We Create, Therefore We Endure

I see you. I am with you. Let’s make something beautiful, even now.

My husband and I both work in research. Jon oversees the the special funding office for research at Mayo Clinic, where he helps teams of some of the most advanced doctors in the world secure funding for some of the most extraordinary medical research ever conducted. One of the physician researchers Jon helps secure grants for is David Lott. Here’s just a little bit about Dr. Lott’s research:

Dr. Lott is the Associate Director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine, Arizona Campus. In addition, he is the Director of the Head and Neck Regenerative Medicine Lab at Mayo Clinic. The primary goal of the lab is to establish safe and effective clinical translation of regenerative medicine technology. The lab is initiating a FDA-approved human clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of the tissue-engineered technologies. Additionally, the efforts of this program have established the world’s first UNOS-approved Head and Neck Transplantation Program.

What this means in real life is that when a dear, dear friend of mine’s husband had an aggressive laryngeal cancer, Dr. Lott was able to save his larynx and, ultimately, his life, when his local doctors predicted otherwise.

The Trump administration’s cut of billions of dollars in biomedical research overhead on Friday directly imperils this research and other research like it. As you can imagine, studies of this nature require significant overhead, including funding specialists like my husband whose work allows the physician researchers to do theirs.

As for me, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health—where I have worked for fifteen years as a writer—is renowned nationally for our work in DEI, especially anti-racism and health equity, and, therefore, many faculty have received cease and desist letters halting their research.

Specifically, my position resides in the Evidence-based Practice Center, where my colleagues—clinicians and researchers—conduct systematic and comparative effectiveness reviews of research on common conditions in order to determine which treatments are most effective for those conditions. In other words, which available treatments have strong evidence (or any evidence at all) to indicate that they work.

My job is to help make the reports, journal articles, and other written materials generated from these reviews as clear, direct, and readable as possible in order to increase their impact in the real world. In other words, to help the researchers communicate their findings effectively so that their work can have faster, more powerful reach. So that their work will matter more.

But with the current decimation of the federal government by DOGE, the future of the federal agency that funds EPCs is in immediate question, and our EPC’s future is therefore also in immediate question, as we have no federal contract for 2025. As a result, my job and the jobs of all of my colleagues are also in immediate question. I mean, it’s a question with an answer: no funding = no job.

I have to admit, my tendency during times as dark as these is to withdraw. I have always been that way, and even though I know it does not serve me, even though I know it makes things worse, it is my first inclination. Curl up in a ball and unplug the phone. Back when our phones had plugs. That’s what I would do: unplug the phone from the wall. Hide.

And it isn’t that hard to hide if you already feel alone, which I did for almost all of my childhood and teenaged years, and much of my young adulthood, with the exception of the healing bonds I had with my children, which gradually formed a bridge for me to cross toward other healing bonds with adults. Thank god.

But still, when the world tilts toward chaos, when the days feel brittle and the future unreadable, I am inclined to shrink into myself. Fear always makes solitude seem like the safest refuge—shut the door and let silence settle like dust. But this is a deception. Isolation does not shield me; it only starves me of the very thing that sustains me: the act of making, together.

So, here I am, choosing to create. Because to create is to resist the pull of despair. When we write, paint, build, sing—when we bring something new into existence—we carve out meaning. We take uncertainty and give it shape. And when we create with others, when our individual energies meet, something even greater ignites: it really is a fire against the dark.

Our art is proof that we are still here. The stories we tell, the images we shape, the songs we raise—these are the bridges we build between one another, the threads that keep us from unraveling. To create side by side is to say:

I see you. I am with you. Let’s make something beautiful, even now.

There is no way to pretty up what is happening in the world right now, and there will be much work in front of us to reclaim, hopefully, eventually, whatever can be reclaimed—to protect whatever can be protected. But, simultaneously, our creativity is its own resistance. And as long as we gather, as long as we fill the silence with the sound of making, we do more than endure—we push back against the void.

Our daily delight chat thread is part of that for me. I look forward to your voices and photos there every single day. Thank you so much. And our current For the Joy &. the Sorrow: Writing the World intensive is like that for me, too: the best kind of wild rumpus. Your voices are a fierce chorus. Your voices are an untamed choir. Your voices are so fucking beautiful.

Our words are proof of life, evidence that we are still here, still reaching, still insisting on something more. Thank you for sharing yours with me.

Much, much love,

Jeannine