So many of us are exhausted by the media environment we live inside—the scandals, the outrage, the fear, the endless framing as a battle between us and them. But there is another kind of absence too. So much of what matters most in our lives—our relationships, our inner struggles, our longing for meaning and belonging, the challenge of living with greater care and wisdom—receives remarkably little sustained attention. Whether through cable news and social media, podcasts or online publications, we are surrounded by an enormous amount of content while often being offered surprisingly little depth.

That exhaustion, and that hunger for something deeper, are among the reasons we are creating At The Root, a new media platform launching later this fall. We’re building a place to slow down, widen our gaze, and look more deeply at the defining issues of our time, across our inner lives, our relationships, our communities, our shared world, and the places where they meet. Rather than simply chasing the latest controversy or treating our personal and societal challenges as separate things, we want to explore what lies beneath them: the psychological, relational, social, historical, cultural, systemic, and spiritual forces shaping our lives, along with the possibilities for repair, healing, and a more grounded way forward.

If that sounds like something you’ve been looking for, you can subscribe early at www.attheroot.media. We’re beginning to build the community before launch, and I’d love to have you be part of it.

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Because the problem At The Root is trying to address isn’t simply that there is too much bad news. It’s that the structure of our media increasingly determines which stories get told, how they get told, and therefore what parts of reality we repeatedly see.

Stories move at extraordinary speed. Something consequential happens, we get a headline, a clip, maybe thirty seconds of commentary, and then the machinery moves on to the next controversy. Important questions are sometimes raised but rarely explored. Context gets compressed. Complexity disappears. Whatever is most provocative tends to rise to the top.

There are obvious economic reasons for this. Much of our media now operates inside an attention economy shaped by an almost impossible demand for continual growth and ever-greater returns. Clicks, views, engagement, subscriptions, and advertising dollars matter enormously, and fear and outrage are especially effective at capturing our attention. A headline that leaves us alarmed, furious, or incredulous is awfully hard not to click.

But I think the consequences go much deeper than clickbait.

Media doesn’t simply tell us what’s happening. Over time, it helps teach us what kind of world we are living in. Human beings have always understood ourselves through stories. Long before newspapers, television, or social media existed, stories helped us make sense of who we were, how to understand our inner lives and relationships, where we belonged in our communities, and how to understand the larger society and world around us.

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Today, an enormous portion of that storytelling happens through media. And when the stories surrounding us are disproportionately organized around conflict, threat, scandal, and division, it shouldn’t surprise us when the world begins to feel more frightening, hostile, and divided than it actually is.

Our divisions are real, of course. There are profound disagreements in American life, along with enormous social, economic, cultural, and political pressures that shouldn’t be minimized. But something else is true at the same time: we often misunderstand one another more than we realize. Research into political polarization has repeatedly found that Americans tend to exaggerate the extremity of people on the other side and underestimate the amount of common ground that still exists between us.

That matters, because if I am continually shown the most outrageous example of people who supposedly represent “the other side,” eventually that example begins to stand in for millions of people I have never actually met. They become caricatures. And once we believe our neighbors are fundamentally unreasonable, dangerous, or beyond reach, we begin behaving toward them accordingly.

This is true beyond politics as well. Our mainstream media rarely makes much room for the deeper questions of how to live a good life—how to meet our inner struggles, our relationships, and one another with greater care, gentleness, and skill. These dimensions of life are often ignored, treated superficially, or separated from the larger social and systemic forces that shape them. We rarely explore how our inner lives and our shared world continually act upon one another.

In all these ways, distorted perceptions, and incomplete ones, can eventually help create the very reality they seemed merely to describe.

The media isn’t solely responsible for our polarization. We all participate in the system. We click. We share. We reward the stories that provoke us. Political leaders, influencers, and media personalities have learned to exploit those same dynamics. But we should take seriously the enormous power of an information system that surrounds us for hours every day and continually directs our attention toward certain aspects of reality while leaving others largely invisible.

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And that may be one of the most important pieces of this: it’s not only what we are being shown. It’s what we aren’t being shown.

