From Where I Sit Reflections on belonging, identity, and becoming

I've spent a lifetime sitting in a lot of different places. Bleachers. Corner tables. Design showrooms. Boardrooms. Hospital waiting rooms. The booth at Poppin Fresh Bakery where I first looked into the eyes of my birth mother and saw my own face looking back.

From every one of those seats, I've been paying attention.

These essays are what I've noticed. They're about the rooms that didn't fit and the ones that finally did. About the permission we spend years waiting for that was always ours to give. About hair and faith and belonging and what it means to show up — fully, finally, without apology — as exactly who you are.

I'm not writing from a place of having figured it all out. I'm writing from where I sit — which is somewhere between who I've been and who I'm still becoming.

I hope something here lands for you. And if it does, I'd love to hear about it.

— Katie

A New Season, A New Lens From Where I Sit — Essay

I have no distinguishable backside. And after years of reflection, I am fairly certain I know why.

A significant portion of my life has been spent on bleachers—watching, coaching, cheering, learning. Before any of that, though, my very first role in sports was as a player, a marginally decent one.

After giving birth to three daughters, my only real hope was that they would inherit their father’s athletic prowess. Spoiler alert—they did.

From there, my life in sports unfolded in a familiar rhythm: player, fan, parent, coach—oh, the stories I could tell—then back again to parent and fan. And now, here I am once more on the bleachers, only this time as a grandmother. A new season. A new title. And, thankfully, new and improved lenses.

My granddaughter plays on an 11-3’s club volleyball team. She is nine. Her teammates range from nine to eleven, and for many of them—and their parents—this is their first experience on a team. Which means the gym is not just a place for sport. It is a classroom for everyone.

Sit in the stands long enough and you will hear it: “Be aggressive!” “Call the ball!” “Just get it over!” The energy is real. The investment is genuine. And the intention is good. But sometimes, it is a bit much.

At one point, I found myself gently reminding my husband that he did not need to comment on every play—even if it was only whispered in my ear. And if I am honest, I have had my own moments. There was the time I loudly called out “Point!” from the sidelines when the young scorekeeper missed it. Which, in my defense, was accurate. But also…not my job.

In that moment, it struck me: the children are not the only ones learning here.

Years ago, my son-in-law shared a phrase that has stayed with me ever since: lower expectations, raise aspirations. Through a lens of expectation, we notice mistakes. Through a lens of aspiration, we see effort, courage, and growth in real time. These children are not failing. They are learning.

Watching a young team develop is a lesson in patience. At first, it can feel chaotic. Balls drop untouched. Players hesitate. Communication is more hopeful than effective. And then, slowly, something shifts. A serve clears the net. A pass connects. Someone calls “Mine” and takes it. Not perfection. But progress.

And then there is the moment that matters most. The shy, unsure child makes a play, and you see it in their face—joy, pride, a spark of belief. That is the magic. That moment is what keeps them coming back. Because they will fall short again. That is not failure. That is the process. And if we are paying attention, we realize this is not just sports. It is life.

At one tournament, a parent asked my daughter—the head coach—why another team was being told exactly where to serve, while ours was not. It led to a deeper conversation about coaching philosophy. There is a time to direct, and a time to develop. If we remove the moment where a child must think and decide, we may get a better point—but we lose a better player.

My daughter played volleyball at the Division I level. She now coaches alongside young assistants who are learning how to lead. This gym is a petri dish of growth. Players, coaches, and parents are all learning together.

I care deeply about this because I have seen the alternative. Years ago, I watched a coach berate young players, even allowing “You guys suck” to be said aloud. After being told to stay in my lane, I chose a different path. I found a new coach—a former collegiate player, a woman—and stepped in to help. And just like that, I became a coach. And my lens changed.

Having experienced this from every angle, I can say this: the stands are not the place for coaching. Our role is to support. At the end of the day, the most important words we can offer are simple: “I love to watch you play.”

So here I sit once again on the bleachers, watching young athletes figure it out—not perfectly, but wholeheartedly. And through this lens, I see it clearly. This is courage. This is growth. This is becoming.

