There are years that give us a tremendous amount, and there are years that take from us. The former inspire and catapult us forward, and the latter can steal our fire, our hopes and dreams, our optimism and our spirit. We all, or at least most of us, know that challenges build character and tenacity, and with any luck, hope for better and easier times.
Well, 2025 has been a year. We all know this. We’re living on the precipice of losing almost everything good and hopeful, if not ideal, about our imperfect nation. We enter this Thanksgiving and holiday season fighting for the very basics of decency and democracy. These are difficult times, and we are navigating through a period when it feels difficult to be hopeful.
But we must. Because it is through hope that we have the strength to move through the darkness toward the light. In that spirit, I’ve allowed myself to focus on what I’m thankful for, and admittedly, it’s not all butterflies and rainbows and kitty cats, although those are all high on my perpetual list. Here is an inexhaustive, and honest, list of what I’m giving thanks for as this holiday season opens—in no particular order.
First, the holidays. Colorful fairy lights, retro decor, the kitsch, the presents to give and get, the creativity, the belief in a power that allows us to transcend the negative and our mistakes of the past year and to become better versions of ourselves every year. I’m a little girl this time of year, obsessed with the season and all its accoutrements. I can’t wait to climb into all the boxes of decor in the attic over Thanksgiving break. I’m my mama’s daughter, may she rest in glorious peace.
Families, original and built. As a white woman who openly rejects the worst of Mississippi, I am blessed to have siblings, nieces and nephews I can gather with who do not bring hate to the dinner table. This wasn’t always true with the extended families of my childhood. I cannot break bread with such people as an adult, and with my wonderful immediate families, I do not have to.
After fleeing from my home state the day after I graduated from Mississippi State in 1983 to avoid the racism and misogyny here, I am so grateful that I moved back here with my partner, Todd, in 2001. And that we together created the kinds of loving, creative and open-minded spaces that I realized might’ve kept me here decades ago had they been available to me. He and I’ve tried to do the same for others ever since we returned. We’re far from perfect, but we are driven toward the light.
My immediate little fam. I am so blessed to have connected with Todd Stauffer 30 years ago next summer at a kitschy white-trash party I hosted in Colorado Springs, where we both lived then. It’s been an amazing journey filled with laughter, joy, adventure, travel, entrepreneurship and a determination to lift up communities around us and do our parts to improve and diversify journalism so it actually serves the people over the usual power suspects. Having a partner in all aspects of your life and passions, who supports and lifts you up, is everything. And let’s not forget the animals we’ve shared over the years—cats Daisy, Willie, King Eddie, Deuce and our dear sweet Gato we lost far too soon a year ago. Now, our way-too-smart cat Capp Bob (a natural social-media influencer, sigh) and our pup Gizmo entertain us daily.
The MFP team. It amazes me to think how long I’ve worked and innovated journalism alongside most of the staff here, most of whom followed co-founder Kimberly Griffin and me over from the Jackson Free Press. For a period, some signed in at the JFP for a half a day, then signed out and into MFP the second half of the day while both publications overlapped. They knew we were trying to raise enough money to hire them full-time at the new statewide nonprofit.
This news organization is a passion project. This is a team of fantastic and collaborative human beings who mostly grew up in Mississippi who are here not for fame and fortune or awards (although we like to win them, no doubt)—but to center the people of Mississippi, listen deeply to them, connect them, and report on challenges they identify and potential solutions. We are driven to work very hard together due to that shared ethos. And they are kind and mutually accountable to each other; we’ve learned to hire as a team for mutual respect.
Youth Media Project teenagers. I’m so grateful for the support, especially from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Jane Alexander at the Community Foundation for Mississippi, for helping make our teenage reporting project possible every summer since 2016 (except for an extended pandemic break). That means six summers of fantastic, award-winning systemic journalism (a phrase I borrowed from the social sciences to explain our unique Free Press journalism approach) on their website at jxnpulse.com.
YMP helps create a pipeline of young people paid for their work and brilliance, some of whom come back as mentors or to do other Free Press work later, not to mention to do amazing work for their communities. This isn’t a side project; it is core to the mission of our nonprofit Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, alongside the soon-to-be eight local reporting bureaus of the MFP, and the Solutions Circles the teenagers help us host.
Friends I don’t see nearly enough. OK, I’m a bit of a workaholic driven to create and do the kinds of things I list above. I often focus more on “communities” than I do my own dear friends and smaller circles, and there’s no good excuse for that. You know who you are. But I’m working to do much better and have reconnected with so many in the last year, and I’m still working on it. I’m grateful for each of you, and you know who you are. Hold me accountable.
Courageous people standing up. Here’s where the “rough” part begins. It’s easy for hopelessness to set in as course hatefulness is modeled and infiltrates so many parts of our lives. It reminds me so much of why I fled Mississippi more than four decades ago, only to find intolerance elsewhere dressed up in erudite sophistication or shared openly with me because I was a white southerner, wink-wink.
As a club DJ in Washington, D.C., after I dropped out of law school, I can’t tell you how many times a venue owner told me to “stop playing that n—r music.” Now, of course, hate is again in vogue for many in all these 50 states, and more openly than it was then. And now we are on the cusp of losing not only human decency but our democracy. We must be courageous, and I’m thankful for each of you who seeks and finds that inner strength. Real power is in the numbers of people who stand up and speak out.
Virginia Giuffre and all sexual-assault survivors speaking out. It’s no secret that I’m a sexual-assault survivor, and I have managed to avoid it numerous times since the original sin against me. But I like so, so many women and other survivors have been throttled by a society protection system that punishes and blames women for our own abuse. As we saw after the intentional asphyxiation of the #MeToo movement, most male offenders and enablers of various genders just remade themselves, enabling the system to morph forward over generations. These types even target and mistreated the survivors who speak out. It’s happened to me and so many others.
To this day, like so many women, I still believe I can’t name my rapist because it would get turned on me, as the system loves to do, and destroy me and what I’ve helped build in Mississippi over 23 years. This is how it keeps going and growing. But courageous women are putting much on the line to blow up this system.
The men speaking out, too. I recently saw quotes from a HuffPost piece on Instagram: “The Epstein emails expose grim truths about men in power—even Democrats. … Women get exploited, dismissed and forgotten. … Men get do-overs. … Epstein and the men he surrounded himself with didn’t evade accountability for so long by accident. They did it because systems built by powerful men protect powerful men.” That is straight talk, folks. And spot on.
Make no mistake: Blowing up this age-old system requires men to be more courageous about challenging their brothers and speaking up on behalf of women and other survivors. It’s shocking to me how often I’ve observed men openly abusing women, including in social media, and no “good” man bothers to challenge them.
But thanks to the courage of Giuffre and others in forcing public attention, more men are now speaking out and sharing our writings and demanding the Epstein files be public, no matter who in the multi–partisan brotherhood (and sisterhood) abuser/enabler system falls as a result. Of course, we had high hopes for #MeToo to finally destroy the system, and too many men got do-overs. But I’m very thankful for the signs of systemic sea change we’re finally seeing. I pray it goes the full course.
Please join with your voices—and light a special holiday candle for Virginia Giuffre, who ignited this moment and ended her own life clearly because she couldn’t take more abuse. Thank you for your courage and sacrifice, Ms. Giuffre. We owe you.
To the rest of you, may you have a loving, honest and peaceful holiday season filled with grace and courage. I’m thankful for all of you as well.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.