We hear about the school shooting. We hear much less about the deeper conditions that make violence more likely, or about the communities developing approaches that might prevent it. We hear about political polarization. We hear less about the psychology of belonging, humiliation, identity, status, fear, and threat that can make polarization so powerful. We hear about loneliness, anxiety, and stress as individual problems, while hearing far less about the social conditions producing them, or the ways our relationships, communities, workplaces, technologies, and institutions shape our inner lives.

And we rarely put these pieces together.

We tend to divide the world into categories: psychology over here, politics over there, spirituality somewhere else, economics in another section, relationships relegated to their own corner. But human life doesn’t work that way. What happens inside us affects the societies we build, and the societies we build affect what happens inside us. Our nervous systems, relationships, institutions, histories, cultures, and political systems are constantly shaping one another.

If we want to understand the defining issues of our time, we have to become much better at seeing those connections.

That is the deeper ambition behind At The Root. We’re bringing together writers, researchers, academics, practitioners, organizers, philosophers, spiritual thinkers, and others working at the leading edges of their fields—not because any one discipline has the answer, but because the problems we face are too interconnected for any single lens to explain them.

We want to ask not only What happened? but Why is this happening? What sits underneath it? What does psychology have to do with politics? What does history have to do with our relationships? What does trauma have to do with culture? What does belonging have to do with democracy?

And just as importantly, we want to ask where something is beginning to heal. What are people learning? What possibilities are emerging that we aren’t hearing enough about? What’s working that deserves more attention?

Because going to the root doesn’t mean endlessly diagnosing what is broken. It also means understanding the conditions that allow something different to grow.

There are extraordinary people already doing this work—researchers discovering more about human behavior and cooperation, communities experimenting with new ways of repairing division, practitioners helping people heal trauma, thinkers exploring consciousness and meaning, organizers redesigning institutions, and artists helping us imagine worlds that don’t yet exist.

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So much wisdom already exists. What’s missing are enough places capable of bringing those insights together, connecting the dots among them, and bringing them into our shared cultural conversation.

That is what I hope At The Root can become: not another machine for telling us what to be outraged about today, but a place for stories that help us understand one another and ourselves more deeply. Stories that illuminate what lies beneath our problems. Stories that reveal possibilities alongside breakdown. Stories that might help us remember that even in a deeply fractured moment, another way of being together is still possible.

If this resonates with you, please subscribe now at www.attheroot.media. We’ll be launching later this fall, and subscribing now is the best way to follow along as the project comes to life.

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I hope you’ll join us. Because changing the stories a culture tells about itself may be one of the ways we begin changing the culture itself.

Matthew Albracht is the Board Chair of The Peace Alliance (www.peacealliance.org), a U.S. based NGO which advocates for domestic and international peacebuilding priorities. His writing has appeared on CNN, Newsweek, Salon and HuffPost, among other outlets.

His personal Substack writings explore how we heal—from the inside out and the bottom up—personally, politically, and culturally—with a particular focus on the intersections between them all. Weaving together politics, psychology, and personal growth, grounded in systems thinking and trauma-awareness.

Follow Matthew on: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok

At The Root is a new kind of publication — a place to slow down, widen our gaze, and look more deeply at the defining issues of our time. We explore the terrain of our inner lives, our shared world, and the places where they meet.

We map the root causes and reveal the deeper stories, practices, and possibilities that help us see more clearly and meet this moment with more wisdom and compassion.

We are here for people exhausted by the fear, outrage, and shallow analysis dominating today’s media landscape, and longing for something deeper:
clarity beyond the noise, and pathways toward repair.

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Something is off, and we can feel it… The narratives our media feeds us, across news coverage, commentary, and social media, profoundly shape what we notice, what we fear, how we make sense of both our lives and our world, and what we believe is possible. And far too often, these very stories shaping us are failing us.

We are living through a profoundly destabilizing moment, and too much of our media is deepening the very conditions we most need to repair. And yet, even as our understanding continues to evolve, we can already draw from deep wells of research, proven practices, wisdom traditions, and moral imagination that can help us find our way through. What’s missing is a home that can bring all of this insight and capacity together at a scale powerful enough to meet this moment.

