A Label Is a Starting Point, Not a Conclusion

When I sat down with Jed for VOICES of OKC, I expected we’d talk about Resonance—the stories, the people, and why I wanted to write the book. We did. But the conversation also reminded me why I began this project in the first place.

I had been thinking about how much division we see, and how easily a label can become the whole story we tell ourselves about someone. I wanted to look closer: to find people doing quiet, compassionate things and let them describe their own lives. The stories in Resonance are local, but the questions behind them are ones we can ask anywhere.

A label can be a starting point. It should not be the conclusion.

We talked about Stop the Hate 918, where people come together to have tattoos from painful parts of their past covered. It would be easy to focus only on the tattoos. But the people there are also parents, workers, friends, and people in recovery, carrying hopes for what comes next. One man brought several others with him because he wanted them to have the same opportunity he had found.

We talked about Pam, who has spent nineteen years showing up for women at John 3:16 Mission in Tulsa. Her work is not a single dramatic gesture. It is the steady presence of someone people can return to. I also shared the story of Betty, known at the mission as Grandma, who found recovery later in life. Her story reminds me that a new direction is still possible, even after a hard road.

And I spoke about a Pawnee straight dancer whose dance carries a powerful image. A dancer holds a stick representing a weapon; setting it down can suggest retreat or surrender. In his dance, he sets it down as he talks about sobriety. For him, surrender means something different: laying down what he no longer wants to carry.

These stories don’t ask us to agree with every choice or belief. They ask us to stay curious long enough to see a person’s complexity. Compassion doesn’t require us to abandon our values, excuse harm, or enter relationships that aren’t safe. It does ask us to remember that another person has a history we may not know.

One practical question from the conversation has stayed with me: What might happen if, instead of preparing our response, we listened and asked, “That’s interesting. Tell me more”?

That question has changed the way I approach interviews. I’m not there to confirm what I already think I know. I’m there to understand how someone arrived where they are, what matters to them, and what they hope for. Sometimes the story takes an unexpected turn. The person becomes larger than the category I might have placed them in.

I saw this in other stories in the book, too. Amy Downs is known as a survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing, but her life is also full of work she does for her community, including a volunteer garden in Medicine Park. When we let someone tell us more, we see more.

I grew up in California and moved to Oklahoma at fourteen. Oklahoma became home. I believe people here have a deep capacity for generosity and connection, even when public conversations make division seem inevitable. Small acts matter: a garden, a familiar face at a mission, a conversation that makes room for someone else’s experience. We rarely know how far those acts will travel.

I’m grateful to Jed and the City Center team for making space for this conversation. I left thinking again about what Resonance asks of me as a writer and of us as neighbors: to look beyond the first impression, to ask better questions, and to let people be more than the labels we’ve learned to recognize.