I’m Sherry Dryja, a neurodiverse writer, creator, vegan baker, and theologian living in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood.
We thought we were just making roof tiles. What we found was stillness, kindness, and a lump of clay that became a guardian—and a memory.
What does love look like when you scale it up to a country? It’s an easy word to say, but a harder one to define. And once you think you’ve got it, how does it ripple outward into a community and circle back to nourish the people within it?
I don’t have the full answer, but I have some stories.
Like the name of a firefighter passed to me after 9/11, and how a classroom of strangers found healing by writing letters 3,000 miles away.
Like a Seattle storm that left our block in darkness, except for one generator. A neighbor once joked we were crazy to buy it — until he was in our kitchen with a plate of hot food.
Like “The Soup Lady,” who showed up at my door with a cooler when my fridge broke. Just an ordinary act of kindness. And yet not ordinary at all.
These moments remind me: fear is always loud, but courage grows where love refuses to vanish. If love at scale is possible, it won’t mean we all agree or that fear disappears. It will mean the soil of our common life is rich enough to grow a feast that can be shared — a table where no chair is wasted, no gift is lost.
That’s the America I don’t want to lose.
We set out into the woods to find truffles. Our guide was a dog named Cowboy. He found something else instead—a long bone, possibly human. This is the story of a winter day in the Pacific Northwest, a quietly remarkable dog, and the woman who works beside him.
We stood in a tiny dressing room of a trailer, just the two of us. He held the results from the judges. The winner was clear. The woman had blown everyone away. But he hesitated. Then he turned to me and said, “What do you think? Should we give it to my buddy instead?”
Just like that, everything I had built was at risk.
This isn’t quite a travelogue. It’s more like a dream I had while awake, somewhere in Coyoacán. Every word is true—just not all of it happened in the usual way.
Our trip to Mexico City started with walking tours, tacos, and ambition. It ended with a cold, a curtain, and a surprising lesson in letting go.
When I showed up for a flamenco dinner in Seville, I wasn’t expecting a life-altering moment. I was just trying not to cry into my tapas. But then she appeared—in the corner of a tiny bar, under twinkle lights and a “no moving during the show” rule—and reminded me, with every stomp and sweep of her arm, that I still had a body. And a choice.
A solo trip to Spain wasn’t the plan. But when my travel partner disappeared into work and I found myself wandering the Alhambra with only sun, stone, and disinterested cats for company, I learned something surprising about presence, perspective—and how a well-timed feline blink can feel like emotional support.
Sometimes I think we overcomplicate what it means to be human. We chase meaning, dig for purpose, try to transcend. But maybe the sacred isn’t buried. Maybe it’s already here.
I live in a high-rise soap opera with a rotating cast of eccentrics—and somehow, I’ve become the neighborhood’s unofficial archivist. Not with spreadsheets, but with felt.
