I just got back from three glorious weeks away from my business, spent in my hometown in British Columbia, and I don’t know how else to describe it except that the contrast between the stillness of that time away and the reality I returned to was jarring.

I went from not checking Instagram, Substack, email, or my communities to being blissfully unaware of the news cycle, in a way I know is deeply privileged, while teaching my kids to ski, to a week where the weight of the world was impossible to ignore.

The week I returned to work, the U.S. illegally kidnapped a foreign president, openly threatened a NATO country with invasion, an ICE agent murdered a mother, Iran is in the midst of a revolution, and Sasha Barros’ testimony surfaced detailing Trump’s involvement in a pedophile sex trafficking ring tied to the Epstein files.

So if you don’t know me, here’s the context that shapes how I respond when the world feels like it’s breaking open.

I come from a long line of social activists, something that likely started with my great grandmothers in Italy and Mexico more than a century and a half ago. I’m a daughter of immigrants and my own version of activism began in the late 90’s. I was eight, fundraising with my best friend Carmen for children displaced by the Kosovo war. It continued through environmental protests, becoming president of my high school’s Landmine Awareness Club, volunteering endlessly in my community, moving to Ghana to volunteer (which is its own story for another day), and eventually following my father’s footsteps to the United Nations.

There, I became part of the founding team that brought ShareTheMeal, an award-winning app designed to help end global hunger, into the world.

That history is what informs how I move through moments like this, and why staying quiet has never sat comfortably with me long before I had an audience.

It’s why stepping back into work this week felt less like resuming a routine and more like re-entering a world that had accelerated its unraveling while I was gone.

This is technically an essay about how to show up on social media during a moment of collective upheaval, at a time when all you want to do is consume, grieve, and rage simultaneously. But I also needed to come back to work.

My husband and I run our business together. There is no income outside of it. We have children, a child we sponsor in Gaza that depends on us, and dreams of one day owning a small piece of land, all of which unfortunately insist that we participate in capitalism, a system some would argue is precisely why we’re here in the first place.

That’s the tension I’m working inside.

I’ve worked in social media for over twelve years. I don’t mean casually. I mean building global partnerships, designing viral marketing campaigns with zero budget, and working with companies like Google, Apple, and Michael Kors. I’ve done the influencer bit, and even been hand-selected by Instagram itself to teach others how to use the platform more effectively.

When I asked my audience on Instagram what they wanted me to write about today, more than half voted for how to approach social media right now.

I’m no stranger to “unprecedented times.” I’m a millennial, after all, but this moment feels eerily different.

Unprecedented in how quickly the U.S. is sliding toward authoritarianism. Unprecedented in the growing certainty that powerful systems are protecting abusers at the highest levels. Unprecedented in the way our planet continues to warm beyond survivable limits, while we’re forced to process global suffering in real time and still expected to show up as if nothing is happening.

So here’s what I want to tell you about social media right now.

Throw the rulebook out the window.

Seriously.

I’ve always told my audience to stand for something. Now I can say this with complete certainty: those who stand for something human, ethical, and grounded will outlast those who don’t.

You already know the algorithms reward outrage and negativity. That’s why it spreads so easily. When you take a stand, dissent will follow. That has always been true.

But we are so far into late-stage capitalism, so close to the collapse phase that every empire eventually reaches, that neutrality is no longer a safe position. It’s a choice.

If you don’t stand for something now, your silence will not protect you, and it will not not protect anyone else either.

So how do you show up on social media right now?

You show up honestly, without pretending that maintaining a livelihood requires disengagement. You respect your financial commitments while recognizing that carrying on as if nothing is happening is not neutrality, it’s a form of absence. Real change has never been sustained by content alone, but by people remaining in relationship with one another beyond the screen.