The Kind of Authority You Take

I keep thinking about Mary Ann Bickerdyke, though I didn’t go looking for her.

She appeared in my feed the way certain stories do—quietly, insistently—refusing to be reduced to inspiration or trivia. A widowed mother. No medical degree. No military rank. No formal permission. She went to deliver supplies to Union soldiers and stayed for four years because what she saw made it impossible to leave.

Men weren’t dying because their wounds were unsurvivable.

They were dying because the floors were filthy.

Because food was inadequate.

Because supplies were locked away.

Because hierarchy mattered more than care.

So she acted.

Not heroically in the cinematic sense—no speeches, no manifestos—but practically. She cleaned. She cooked. She organized. She broke locks. She dismissed people who shouldn’t have been responsible for other people’s lives. She did the work until the work itself became undeniable.

There’s a story—often repeated, maybe polished by time—where a surgeon demands she be removed from camp, and a general replies, “She outranks me.” I don’t think that line matters because of who said it. It matters because authority had already shifted by then. The work had spoken.

What stays with me is not her defiance, but her refusal to pretend the system was more important than the people inside it.

I think about how often we’re taught to wait—

for credentials,

for permission,

for consensus,

for legitimacy granted by structures that are already failing someone.

Mary Ann Bickerdyke didn’t wait because waiting would have meant more death. She understood something fundamental: when harm is visible and preventable, inaction becomes a choice.

I recognize that logic.

In my own work—reading, analyzing, responding to stories and systems—I don’t approach from above or outside. I approach from inside the gap. The place where intent and impact quietly diverge. The place where something feels off long before it’s officially acknowledged. The place where people often say, That’s just how it works, as if that absolves anyone.

Bickerdyke reminds me that care is not passive, and insight is not neutral. Attention itself is a form of action. So is refusing to look away.

She didn’t ask to be seen as authoritative.

She became unavoidable.

I’m less interested in her as a historical exception than as a pattern. There have always been people like her—mostly uncredentialed, often inconvenient—who step in when systems stall, who take responsibility without being asked, who understand that permission is not the same thing as ethics.

That kind of authority isn’t given.

It’s taken—carefully, deliberately, and with consequences.

And once you see it, it’s hard to pretend you don’t know what to do next.💎

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As I move toward 2026, I’m thinking more intentionally about how and where I place my attention.

I’m interested in working with people who understand that insight is not ornamental—that noticing patterns, naming harm early, and tending to what’s been overlooked is not extra work, but essential work. I’m drawn to projects that value care over speed, clarity over comfort, and responsibility over permission.

What I offer going forward will grow out of this same practice: close reading, deep listening, and a willingness to step into the gap when something matters too much to leave unattended. Not as an authority granted from above, but as someone who understands that waiting for approval is often how harm is allowed to continue.

More soon.

But this is the direction.