This is a story I almost didn't tell you

How small gestures create belonging, and a ripple effect.

I’ve started and erased several different versions of the start of this newsletter.

Turns out this is harder to write about than I thought, but maybe not for the reason that you think when you read the first “real” sentence.

Here goes.

The first time I cried hearing “My President” was in 2008.

It was a 6 AM spin class, and, because this was before SoulCycle and CycleBar and all of the boutique cycling spots took off, and years before you could own a Peloton in the comfort of your own home, this was in a fancy gym* in Newport Beach, California, near where I was living while a midlevel associate at a large law firm.

This spin class was taught by a White guy named Kyle who was basically the poster child for Newport Beach, California: tan, blonde, and the kind of guy who, when you started riding, would yell things like “SO YOU’VE ALREADY HAD THREE MONTHS TO GET COMFORTABLE WITH THIS YEAR, WHAT ARE YOUR Q2 GOALS?!”

To which, I’d think to myself, “Look, Kyle, my goal was just to get on this freaking bike today in the dark, thankyouverymuch” and then wish I had the energy to roll your eyes, but I didn’t, because my whole body was screaming at me for being so dumb as to get on this bike before dawn.

Anyway, needless to say, I felt that Kyle and I had not very much in common at all.

In the office in which I was working, the vast majority of the attorneys and staff were Republican. I have been a Democrat since I could remember, and definitely since I could register to vote. (This is an example of how California is not just a blue state.)

Not only were they Republicans, they were vocally anti-Obama, who was the Democratic nominee at the time. I couldn’t go into certain offices to get assignments from partners and senior counsel without seeing news articles posted on their walls about how terrible of a choice Obama was going to be. So I kept largely to myself about how Obama carried a lot of my own dreams with him as well.

Then, I went to be an election protection volunteer in Nevada at a drafty and cold firehouse in Clark County, right outside of Las Vegas. I spent thirteen hours in that firehouse on Election Day as the Democratic lawyer representative, sitting in a metal folding chair for the most part, and had a good time talking to the Republican election protection volunteer. Our job was to make sure everyone had the ability to vote, and along the way, despite the fact that there were many, many things that were different about us, through dialogue, we found a lot of similarities too.

I then spent that night jumping up and down in my hotel room and crying through Obama’s acceptance speech, because it was something I had never thought I’d see in my lifetime.

So, needless to say, when I returned to Orange County and to that law office, I was wary of how this would go. Orange County as a whole was very Republican, and I was ready to keep my head down again and keep my feelings to myself.

But Kyle changed all that.

That spin class that I mentioned at the start of this newsletter? That happened a couple weeks after I got back. And in that dark room, early that morning, Kyle played “My President” as one of his final songs.

And I cried.

For those of you unfamiliar with this song, it (a) has one of the best guest verses by Nas ever in my opinion; and (b) Young Jeezy and Nas wrote this early in the morning/late at night on June 3, 2008, the day that Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for President. It is an ode to change and hope and so much more, and it was a song I had played on loop once it was officially released in mid-November of 2008 (Side note: the remix that Jay-Z did of this song in 2010 is also amazing).

But it was not a song that I had expected to hear in Kyle’s class, which was always more dance, or rock, or dance covers of rock. (You get the picture.)

He said a few words about the historic nature of Obama’s win and how much hope he had, into the mic, but I don’t remember much of what he said. I realized then that Kyle and I had a lot more in common, on certain levels, than I had thought.

And I felt seen. And, for the first time, like I belonged.

I’m sure Kyle didn’t put that song in for that reason. I never told him any of this.

But at the same time, small things matter. Small acknowledgements, or small perspective shifts, or small acknowledgements of the world bigger than ourselves, of ties that hold us together, can create even unexpected forms of belonging.

I went back to Kyle’s spin class regularly until I moved up to the Bay Area a year later.

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The second time I cried hearing “My President” was a few weeks ago.

I had put it on my 2025 playlist that I keep compiling throughout the year, kind of a musical diary of the year, a few months back.

And it came on in the car when I had my two boys with me.

I looked at their faces in the rear-view mirror, baseball caps on, laughing about something or other in one of their books.

And I teared up, for a totally different reason.

These are the same boys who had their stuffies celebrate with them when Kamala Harris was sworn in as VP in 2021 because they saw themselves in her. They were both born when Obama was President.

And somehow we’ve managed to go so far backwards from those moments, in such a short amount of time, that it’s scary.

How will they be seen? How will they see themselves, with some powerful individuals actively looking to tell them that they’re not welcome in the only country they know?

Who’s going to tell them that they belong?

I was immediately frustrated with myself, because I’m out there very publicly talking about the power of hope in dark times like this. And here I am, tearing up because I feel like we’re lost. It’s not that moment in 2008. We’ve lost something, and I don’t know how to get it back.

Where was my hope? Had I lost it too?

And then I remembered Kyle.

I needed to be their Kyle.

And so I told them the history of the song, and my history with the song, and they asked questions and we got to talk about belonging and hope for a while.

In that, I made sure they were seen.

And, in that as well, I got my own hope back.

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So, at the end of this, I’ve come to this conclusion: we need more Kyles.

Someone to say, I see you. I’m going to say the thing that needs to be said. I’m going to celebrate hope, and the promise of something better.

I’m going to make that celebration as inclusive as possible.

And I’m going to focus on the small things that do that.

So that you feel like you belong. And you see that humanity in others as well.

So I’m asking you: are you willing to be a Kyle, for those around you? For those in your community?

If so, I’d love for you to share with me what you’re thinking of doing, so we can celebrate together. And, if this resonated with you, please consider sharing with a friend, or reaching out, if you think I can help you/your group find that space of inclusion, belonging and shared humanity - so that we all can be seen.

To shared humanity,

P.S. A few years later, I too became a fitness instructor as my “fun” job. And I never forgot how Kyle made me feel, that day. I tried my hardest to make sure I did the same for others, every day, even when it got hard. Especially when it got hard.

*For those of you who watched the original RHOOC, this was the gym that they apparently worked out in too, at that time. Sadly, I can’t report any sightings from my time there. But it gives you an idea of what this gym was like, hopefully.