How We Meet This Moment

• We go to the root, not just the surface. At The Root looks beneath the headlines, to the deeper psychological, sociological, systemic, cultural, generational, and spiritual forces shaping our lives, asking not just WHAT is happening, but the deeper WHY, because that’s what makes genuine change possible.

• The dominant media system rewards what harms us. Too much of today’s mainstream media ecosystem is profit-captured, built to maximize click-bait fueled attention rather than deepening understanding. It rewards fear, outrage, speed, and addiction over clarity, meaning, and connection. At The Root exists because this fragile time demands a different kind of media, one designed to help people slow down, see more clearly, and act from a deeper place.

• We become a new center of gravity. No single person, ideology, or discipline can meet this moment alone. At The Root brings together writers, teachers, experts, researchers, organizers, practitioners, artists, and wisdom-keepers — working across education, scholarship, healing practices, the arts, politics, and movements for change. A trusted place to turn for the voices this moment most needs, gathered at a scale that can offer a real counterbalance to a media ecosystem that divides us and keeps us at the surface.

• Crisis is not the whole story. We do not minimize the crises we face or dodge difficult truths, we engage them fully, and make room for the full range of emotions they can stir. But amid what is breaking down, stories of resilience, courage, creativity, and possibility are also unfolding all around us, even when the current media landscape ignores or buries them. At The Root exists to help us see more of the whole: not only the wounds we carry, but the ways they can mend, not only how “I” heal, but how “we” heal together; not only what is breaking down, but what is breaking through.

• Deeper understanding feeds rooted action. Insight matters most when it becomes livable. At The Root doesn't just inform, it connects readers to practices, movements, and advocacy: actionable pathways forward, whether that's learning a meditation practice, showing up for grassroots change, or countless other forms. Not just what we come to understand, but what that understanding becomes: something we embody, something we share, something we act from.

• The state we leave you in matters. We pay as much attention to the state our stories leave us in as to the stories themselves, offering perspectives that help us understand what’s happening without being swallowed by it, that leave us more reflective than reactive, more whole than fragmented, more capable when the world feels overwhelming.

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The Common Roots

The crises of our time are not random. They are interconnected expressions of deeper forces running through our institutions, communities, and inner lives. The same disconnection driving political polarization shows up in epidemic loneliness. The same unprocessed fear and trauma that fuels authoritarianism can echo through our relationships, public life, and collective exhaustion. These are not separate stories — the psychological and the political, the personal and the systemic, the moral and the practical, the wound and the repair. They share many of the same roots. Some run through our history, racism and other systems of exclusion and exploitation, and still shape who gets to feel safe, seen, and heard today.

When we grasp these roots more clearly, something shifts, and hope becomes more than a wish. The despair many of us feel is understandable, but it is often built on an incomplete and distorted picture. Beneath the noise, the evidence points somewhere quietly radical: most of us are more decent, more caring, and less divided than the loudest voices suggest. Cynicism can pose as wisdom, but it often mistakes the echo chamber for the whole. Seeing past it is not naïveté; it is a more accurate reading of who we are and what remains within reach.

Hope, then, is not something we simply wait to feel. It is something we can nourish, and one of the conditions that makes repair possible. As it grows, we begin to notice what our media rarely shows us: repair already underway, its seeds taking root in far more places than we tend to see.

A few examples of the kinds of stories you’ll find At The Root:

• You might read about political polarization and see the story beneath the shouting: not just red versus blue, or democracy versus authoritarianism, but the roots of fear, isolation, distrust, economic insecurity, and outrage-driven systems pulling us apart. And you would also see what most coverage misses: the bridge-builders, local communities, and civic experiments quietly proving that something different is possible.

• You might read about school violence and youth mental health and look beyond the usual debates to the deeper roots: trauma, isolation, emotional dysregulation, and despair. You begin to see why social-emotional learning, mindfulness, restorative practices, and real emotional support may prevent more harm than another metal detector ever could.

