September 19, 2025
By: Jillian Racoosin Kornmeier, F4SC Executive Director
I’ve felt a looming heaviness these past few weeks. Moments that shake us out of our routines, flood our feeds, and press into the rawest parts of our collective pain.
I can’t help but return to the deep sense of disconnection we are experiencing in this country. Disconnection from each other, from purpose, from empathy. In a nation facing heightened loneliness, isolation, and despair, tragedies of violence are not only senseless – they are a signal. A signal showing the consequences of isolation turned inward, and then outward. I continue to return to David Brooks words in The Second Mountain (2019), “These mass killings are about many things – guns, demagoguery, and the rest – but they are also about social isolation and the spreading derangement of the American mind. Whenever there’s a shooting, there’s always a lonely man who fell through the cracks of society, who lived a life of solitary disappointment and who one day decided to try to make a blood-drenched leap from insignificance to infamy”.
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to speak at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, an anti-hate conference in Pittsburgh, PA. I listened with tears in my eyes as eight survivors of mass shootings shared with unimaginable courage, baring their stories and their souls. Each one chose not revenge or despair as a platform, but peace. Not silence, but raising their voice. They reminded me that amid so much darkness, there are still those who choose light, who choose connection, who choose good.
There is no single policy or intervention that will repair the heaviness many of us are feeling. But we cannot underestimate the power of social connection – not just as a salve, but as a multisolver. Connection can prevent and mend what isolation breaks. It can bridge over difference, soften hardened hearts, and remind us that our lives are inextricably linked. As Senator Cox said in his remarks last week, “To my young friends out there, you are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option. But through those words, we have a reminder that we can choose a different path. Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now, not by pretending differences don’t matter, but by embracing our differences and having those hard conversations.”
So today, I hold tightly to the belief that there is a path forward. That we are not powerless. That good is still louder than evil when we choose to hope, and to act on that hope together. At the start of our session my co-presenter, Jenan Mohajir, asked participants to line up along a timeline from birth to today, and stand at the point that answered the prompt “When was a key moment in your life where you connected with someone that believed something different from you?”. I challenge each of us to do that reflection, and ask ourselves, “How did it make us feel?”, “What bonds us together, despite our differences?”, and “How can we show up with curiosity and compassion?”. Maybe you will feel compelled to share your reflection with someone today. Let’s keep the conversation going … we’ll be stronger for it.
For more on this topic, we highlight a few great resources in the Action Guide for Building Socially Connected Communities. I encourage you to check them out: