It is February of 2026.

I am 38 years old.

I am living in Canada.

I am watching the world I knew crumble around me.

I am watching the world I was used to crumble around me. The world that benefitted me in privilege based on the location of my birth. The order that I called unfair many times because I saw many people who had it better than I did – better homes, fewer stresses, easier lives.

I’ve struggled to put food on the table. I’ve struggled to access the health care needed for a unique condition that I also struggled to have diagnosed in the first place.

I’ve lost people I loved. I’ve lost people I’ve cared for. I’ve lost them to death. I’ve lost them to suicide. I’ve lost them to murder.

I’ve lost some to their own minds. I’ve lost some as I’ve learned to put up boundaries that keep me safer; saner.

I’ve lost my career and the vibrancy of a healthy youth. I am only 38 years old and facing the realization that my life will never again move along the path I once thought I could seek, because of that loss.

I’ve struggled and I’ve lost and I’ve looked at my world through that lens. I’ve sunk into depression, on occasion, feeling sorry for myself – feeling as though something I inherently deserved was taken from me.

As I age, I see how much that very feeling was a privilege.

I see how much that feeling of ‘deserving’ in the first place comes from privilege.

And I do not point this out to say, “We shouldn’t fight for better.” But, rather, to remember, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”

Or until it is under threat.

Until someone is trying to take it.

Until you see it stolen from your neighbour.

Privilege.

The privilege of security. Safety. Food in the cupboard.

The privilege of walking safely down a street without having to worry that you will be scooped up and deported or detained.

The privilege of holding peaceful protest to fight for better privilege or stand up against those being taken away – without worry of being tear gassed, beaten, or killed.

We often talk about these things as rights. And perhaps they should be.

But language matters.

The ability to have these rights, to fight for these rights, to argue about whether they are rights or not… is all a privilege.

But, again, language matters. The way we define words matters.

Privilege does not need to be a dirty word. Having privilege does not erase our sorrows. Acknowledging it does not mean we haven’t struggled. It doesn’t mean we can’t want for more; for better.

Acknowledging privilege means that we humble ourselves. It means that we recognize how fragile those things we call “rights” truly are. It means we recognize how important it is to fight for them – for ourselves, for our neighbours, for our world.

It is February of 2026.

I am 38 years old.

I am living in Canada.

I am privileged to watch the atrocities in the United States play out on a screen instead of my city. I am privileged to have, all the years of my life, watch wars from the safety of my living room as they destroy lives all over the world. I am privileged to have a choice to stay silent. And a choice to speak up.

And I am humbled by the realization of just how quickly that privilege could be taken away.

Now, I’ve always known this in some ways. It’s part of why I was a very anxious child. Watching things on the news always reminded me that at any moment, everything I have could be taken away.

I choose to honour that understanding by living as full and loving and beautiful of a life as possible while I have it. I have seen deaths in those far too young. I know I am not immune to the fate we all face. I have lost measures of my health and know how much more could be gone in the blink of an eye. And now I am watching so many of my American neighbours face a reality that I never wanted to believe could exist in North America but always feared would come.

I choose to honour my privilege by acknowledging it. I choose to honour my privilege by speaking out. I choose to honour my privilege by continuing to laugh and love and find the tiniest spark of beauty in every day that I am blessed to walk this earth. I choose to honour my privilege by fighting for others to have the same, by focusing on those things I have to be grateful for instead of only focusing on the things I want to see change, by fighting for that change as well, and by remaining open to finding better ways to continue to honour it in the future.

Maybe this jumble of words only makes sense to me. Maybe someone else will find something helpful wrapped inside it. I can’t know. All I know is that there is a great unrest in my soul and a great sadness in my heart and that they sit side by side with an immense gratitude for the life I’ve had a chance to live up to this point and every bit of life I’ll get from here on out.

I intend to carry these things in equal measure. I intend to allow the sadness and the hurt and the fear and the frustration and the anger to live and breathe and have their space to fuel the fight inside me. But I also intend to never let them take my happiness, my joy, my love, my laughter, my gratitude – my humanity.