The Woman on the Porch

A few weeks ago, I knocked a door where no one answered.
Twenty minutes later, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number: 

 

“Hey, you stopped by my home earlier. I was in the backyard. If you’re still around, I’m sitting on the front porch.”

So I turned around.

We’ll call her Sandy. A retired youth pastor who works a few shifts at a coffee shop because she’s “bad at retirement.” We talked about everything—one-party Republican rule, Democratic leaders who aren’t using their platforms, and what it feels like when systems hollow out around you.

We talked for half an hour.

At the end, she said she wanted to canvass for me. Then she said something I carried the rest of the night:

“You give me hope. This can’t be easy. But steel is forged in fire.”

Later that evening, after she posted about our conversation, a former city-councilor messaged her to chastise her for supporting me.

She told him, “I do my homework. I’m standing by this.”

Then she texted me:

“If they’re this worried, you must be doing something right.”

When you’re running a bottom-up campaign, people pour their frustration into you. They pour their hope into you, too.

Both are heavy.
Both are sacred.