holding onto is that human beings always have more in common than we think, especially when we’re in the same room looking one another in the eye. That’s exactly what that would-be mass murderer discovered in Muncie, Indiana — that redemption, empathy, and the power of human connection can dissolve even the most deep-rooted prejudices.
I am Unraveling. Our nation most certainly is Unraveling. Come Unravel with me. My prayer is that we unravel to ravel anew — out of our documentary moment, and into open hearts and building bridges to common ground.
All my love and hope —
BB
PS I would love to hear about the conversations around your dinner table and how you feel about the state of our country today. And how you’re bridging the divide in your life and at home.
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