• You might be struggling with anxiety, chronic stress, or the residue of old trauma, and find not just explanation but genuine pathways: the science of nervous system regulation, guided practices you can try — meditation, somatic practices — and honest reporting on the professional approaches that research supports, for those ready to go deeper. All of it grounded in why so many of us are carrying so much right now.

• You might look at democratic erosion, climate anxiety, parental burnout, or the weight of collective exhaustion, and come away not with hopelessness, but with a clearer sense of what’s happening, why old patterns keep repeating, and where new possibilities are already emerging.

We cover a wide range, from democracy and political culture to justice, mental health, relationships, education, climate, spirituality, and the inner life — and the deeper forces that connect them.

This is not passive media.

This is a space where, together, we build community and belonging around deeper ways of knowing ourselves and our world.

What Could Grow Here

Imagine what becomes possible if this actually takes root.

Not another outlet shouting into the same exhausted noise, but a genuine home, gathering the people already doing this work, often in isolation, and giving them a shared place to think out loud, together, at a scale that can finally be felt. A commons for the sanest voices of a disoriented time.

For individuals, it could be the place you go not to be inflamed but to be steadied, where understanding actually metabolizes into how you live, parent, vote, grieve… and hope. For the culture, it could be a working counterweight: proof, published and repeated, that depth can hold attention, that we are not condemned to the shallowest version of every story. And for the larger turning so many of us can feel but few can name — the slow shift toward a more whole and humane way of being together. It could be one of the places that turning is nurtured, articulated, and made real. That is what transforms a life, and, together, a world.

This is not passive media. This is what could grow here.
From the root.

If you pay attention to your body while you read the news, you can feel it.

The tightening in the chest. The shallow breath. The reflex to roll your eyes, clench your jaw, pick a side, and brace for impact. That’s not an intellectual response. That’s your nervous system deciding the world isn’t safe.

And the truth is, a lot of our politics is not just “heated debate.” It’s mass dysregulation — a state where the nervous system is so flooded with threat and stress that clear thinking, empathy, and genuine deliberation become nearly impossible. Chronic activation. A culture caught in a stress response so constant it becomes hard to imagine there could be anything healthier outside the bubble it has created.

Our political ecosystem has become a machine for this. Leaders provoke. Audiences react. Media amplifies. Algorithms reward whatever spikes emotion fastest. Fundraising follows the outrage. The whole cycle trains us into a narrower and narrower state, where nuance feels like weakness and contempt passes for conviction.

In that environment, politics stops being an arena where we deliberate for the common good. It becomes a stage where we reenact our oldest survival patterns: fight, flight, freeze, and the desperate scramble for belonging.

What we’re living through isn’t only a policy crisis. It’s an emotional maturity crisis. A co-regulation crisis. A crisis of whether anyone in power can stay steady enough under pressure to help the rest of us widen, rather than collapse. It’s a game we seem to be losing.

We don’t just need smarter policy platforms (though we certainly do). We need leaders who can carry conflict without turning it into annihilation. Leaders who can tell the truth without contempt. Leaders who can model real adulthood in public. This would do more to open up our capacity for the positive change most of us long for than just about anything. But it’s a tall order given the limiting system we live within, and with the pool of leadership we currently have before us. Far too often modeling the worst of us, not the best of us.

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The hidden loop we are stuck in

Here is the toxic loop as I see it.

Provocation gets attention. Attention gets amplified. Amplification triggers the crowd. The crowd rewards escalation. That reward trains leaders to escalate again.

A dysregulated leader dysregulates the room. The room dysregulates the country.

That is the trap. We spiral inside it, mistaking intensity for strength and cruelty for clarity or justice.

And if we wonder why whole and healthy arguments rarely break through, this is a big part of the answer. When already stressed and dysregulated people get activated, they can’t reliably take in nuance. They narrow. They sort the world into friend and foe. They may seek belonging through shared enemies. They reach for certainty, not complexity. In that state, politics becomes less about solving problems and more about managing fear.

A nation stuck in trauma response

Look at our political landscape honestly and what you see, underneath all the noise, is a lot of people acting from unprocessed psychological and developmental wounding. This is true of voters. And it is deeply true of many of our leaders.

