I try to do what I can to make my local community better. I research and vote in every election, donate money to local nonprofits and also volunteer there when I can (heading to the food bank in a bit, yay!), and try to speak out and offer words of encouragement when I can.

But I live in a very socially, politically, and religiously conservative community. And I…am not. It constantly feels like any effort amounts to pissing in the wind, and yet also like I am not doing nearly enough at all. It makes me anxious a lot.

The latest iteration of this is local people trying to get “obscene” children’s and YA books in the public library moved to the adult section. And to be clear most of these books are not obscene they just acknowledge that, hey people who are LGBTQ+ (sorry if I got that initialization wrong!) exist and that racism is a real thing. I went to the public meeting and was mostly ineffective except I got to thank the library director for her work pushing back against this. I would love to write a Letter to the Editor of the local paper to speak out, but there is a risk of retaliation against my family members and their local businesses. And most of the community seems to be behind this which is absolutely bonkers to me. I don’t know what to do.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I think I just needed to say it. Anyone else deal with something similar- feeling like you need to do more but also feeling completely defeated about actually getting anything to change?