At the 20th Power of Words conference Oct. 3-5 in Kansas City, I had the honor of giving the welcome talk, which I realized speaks to more than just people engaged in Transformative Language Arts (writing, storytelling, theater and other word arts for social and personal transformation and community building). So I share this here, hoping we all find meaning, stubborn hope, and belonging. At our first meeting, you could see how different we were by our shoes: Birkenstocks, w