When politicians attack and humiliate, when they perform constant public rage, when they govern through grievance and keep their followers in a permanent state of threat, they do more than model destructive behavior. They trigger the collective nervous system.

If someone experiences the world as hostile, maybe because they have spent parts of their lives feeling unseen, attacked, abused, oppressed, or not loved enough, they can gravitate toward leaders who feel familiar inside that hostility, even if those leaders intensify the very conditions that keep them trapped. It isn’t rational. It’s somatic. It happens below the level of conscious thought.

The allure of a deregulating leader isn’t always about the policies they promise. Sometimes it’s about the relief of being mirrored. The feeling that someone finally understands your anger. The camaraderie of shared grievance. The familiarity of chaos can feel safer than the unfamiliarity of calm, especially if calm has never lasted.

This may not be most people. But it is enough people to shape elections and dominate news cycles. And the more our political environment amplifies dysregulation, the harder it becomes for anyone, on any side, to respond from their best self.

We are spinning. We keep spinning. And a lot of us are exhausted.

Most People Know It When They See It

Here’s what gives me hope: you don’t need to have had a great therapist, a secure childhood, or an intact support network to recognize groundedness when it’s standing in front of you. Most of us haven’t had those things as deeply as we need them. But something in us still responds — to warmth, steadiness, and the sense that the person speaking actually means what they say.

We know it when we see it. We feel it in our bodies before we can explain it with our words.

This matters politically because it means the opportunity isn’t only for the already-healed. A well-regulated leader can help a dysregulated audience hear things they couldn’t hear before — not because the argument improved, but because the nervous system settled enough to let it in. The message hasn’t changed; the container for it has. And that changes things.

Most of us are longing for this, even those of us who can’t name it. We’re longing for connection. For someone to model what calm, introspective leadership actually looks like. For a sense that the adults are in the room.

I don’t mean bland. I don’t mean passive. I don’t mean “above the fray” in a way that excuses injustice or dodges righteous anger. I mean a leader who can carry conflict without turning it into all out annihilation.

Someone who can tell the truth without contempt.

Someone who can oppose policies without dehumanizing individual people.

Someone who can admit mistakes without collapsing into shame or doubling down in aggression.

Someone who does not need to perform dominance to feel powerful.

It is startling how rare this is now.

What We’re Really Voting For

There’s a version of this argument that says: voters should be smarter, more policy-literate, more rational. And sure, in an ideal world... But that framing misses something essential about what it means to be human.

We are social creatures whose nervous systems were built for small tribes and clear hierarchies. We look to our leaders not just for ideas but for cues about whether the world is safe, whether things are going to be okay, whether we are going to be okay. We look for healthy modeling. We always have. The question is whether we’re going to consciously work with that reality or keep pretending it doesn’t exist.

Here’s my theory: if more leaders modeled regulation, love, restraint, and accountability, our politics would not simply become nicer. It would become far more functional. People would be more able to listen. More able to tolerate difference. More able to update their beliefs without feeling humiliated. More able to stay in relationship while still advocating fiercely for what they believe.

In other words, we could begin to exit the trauma loop.

We cannot heal a traumatized society solely through better policy, though policy matters enormously. We also have to address the culture’s emotional operating system. And leadership is one of the fastest ways a society learns what is normal — what is possible — what it’s allowed to feel and do and become.

If we want a different political order — and I believe most people, across the spectrum, are hungry for one — then part of what we need to do is recognize and elevate the leaders who have done some personal work. Who aren’t playing the gotcha demonization game. Who can be a steady presence under pressure. Who aren’t just performing values but actually practicing them. Who make us feel, in our bodies, like things might be okay.

The work, for all of us, is learning to recognize what we’re looking for — and supporting it when it shows up. The system, of course, doesn’t make this easy — gerrymandering, donor capture, party corruption, an outrage-driven media, etc. all select for exactly the opposite. Which is why recognizing and actively supporting this kind of leadership, when it appears, matters more than ever.

