It’s the first of the month in Florida—a place where superstition, politics, and contradiction often share the same sunlit stage.
The light outside is soft, but I’m already bracing. The kind of day where even the quiet feels like it’s holding its breath.
Today is also April Fools’ Day, which feels like a dare. Because in a state this broken, where cruelty is strategy, calling anything a joke feels redundant.
The headlines are already piling up. Close races. Conservative strongholds. Trump looming like a ghost of elections past, DeSantis posturing like his reflection. I’m watching it all unfold from within the state, but not within the vote. These special elections aren’t in my district, so my ballot sits untouched. Still, I feel every inch of the outcome in my body—in the bans, the silences, the slow tightening of control masquerading as freedom.
It’s sunny here, as it always seems to be when the news is darkest. Palms sway against an indifferent sky. Somewhere down the street, someone’s mowing a lawn. It would be easy to pretend nothing’s happening at all. That’s the trick of Florida—it’s beautiful even as it burns. And maybe that’s part of the seduction. While we’re distracted by the blue skies, rights disappear behind closed doors.
There’s a peculiar ache in being politically invisible inside a place that governs you so loudly.
I’ve lived long enough here to recognize the choreography: the way power tiptoes in dressed as patriotism, how censorship gets marketed as safety, how the governor plays strongman while pretending to protect the children. But it’s not just strategy—it’s erosion. Subtle, daily, disorienting. A library shelf slightly emptier. A neighbor growing quieter. A right turning into a privilege, then into a memory.
There are days I scroll past a headline or another executive order and feel nothing. Not rage, not despair. Just numbness. And that scares me more than anything. Because numbness is the slow death of civic feeling. It’s how silence wins. It’s how we forget that power isn’t something we’re given—it’s something we’re supposed to take back.
I think about last year, and how DeSantis—never one to leave power to the people—put his thumb so heavily on the scale of the ballot measures you could practically hear the Constitution creak. He used taxpayer money not to serve us, but to sway us. Bought airtime. Flooded the zone with fear. And now, predictably, he’s made it harder for future measures to even reach the ballot.
That’s the part that gnaws at me—the way they rig the game and still have the audacity to call it democracy. And yet we’re told to be polite, to be patient, to keep pretending the process is fair when we can see the thumbprints smudging every corner of it.
Today’s races feel like more of the same.
On one side, Republican candidates who seem pulled from central casting—villains with veneers. You know the type. State Sen. Randy Fine, who rails against “wokeism” while pushing censorship in schools and libraries. And Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer, more interested in headlines than households—echoing talking points while ignoring the people living beneath them.
On the other, Democrats with backstories that don’t just tug at the heart, they test it—like Gay Gillespie Valimont, a mother and gun violence prevention advocate whose work began on the sidelines as an athletic trainer listening to kids talk about fear in their own neighborhoods. Or Josh Weil, a teacher and single dad from Orlando, running not to preserve the status quo but because his students—and his sons—deserve a future grounded in facts, care, and common sense.
If they win, it’ll feel like a lifeline. If they lose—well, that heartbreak won’t be theoretical. It’ll be legislative.
And yet.
I still want to believe.
Not in redemption arcs or sudden reversals, not in the fantasy that a few flipped seats will cure a system that’s been rotting for years. But in something quieter. In the ordinary, brave act of showing up. In the person who thinks they’re the only one, but goes anyway. In the rustle of ballots sliding into boxes and the subtle courage it takes to cast a vote you’ve been told won’t matter.
Because it does matter. Not just for the outcome, but for the ripple. For the conversation it sparks. For the neighbor who notices. For the moment when someone else feels a little less alone in their hope.
Maybe that’s what belief is, too—a kind of ritual. Showing up again and again, even when the outcomes blur.
Hope doesn’t always come in grand speeches or sweeping wins. Sometimes, it’s stubborn. Fragile. Just a pulse you keep feeling for, even when you’re not sure it’s still there.
Belief, these days, isn’t some clean, shining thing. It’s gritty. It’s the decision to keep speaking when you’re tired, to keep showing up when you’re not sure it matters. I don’t believe because I’m optimistic—I believe because not believing feels like giving something away.
My voice. My part in what happens next. I’ve given time, attention, breath. I’ve watched conversations flatten into compliance. I’ve watched my own voice retreat. And I’ve given enough already.
And so I hold onto small things. The scraps that feel like resistance, even when they don’t look like much. Ritual. Memory. The absurd and tender gestures that remind me I haven’t gone entirely quiet yet.
I grew up in the UK, where the first of every month came with a peculiar kind of magic. Before anything else—before “good morning,” before brushing your teeth—you were supposed to say “White Rabbits.” It was a charm, a wish for luck. Whispered or shouted, the words didn’t need to make sense. They just had to be first.
I used to love that ritual. Still do. There’s something strangely defiant about it: the idea that you could meet the unknown not with fear, but with a kind of playful hope. That your voice, small as it is, could shift something—if only for the day ahead.
I said it this morning, quietly. Not expecting luck, exactly—but needing a reason to begin again.
And so, on this April 1st—a day already charged with chaos, cynicism, and consequence—I’m leaning into it again. Because even in a state where I can’t vote, where the scales are stacked and the outcomes uncertain, I still believe in what can happen when people speak.
If you haven’t said anything yet today, maybe start here. Say it out loud. Say it for yourself. Say it for the future you’re still daring to imagine:
White Rabbits.
Not because it’s magic. But because in a system that wants you silent—wants you erased—even superstition becomes a kind of protest. Because sometimes, hope needs a chant, even a strange one, to remind it that it's not alone.
And sometimes a chant becomes a rhythm. A way of coming back to ourselves, month after month, even when the world stays the same.
Maybe luck isn’t enough. But maybe it’s a start.
And maybe, if we’re lucky—if we’re loud, and stubborn, and brave—then April 5th will be more than a date on the calendar. It’ll be a signal. That something cracked open. That someone stood up. That we spoke, and this time, it counted.
And somewhere, someone else whispered it too.
White Rabbits.