And lest we think I am too old to learn… I am about to order a cushy bleacher seat, because there are many more gyms—and likely a few ice rinks—in my future. Our grandsons are leaning towards Hockey.  A new season. Another sport. Another lens.

— Katie

From Where I Sit: The Smallest, Most Impactful Gifts

The smallest gifts aren't things. They're moments — and the people who love you enough to stop and share them.

A few days ago I got two texts.

Cathy and I have built a fast friendship — the kind where you feel like you've always known each other, and are a little surprised you haven't. She's in Miami, where her daughters are building their lives — young women in their twenties, planting roots in a new city. Cathy is Jewish; her husband is not. But they had a seder, and she sent me a note her mother had written to her in 2014 — a written memory of a seder Cathy had hosted, and how beautiful it was. The reason this stopped me: her mother has Alzheimer's now. She's nonverbal. She doesn't remember much of anything anymore. That note is a message in a bottle from a woman who no longer exists in the same way. And Cathy wanted to share it with me. I felt the weight of that — and the gift of being trusted with it. Some connections don't need decades to go deep.

The second text was from Sherri. Sherri and I have been friends for a long time — the kind of friendship that has its own history, its own shorthand. Her daughter Dana and my middle daughter were friends from grade school, which means Sherri and I were in the bleachers together, in the carpool line together, in the living room together. We have roots. Dana is 37 now, a mother herself with two daughters of her own, living her life in Spain. And Sherri was traveling to see her — in Marrakech, of all the beautiful places — when she sent me the text.

She wanted to show me pictures of where they were staying. But she also wanted to tell me something Dana still carries. Two things, specifically, that she'd learned from me somewhere in those years when she was young and I was just Sherri's friend, just another grown-up in the room.

No one ever knows what you didn't choose.

Drop a hip and put the other foot forward — in ALL pictures.

I laughed. And then I got quiet.

Here's the thing about that first one. I've said it my whole life. It's one of those phrases that lives in me — something I reach for when a decision feels too heavy, when someone is second-guessing a choice, when the weight of what if starts crowding out the present moment. I don't remember saying it specifically to Dana. But I'm sure I did. Because I say it to everyone. It's just part of how I see the world.

What I didn't know — what I couldn't have known — is that it showed up for her on her wedding day. That beautiful, overwhelming, once-in-a-lifetime day when everything feels enormous and every decision feels permanent. She was nervous. And she remembered. No one ever knows what you didn't choose. And it calmed her.

Something I've said a thousand times, to a girl who was just her mother's daughter, reached into one of the most important moments of her life and gave her peace.

I have no memory of the specific moment I said it to her. But it traveled — through years, across an ocean, into a wedding day — and it was still alive in her. Alive enough that a 37-year-old mother in Spain mentioned it to her own mother, who sent it back to me from Marrakech on that Saturday morning, with two red hearts at the end.

This is what I keep coming back to: we are constantly giving gifts we don't know we're giving. A phrase that becomes someone's anchor. A note written in 2014 that becomes a lifeline ten years later. A posture tip that shows up in every photo a woman takes for the rest of her life. We hand these things off without ceremony, without intention, sometimes without even realizing we've said anything at all — and they keep going. They travel farther than we do.

And then — if we're lucky — they come back.

That's the part nobody tells you. That generosity isn't just about what you give. It's about what gets carried. What gets shared. What someone decides is worth passing along because it steadied them — even on their wedding day — and they want you to know.

Cathy didn't have to send me that note. Sherri didn't have to tell me what Dana remembered. But they did. And in doing so, they gave me something I didn't know I needed — proof that the small things matter. That the phrase you've said a thousand times, the offhand tip, the way you see the world — it lands somewhere. It lives in someone.

I am proud of my friendships with both of these women. Cathy and I are still writing our story. Sherri and I have been writing ours for decades, and it keeps getting better. But what moves me most isn't just that they thought of me. It's that they stopped. In the middle of their lives, in the middle of their travels, in the middle of someone else's beautiful moment — they paused and felt pulled to share it. That choice — to share a meaningful moment rather than just hold it — that is its own kind of love. And from where I sit, it is one of the greatest gifts one person can give another.

From where I sit, the smallest gifts are sometimes the ones that travel the farthest. And the most meaningful ones are the ones that find their way back.

