Refuge is partially defined in our dictionary as, “…a condition of being safe.”
Being in search of refuge means that you are unsafe and feel afraid. You are living in fear for your survival. You have reached the point in fear and/or in circumstance that you can no longer take care of yourself alone and create an environment of safety, you are driven to ask for help and rely on the reaction of kindness and compassion from the people around you. Not only do you have to ask for help, your situation in life demands it.
I once needed help so I asked for it and received it. Now I can offer help and give it. But I would not have reached this place of centeredness without help.
The words sanctuary and refuge are so important to me that I am compelled to explore these ideas and stories with other women across our country in my current project, The Nature Of Refuge. I have purchased and created a truck house to facilitate a open-ended, cross-country road trip across the United States where I am documenting the stories of our country through the eyes of the women who live in it. 
The United States has historically been held as the ideal of sanctuary in our global community, I will be documenting that ideal in juxtaposition to the working reality of achieving safety and community in this country. I will do this through interviews, writing, and photography and will focus on humanizing individual American women’s stories. I want to have conversations with women across all political, social, color, religious, or orientation lines; every spectrum in our social rainbow. I want to sit on these women’s front porches or stoops and have a conversation with one another where we really listen to each other. I want to speak in this manner with women who have or are currently, surviving the crisis of displacement that we are experiencing in our country due to climate change. I want to explore how these life experiences dovetail and influence each other.
I will reflect these stories of fear and vulnerability in the endeavor to expand our compassion for one another, to contribute to the path of proactive communication in a nation of dissenting social voices. I believe we are in the midst of a massive social overhauling and upheaval that is much needed, but I also believe there are aspects of our idealistic foundation that are worth preserving. I would have never been able to reach this point of knowledge and integration without help when I was at my most vulnerable. We as a nation are at our most vulnerable at this time in history.
We need to extend safety to one another when we are uncovering our collective deepest fears of one another, of ourselves.
This is where we are at as a nation currently so deeply divided.
This is the nature of refuge.