The future depends, in no small part, on whether we keep multiplying dysregulation or finally decide to multiply the leaders who can model something better. That might be one of the most important political acts available to us — if we can find more of them.

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Have thoughts on this? We’d love to hear who else you see modeling this kind of leadership — locally, nationally, anywhere.

Matthew Albracht is the Board Chair of The Peace Alliance (www.peacealliance.org), a U.S. based NGO which advocates for domestic and international peacebuilding priorities. His writings have appeared on CNN, Newsweek, Salon, HuffPost and other outlets. In addition to At The Root, he also writes on his own Substack, check it out!

Follow Matthew on: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok

“One of the most profound shifts in my life has come from learning to relate to others from a more radically accepting place. This dynamic—of meeting people where they are, not where I wish they’d be—has taught me more about life, love, and growth than perhaps anything else. It reminds me that most people, like me, are doing the best they can with the tools they have. We all carry invisible burdens. When we’re given the room to show up as we are—without being squeezed into someone else’s ideal—something more sacred becomes possible. It’s the foundation for deeper intimacy and a more divine unfolding.”

We all know—most of us too well—that life can be full of uncomfortable circumstances and experiences we’d rather avoid. Much of my life has been spent trying way too hard to manage or control these outside experiences, especially those that threaten my sense of emotional comfort or perceived safety. I’ve invested so much energy dodging discomfort and pain—and too often the situations that bring it. But the truth is, that strategy eventually breaks down. It can be exhausting. And it ultimately doesn’t work.

Some level of pain and discomfort is inevitable in life. But when I’ve fought too hard against my emotional experience—trying to control external circumstances to feel more secure rather than accepting what is—it can feel like wrestling the winds of a hurricane sometimes. And all it really does is stir up more inner storms, often fueled by past challenges or traumas that I’m reliving in the present.

The price for all this resistance has been steep. I can really wear myself down. And over time—through age, experience, and a lot of inner work—I’ve come to see that much of the turbulence is actually self-generated. A cyclone of unmet expectations, emotional overextension, and the illusion that control would keep me safe. (Are you enjoying my little TED Talk on emotional weather patterns??? )

Relationship challenges relating to this dynamic have always been especially tricky. I’ve held so many unrealistic expectations: wishing a partner would always speak to me in soothing, non-confrontational tones (even while harshly judging myself when I fail to do the same—which, let’s be honest, is often); hoping a colleague would better recognize my contributions (or better yet, my brilliance!); or just wanting a random grocery store clerk to not be actively rude. The list goes on. (Tell me I’m not the only one who mentally relives and rewrites awkward stranger interactions three hours after the fact!)

Culturally, we’re often told we should raise our relational expectations—demand respect, stand up for our needs. And in many cases, there’s some validity there. But I’m learning it’s less about getting people to meet me where I am at, and more about finding resonance, creating healthy boundaries when needed, and most importantly, letting go of the fantasy that someone who isn’t capable (or willing) to meet me where I want them to will suddenly transform if I just “push” and “fight” harder. For me, that has only created more pain—for everyone involved.

For some years now, I’ve been working to embody a different way of holding life’s inevitable challenges. I’ve been learning to consciously cultivate a psychological and spiritual practice of radical acceptance. It’s not about giving up or letting life or other people walk all over me. It’s about becoming more receptive, permeable even—especially in moments that trigger frustration, fear, or longing. (And bonus points if it’s poking at my very convincing illusion of control!)

One of the most profound shifts in my life has been learning to relate to others from this more grounded and open place. I’ve been practicing the art—because it is an art—of meeting people where they are, not where I wish they’d be. And when I manage to do that, even imperfectly, something softens. The tight grip of judgment loosens. The fog of unrealistic expectation and longing begins to lift. What emerges is a clearer presence—one that makes space for genuine connection, and even love, much more of a possibility.

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This shift hasn’t just shown up in theory—it’s transformed some of my most important relationships. Here’s one example… I tend to run a good bit co-dependent, and one of my default moves is to try and “fix” people or situations (mostly as a way to manage my own anxiety). One of my dear friends had been struggling for years in their relationships and in life. Whenever we talked, I’d offer some empathy, and I felt it—but I was mostly focused on giving advice, laying out strategies, suggesting what might help them shift things, or worse, how I thought they should or could feel. I meant well, but I wasn’t really listening. I definitely wasn’t radically accepting them.