From Where I Sit: How Much is Enough?

I don't know what I am politically anymore.

I used to. Now I'm not so sure. And I've decided that's worth saying out loud.

My dad was a ceramic tile setter. A laborer. He worked with his hands his whole life, watched every penny, and believed people deserved a fair shot. He was also the quietest man I have ever known. Every evening after work he sat down with the newspaper. Every morning he was up before the rest of us — lunch pail and thermos at the ready — out the door before the world had fully started. Before he left he'd come into my room and wake me for school with a back rub. He rarely watched TV. He didn't need to be loud to have conviction.

My mother was a homemaker and volunteer. She wasn't the type to say oh you poor thing when something went wrong. She'd listen, and then she'd ask: "What part did you play?" I didn't always love that question in the moment. But I've never stopped asking it. Including right now. Including about all of this.

They both shaped how I move through the world. One with a lunch pail and a back rub. One with a question that put the mirror in my hand.

As a younger woman I drifted toward the Republican party. Fiscally conservative, socially liberal — that felt honest to who I was. I spent time in conservative media, producing a morning talk radio show where Democrats and Republicans could sit across from each other, disagreed, and then go to lunch. Friendships across party lines weren't just tolerated. They were celebrated. People like Amy Klobuchar — who is now running for governor of Minnesota and who has spent her entire career trying to find what works across the aisle rather than what scores points — were not unusual. They were the norm. That's just how serious people operated.

I miss that. I think a lot of us do.

Later I was producing a podcast, and at a fundraiser at a brewery I ended up in conversation with Tim Pawlenty — a former governor of Minnesota thinking about another run. He told me quietly, without drama, that he didn't believe in everything on the platform he'd be running on. But to get in the race he needed the party endorsement. And to get the endorsement he needed to say what they needed to hear. Because without the endorsement there were no funds. And without the funds there was no campaign.

He wasn't complaining. He was just telling me how it works.

In one sentence at a brewery, he explained the whole machine to me. I have thought about that conversation a hundred times since.

I want to tell you something about myself that I don't mention very often.

In the late 90's I was tapped to run for mayor of Roseville, Minnesota — as a write-in candidate. No party infrastructure. No war chest. Just a name people had to remember to write in on a ballot. I took 32.5% of the vote. I lost — but not by as much as you might think.

After that campaign, I was contacted by Steve Sviggum, who was the leader of the Republican party in Minnesota at the time. He wanted me to run against Mindy Greiling, a DFL state representative who had served the Roseville area since 1992 and was, by any honest measure, beloved. Mindy had started her political life as a Republican before crossing to the DFL. She went on to serve twenty years in the Minnesota House, build the state's first bipartisan mental health caucus, and fight for people — her own son included — who had no other advocate at the table.

The man who beat me was a 28-year-old disgruntled homeowner. His first stated priority upon winning was to disband the ethics committee.

I've thought about that a lot lately.

I turned Steve down. Politely. Because I respected Mindy and what she was doing. Because running against someone simply because your party tells you to — someone who is genuinely serving people — felt wrong.

I tell you this not to be self-congratulatory. I tell you this because I think it's the most important thing I have to say in this entire piece:

There are still good people in both parties. There have always been good people in both parties.

The problem is not the people. The problem is the machine around them.

Think about what's happening in medicine right now. The actual doctors — the ones doing the work, seeing the patients, making the calls — are increasingly being controlled by administrators whose incentives have almost nothing to do with patient care. The doctors didn't change. The structure around them did. And the structure is now running the show.

Politics works the same way. Consultants, strategists, party leadership — the people who have never been elected to anything — are pulling the strings. Good people on both sides are being managed by a machine whose only actual goal is to keep itself running. And the machine runs on division. The moment the people in office start genuinely cooperating across lines, the machine loses its purpose.

We are the product. Our outrage is the revenue.

I don't recognize either party right now — but I want to be precise about what I mean. I still believe in a lot of the people. It's the machine I don't trust.

The Republican party has been taken somewhere I've genuinely never seen before. The Democratic party feels like it's playing defense without a clear through-line that reaches people where they live. And both parties have been captured by consultants whose job — literally their job — is to divide us. Not lead us. Not serve us. Divide us.

I also want to say something about faith, carefully, because I respect it deeply. But I am watching faith being used as a political on ramp. A way to make people feel that their vote and their salvation are the same decision. That to question the party is to question God. When that happens, the conversation is over before it starts — because you're not disagreeing with a policy anymore. You're disagreeing with something someone holds sacred.

That is not faith. That is a strategy.

I have close family members across the full spectrum. Some of modest means who have been pulled toward a narrative I'm not sure serves them — partly through faith communities drawn deep into political alignment. Others for whom the current moment is frankly working fine, so the talking points cost them nothing.

I navigate all of this because I love every one of them. That's not a diplomatic thing to say. It's just the true thing.

But love doesn't make the conversations easy.

At a recent family gathering, someone was insisting that a woman who accused our current president of sexual assault was lying. The reasoning? That a man of his stature wouldn't need to do such a thing.

I shared with my family members that I was raped in college. By a high-profile athlete. I never reported it. I've talked about it publicly since — on a podcast, in conversations with women I trust, and with my own daughters, who I have raised to know they have a voice and the right to use it. I did the work. I had EMDR therapy. I came through it. But I didn't report it in 1978 or 1979 because I knew — with certainty — that I would not be believed. Women weren't believed then. Many still aren't.

Somewhere in that same conversation, a close family member said: women have been known to lie.

I took a breath. And I talked about the statistics. About how rare false reports are. About how the fear of not being believed is exactly why most assaults go unreported.

And then I thought about Al Franken.

I am not defending what he did. I'm not. But a man lost his United States Senate seat over a photograph taken at a USO rehearsal — and he admitted it and he apologized. Meanwhile we have a sitting president with a civil court finding of sexual abuse against him, multiple credible accusers, and his own recorded words about his own behavior.

I'm not saying that as a partisan. I'm saying it as a person.

What level of bad behavior is acceptable? And who decides? And why does the answer keep changing based on which team someone plays for?

I want to acknowledge something. Naming a rape is jarring. I don't do it lightly. I spent years feeling guilt and shame and blaming myself. I started talking about it when it felt right — but I really started talking during the Kavanaugh hearings. It was a similar story. And I thought: if the person who raped me were ever running for something that required them to vote on things affecting the lives of others, I think I'd need to stand up too. I don't know what became of him. I've done the work so thoroughly that I can't recall his name right now.

Protection for my soul? Perhaps.

I've been learning that a lot of the confusion we're all feeling isn't accidental.

When someone delivers a false statement calmly — composed, almost serene — and you feel something wrong but can't quite name it? That dissonance is intentional. Hostility without heat removes the signals that would normally tell us something hostile is happening. It's designed to make whoever reacts look like the problem.

When there are so many things to fact-check that you just give up? That's an actual strategy. The goal isn't to convince you of anything. It's to exhaust you. A tired, overwhelmed person is easier to manage.

When a reporter asks a straightforward question and gets called a disgrace — calmly, almost pleasantly — that's designed to flip the accountability. To make the questioner look like the aggressor. To make everyone forget what was being asked.

These aren't character flaws. This is a playbook. And it works best when we're too tired or too divided to name it out loud.

So. Here I am. Naming it.

Here's what I keep coming back to. In my actual daily life — in the professional organizations I belong to, in the rooms where I work and speak and show up — I'm surrounded by people who see the world differently than I do. Politically, personally, all of it. And we navigate it. We find the common ground. We disagree and we still show up for each other.

I also know that when I post this on LinkedIn, it will be read by people who work across political lines every single day — because their clients, their colleagues, their livelihoods require it. They do it without fanfare. They do it because that's what people in professional life do.

So if we can do this in our real lives — and we can, and we do — then the division we're being fed is not inevitable. It is manufactured. And we don't have to keep buying it.

Which brings me back to my mother's question. What part are we playing in all of this? Because calling myself an independent isn't a passive thing. It means I've decided to do the work — to vote for the people who most align with what I believe, across party lines, race by race, person by person, without the shortcut of a team jersey telling me what to think. That takes effort. You must pay attention. You must resist the noise. You must decide for yourself every single time.

But I think that's exactly what this moment requires. And I think my mother would agree.

The good news — and there is good news — is that 45% of Americans now identify as political independents. That is not a fringe. That is the single largest political identity in this country, bigger than either party. More than half of registered voters don't feel represented by anyone currently in power.

We are the majority. We are just scattered and quiet and tired.

I've been doing some homework on organizations that are trying to do something about this. A few I'm going to check out myself:

Braver Angels (braverangels.org) brings actual Republicans and Democrats into structured conversation — not to agree, not to debate, just to hear each other. Volunteer-led. Local chapters. The unglamorous work.

The Independent Center (independentcenter.org) is building what they literally call a home for the politically homeless — and working to elect independent candidates to Congress.

Independence.org is focused on the structural stuff — open primaries, ranked choice voting, redistricting — the mechanics that keep the machine in place and the rest of us locked out.

And if you want to understand what the parties actually stand for versus what they perform, Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org) is data without spin. Vote Smart (votesmart.org) shows you what politicians actually voted for. And OpenSecrets (opensecrets.org) follows the money — which honestly explains most of the rest of it.

My dad the ceramic tile setter believed people deserved a fair shot. He got up before dawn, picked up his lunch pail, came home, and read the paper in silence. He woke his daughter with a back rub. He was the quietest man and somehow always the most important voice in any room he was ever in.

My mother handed me a mirror and taught me to use it. She didn't raise someone who points fingers without first looking inward. I'm trying to honor that right now too.

I don't know what I am politically anymore.

But I know what I believe. And I still believe in the people — the ones on both sides who got into this because they wanted to serve. The ones the machine is slowly grinding down.

I'm starting to think the most radical thing any of us can do right now is just say that out loud — honestly, without a jersey on — and see who else raises their hand.

If that's you, I'd love to hear from you.

#FromWhereSit #PoliticallyHomeless #IndependentVoter #Democracy #BridgeTheDivide #FaithAndPolitics #BeyondPartyLines #WomenWhoWrite #Minnesota #MNPolitics #BelongingWithoutPermission #KatieHarms

Katie Harms is a writer, speaker, and podcast co-host based in Minnesota. This essay is part of her ongoing series, From Where I Sit.

The Lexicon of My Hair From Where I Sit — Essay

My hair has been part of my lexicon my entire life.

It arrived before I had words for it. By the time I was two years old, I had a full head of thick, coarse, curly hair — the kind that has opinions. The kind that doesn't ask permission. My mother had thin, straight hair. She loved me completely. But my hair was a foreign language she had never been asked to speak.

So in third grade, she did what made sense to her. She took me to a stylist and had it cut into a Vidal Sassoon pixie. Neat. Controlled. Manageable. For the time in my young life, my hair behaved.

Or at least it looked like it did.

I should tell you: I was adopted. My parents chose me — wanted me, loved me — and I have no doubt they were fully committed. But a baby is still largely a mystery at arrival. I was simply the unknown of a baby on steroids. They were learning too.

My hair was the first visible evidence that I was uniquely, undeniably me. Before I had language for identity, I had a curl pattern.

I should also mention: I am nearly six feet tall.

I say that not for effect, but because it matters to the story. My hair was never operating in isolation. It was arriving on top of a person who was already impossible to miss. I stood out before I said a word, before I did a thing, before my hair had any opinion at all.

And yet — I grew up in a family of introverts. Quiet people. People who moved through the world without needing to be noticed. I came out of the gate as an extreme extrovert, which meant I was both wired to engage every room and vaguely aware that standing out made the people I loved uncomfortable.

I am still, honestly, learning that it's okay.

In high school, I sat next to a boy named Mark Dolan in Science class. He used to give me a hard time — not cruelly, just with the particular confidence of a teenage boy — that my hair never looked the same two days in a row. He wasn't wrong. It didn't. It changed with the weather, with the humidity, with whatever mood it was apparently in that morning. It was unpredictable in the way that things with real personalities tend to be.

I didn't know then that "unpredictable" could be a gift.

What I did know — with absolute certainty — was that I wanted people to like me. An embarrassing amount, honestly, for someone who is nearly six feet tall and impossible to miss. You'd think the sheer square footage would come with built-in confidence. It does not work that way.

What I've learned, slowly and somewhat stubbornly, is that the people who earn real respect aren't always the ones who were trying to be liked. They were busy being useful. Being honest. Showing up as exactly who they were, whether or not that fit the room.

The hair, it turns out, was always ahead of me on this one.

Because here's what I didn't say out loud for a very long time: I was a square peg for most of my life. The tall girl at Catholic school who came home in tears more days than I'd like to remember. The extrovert in the quiet family. The adopted child who didn't look like anyone in the room. I got very good at making it look like I was fine. At making the standing out seem like a choice rather than a condition.

What I didn't understand then — what takes most of us the better part of a lifetime to understand — is that the not-fitting-in wasn't the problem to be solved. It was the path. Every room that didn't quite fit was teaching me something about which room eventually would. Every piece of myself I tried to manage or minimize was simply waiting to become exactly what someone else needed to see.

I was becoming whole. I just didn't have a word for it yet.

For years, I negotiated with my hair the way you negotiate with something you don't fully understand but can't ignore. I worked around it. I managed it. I did what I could.

Then, about twenty-five years ago, someone handed me a round brush and changed my life.

I know how that sounds. But I mean it.

A stylist who actually understood my hair gave me my first real blowout. And something clicked — not just the style, but the feeling. My hair, smoothed and shaped, still mine but finally fluent. It wasn't taming. It was translation. Someone had finally learned to speak my language.

I've been a blowout devotee ever since. Dry Bar before events. A ritual, really.

Though I'll tell you something interesting: my hair has a second life in Palm Springs, where we have a home. The dry desert air does something to my curls that Minnesota never has. I can air dry there. I can spritz with water and watch them spring back to life. In Minnesota, that same spritz would be chaos. Same hair. Different environment. Completely different result.

I think about that more than I probably should.

When I turned fifty, I decided I wanted to let my hair go grey.

My three daughters had thoughts about this.

They worried it would age me. Make me look old before my time. And I — who had spent a lifetime learning to be exactly who I was — waited. I was fifty years old and I waited another decade for permission I never needed to ask for in the first place.

At sixty, I stopped waiting. In January of 2020, I let the color go.

A few months later, Covid arrived, salons closed, and suddenly going grey was everywhere. A cultural moment. A trend. Women all over the country were letting their roots grow out and calling it liberation.

I was already there.

My grey came in silver — really silver, with depth. Light in the front, salt and pepper underneath. The thickness that had confounded everyone around me since I was two years old turned out to be exactly what gives it dimension. The very thing that seemed unmanageable all those years was what made it beautiful.

Going grey felt like one word: liberating.

Recently, I was asked to introduce a group of community impact honorees at the fifth annual Taste of the Twin Cities — an event that brings together business and nonprofit leaders, with all proceeds going toward food scarcity. Rena Sargianopolous — a familiar and trusted face in the Twin Cities — was serving as MC. She had my introduction in hand. She started reading it.

And then she stopped.

Mid-introduction. In front of the room. To say: "Can we also talk about her hair? She has the most fabulous hair."

I walked to the stage and said, "Thank you Rena. And my hair thanks you too."

The room laughed. I laughed. And somewhere underneath that moment was a little girl with a pixie cut who would not have believed any of it.

Here is what I know now, from where I sit:

My hair has been doing this my entire life — announcing me before I arrive, refusing to be ignored, never looking the same two days in a row. For years I thought that was the problem.

Turns out it was just the preview.

I spent years wondering where my relevance lived. What my voice added. Whether the most distinctive parts of me were assets or inconveniences. The curl pattern no one knew what to do with. The grey that came in a decade late but arrived exactly on time. The woman who is nearly six feet tall and still, occasionally, has to remind herself it's okay to be seen.

My hair knew before I did.

And here's the lesson: the things about us that seem unmanageable are usually just waiting for the right room.

My hair has been part of my lexicon my entire life.

I'm just finally fluent.

— Katie

Coming soonish: Belonging — On names, faith, adoption, and what it actually means to find your place.