There are few things more frustrating than trying to talk about something you genuinely care about. You mention education, healthcare, or your values, only to have the conversation derailed by politics. Suddenly you are “too liberal”, “too sensitive” or “part of the problem.” I can’t be the only one who feels this way. There is a specific sadness in feeling incapable of discussing what matters most to you. It arises not because people don’t care, but because your passion gets viewed as political.

Here is the truth. Not every conversation about important issues is political. Sometimes, it is just human. Personal. Necessary. We live in a time where the line between personal values and political identity is razor thin. It is easy to misread passion as partisanship. I have felt it. I have felt it in conversations with the people I love deeply. I finally get the courage and open up about something personal. Suddenly I am not a parent or an advocate, I am a problem. I am just another “political opinion”. An uncomfortable truth that someone did not ask to hear.

What hurts the most is that these conversations are not about politics at all; not in the way people think. They are about survival. About fairness. About the future of someone we love. They are about fighting to make sure people do not fall through the cracks. Standing up to a system that decided that their needs were too expensive or too inconvenient. But when that truth is met with discomfort, silence or push back, we are left to carry it alone. It stings more when you share facts, resources or lived experiences. You share real, tangible evidence and it is still brushed aside. As if your voice weighs less than a soundbite from a news anchor. As if the truth matters less when it comes from someone they know. It is lonely, having to filter your life like this. It is lonely when your passion is mistaken for provocation.

It shuts everything down. And so we stay in the safe zone. We talk about the weather, garden updates, new recipes. Anything but what we are actually feeling. We avoid the topics closest to our hearts. We fear they will explode into something they were never meant to be. We reduce ourselves to small talk, even though we crave real talk. But real talk, these days, often gets interpreted as an attack. So we shrink. We swallow our thoughts whole.

It is exhausting.

I don’t want every conversation to feel like a negotiation, I want to talk about the real stuff. The raw, unfiltered, human parts. I want to talk without being labeled or dismissed. I want to be heard without being debated. I want us all to show up as our full selves, even when it is messy or complicated or challenging.

I don’t want to bite my tongue. I want to speak with honesty and heart, to share what matters without it turning into a fight. But I don’t know how to do that, not really. Not when even a simple truth feels like a spark near dry grass. I keep hoping there is a way to be understood without having to defend every word. But, maybe there isn’t. Maybe, for now, it is just holding it all in. Maybe it is wondering how many versions of myself I’ll have to swallow to keep the peace. I will keep hope alive that someday these conversations won’t feel so risky. I will hope that love will make space for truth, even when it is hard. But, for now, it seems that speaking from the heart comes at too high a cost.