One day, after there had been a couple months of space between us, they reached out and—bravely—shared how this dynamic had been impacting them. Something clicked. A lightbulb moment. I realized I’d been trying to change them, not be with them. That moment softened something in me. I stopped trying to “save” them—or at least, tried to stop (let’s be honest, these kinds of impulses still flare up with people in my life). Instead, I began offering deeper presence, more grounded empathy, and fewer fixes. And something in our relationship shifted. It felt more real. More spacious. Our bond deepened. In feeling more deeply heard, they were even better able to move on to other topics more swiftly.

In fact, to my surprise, again and again, I’ve watched something beautiful unfold when I release my story of who or how someone should be. When I give them space to simply be who they are, without pressure or demand, our connection has a chance to evolve organically. Sometimes it grows into something richer than I imagined. Sometimes it doesn’t. But even in the letting go, there is grace. There is freedom.

And it hasn’t just been about softening—it’s also meant being more honest with others. Not the sharp-edged kind, but the kind that makes room for truth and love to coexist.

This dynamic—of loosening expectations and better accepting what arises—has taught me more about life, love, and growth than perhaps anything else. It reminds me that most people, like me, are doing the best they can with the tools they have. And when we’re given the room to show up as we are, without being squeezed into someone else’s ideal, something sacred can happen. A new kind of intimacy. A more divine unfolding. A deeper peace.

And the same goes for how I meet myself. That’s maybe the hardest of all. My inner critic is strong. (It can be quite loud, persistent, and has annoying opinions on just about everything!) The voices of “should” and “not enough” run deep. But I’ve noticed that the more I meet myself with compassion the more progress I make toward being my best and highest self. Judgment and shame pull me backward. Gentle, consistent self-acceptance moves me forward. Turns out shame and self-judgment aren’t great life coaches. Who knew?

I’ve found that transformation doesn’t come all at once. It’s not some epic turning point. It’s daily. It’s subtle. It’s a long game of rewiring my brain’s circuitry. Of unspooling. Of softening. Of learning to tend instead of tense.

“Radical acceptance” has become my big guidepost—one I work to stay attuned to, and one that makes more of that possible. It’s not about perfection—I dip in and out of it every day (sometimes very deeply out of it, yikes). But having that anchor means I can return to it. In moments of frustration, disappointment or heartbreak, I can pause, remind myself, “This is what’s happening. I’m safe. I have choice. I can allow. I can accept.” All this is aided by my regular grounding practices like conscious breath-work, yoga, prayerfulness, therapy (!) and working to stay mindfully present.

Sometimes acceptance does mean creating distance from people. Sometimes it means saying no. It can be tough—but when it’s grounded in clear-eyed compassion rather than resentment, judgment or blame, it opens the door to more authentic connection in my relationships. This has all been a game-changer for me. When I stop trying to control outcomes and instead root into presence, I create the conditions for something real to emerge.

And over time, I’ve seen that reflected back to me. The more I love and accept my loved ones where they’re at—which certainly includes sharing my own needs—the more they often meet me with the same. It can become a beautiful, nourishing circle, a web of mutual care.

I don’t expect to “arrive.” I don’t expect to nail this perfectly. But I know now that resistance drains me, while acceptance frees me. And I know I want to keep returning to that freedom, that fluidity and beautifully alive flow of life. Again and again.

Matthew Albracht is the Board Chair of The Peace Alliance (www.peacealliance.org), a U.S. based NGO which advocates for domestic and international peacebuilding priorities. His writing has appeared on CNN, Newsweek, Salon and HuffPost, where he contributed regularly, among other outlets.

His Substack writings explore how we heal—from the inside out and the bottom up—personally, politically, and culturally—with a particular focus on the intersections between them all. Weaving together politics, psychology, and personal growth, grounded in systems thinking and trauma-awareness.

Follow Matthew on: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok