Memorial Day invites us to remember what people have carried, what families have lost, and what freedom has cost.

And maybe remembrance should make us softer with one another.

Because there are two chairs in this conversation.

There is the person who is hurting and does not know what to do with it, so the pain comes out sideways. It becomes a sharp comment, a cruel assumption, a judgment, a post, a message, a reaction that wounds someone else.

And then there is the person sitting in silence. The one afraid to speak because they have learned that being seen can come with a cost. The one who has been misunderstood before. The one who has carried grief quietly because explaining it felt too exhausting. The one who wants to use their voice, but fears what people will do with it.

Both chairs tell a story.

One says, I am hurting, and I do not know how to hold it. The other says, I am hurting, and I am afraid to be heard.

Both of them are real. Both of them matter. And both of them are sitting at the same table this Memorial Day weekend, carrying something nobody can see.

To the One Who Is Lashing Out

I wonder what pain taught you to speak that way. I wonder what grief you buried so deep that anger became the only language left. I wonder where you learned that being harsh made you feel safe. I wonder what part of you still needs tenderness, honesty, and healing.

Your hurt matters. Your story matters. Your pain may explain the reaction. But it cannot become permission to wound someone else.

You still have a choice.

Pause before you post. Ask what you are reacting from. Ask whether the words you are about to release are truth, or pain looking for somewhere to land.

Hurt people hurt people. Healing people can choose differently.

And that choice begins with one breath, one pause, one moment of asking what is really underneath this.

To the One Sitting in Silence

I see you.

I see the way you measure every word before you say it. I see the way your body braces before you share your heart. I see the way you wonder whether honesty will cost you connection. I see how tired you are from being misunderstood.

You are not weak for being quiet. Sometimes silence was how you survived. Sometimes silence kept you safe. Sometimes silence was the only place you could breathe.

But you do not have to stay hidden forever.

Your voice does not have to come out loud to be real. It can begin small. It can begin honest. It can begin with one safe person, one sentence, one boundary, one prayer, one breath.

Silence may have kept you safe once. But you are not required to live there forever. The world needs the version of you that finally decides to speak.

And on This Memorial Day

We remember the cost of freedom.

We remember the lives lost, the families changed, the grief carried forward. We remember the parents who got the knock at the door. The spouses who folded the flag. The children who grew up with a photograph instead of a person.

The freedom we live in was paid for by people we will never meet.

Maybe that remembering should change how we move through the world. Maybe it should make us slower to judge, slower to speak from anger, slower to turn people into villains, and slower to forget that everyone is carrying something.

Because freedom is sacred. And if we are going to honor it, maybe we start by using our freedom with care.

The Way Forward

Maybe the way forward is not proving our point louder. Maybe it is pausing long enough to ask what our words are carrying. Are they carrying truth, or are they carrying pain? Are they opening a door, or leaving a wound?

Our opinions matter. Our platforms matter. Our humanity matters more.

Because freedom was never meant to make us careless with people. It was meant to remind us that every voice carries responsibility.

Because the person in the comment section is somebody's daughter. The person who said the hurtful thing is somebody's mother. The person sitting silently in the corner has a story you have not heard. The person whose post made you angry might be having the worst day of their life.

This weekend, we honor the ones who gave everything so we could live in freedom. Let us live like we know what that means.

Let Me Be Honest With You

I have sat in both chairs.

Not long ago, I had to make a hard leadership decision and close a group I had built. I made the call quietly, out of care for people who had been hurt inside that space, so I never explained it publicly.

I was criticized for it anyway, out in the open, while the reason for the choice stayed private to protect the very people it was about.

I am not telling you that to defend myself. I am telling you because of what was happening in me at the time, where no one could see.

Here is the part I want you to hear.

If that situation had hit me a year earlier, it would have landed very differently. I was at the worst point in my life. Mentally, I was barely hanging on. If someone had piled on me then, I am not sure what would have happened.

I was grieving a broken relationship with my daughter, a grief I would not wish on my worst enemy. I had a sick father-in-law. And there were other heavy things I will not name here, because the point is not the list. The point is that no one on the outside knew.

No one piling on knew. And if they had known, I want to believe they still would have chosen kindness, but I cannot be sure.

That moment changed how I move through the world.

Every word, every comment, every action lands somewhere. And we do not always know what the person on the other end is already carrying.

So I made a quiet promise to myself. I will never pile onto someone who is already hurting. I will never try to affect someone's business, reputation, or faith out of my own pain. Not because I am better than anyone. Because I have been the woman barely holding on, and I know what one more cruel comment can do.

I have sat in both chairs. I have reacted from overload and overwhelm. I have also been on the receiving end of mean girls more times than I want to admit.

But here is what I am most thankful for. God had a way of removing the ones who did not belong in my next chapter. And He offered grace through the women who did, the ones who showed up when I finally cried out to Him. The friendships that formed in that season are the truest I have.

I want to be able to give that grace back. Even if it is just to one person today.

This Is About Loving Our Neighbor

This is not about agreeing. It never was.

This is about loving our neighbor. This is about celebrating our differences. This is about remembering that God made each of us uniquely in His image, and that the person whose opinion irritates you is still bearing the fingerprints of the same Creator who made you.

Our grandfathers fought for our freedom. Our fathers served. Our sons and daughters wear the uniform. Brothers and husbands and friends came home different, and some did not come home at all.

They did not fight so we could agree on everything. They fought so we could disagree freely. They fought so we could have a voice. They fought so we could sit at the same table even when we see the world differently.

We honor what they died for by offering compassion to one another. By using our freedom for kindness, not cruelty. By remembering that the person on the other side of the screen is still a neighbor.

Agreement is not the goal. Love is.

And love does not require sameness. It requires reverence. The kind of reverence that says, I may not understand you, but I will not weaponize my voice against you. I may disagree with you, but I will not strip you of your dignity. I may see the world differently, but I will see you as someone God Himself made on purpose.

That is what loving our neighbor looks like in 2026.

If No One Tells You Today

Whether you are sitting in the chair of the one who hurts, or the chair of the one who hides, you are loved. You are seen. You are not the silence that has kept you small. You are a whole person with a whole story and a whole future still in front of you.

If you are hurting and feeling alone, you are not. God is always with us. And if you are reading this, please reach out. Maybe I can be that light for you today, the way other women were lights for me when I was barely hanging on.

We are all worthy of love. We are all worthy of kindness. We are all worthy of compassion. Even when we are not the same. Especially when we are not the same.

That is how freedom gets honored. Not just in remembrance. In the way we live the days we were given.

With love,

- Jenn Board

• • •

Pass It On

Share this with someone at the table. Send this to the friend who has been quiet lately. Send it to the one whose words have been sharper than usual. Send it to yourself if you needed to hear it. We are all sitting at the same table this weekend.

Come Closer

Want to tell me which chair you are in? If something in this resonated, do not let it pass through quietly.

Related Reads

Further Reading

If you want to keep exploring why social media can make us harsher with one another, these ideas are a good place to start. They look at empathy, emotional contagion, online outrage, polarization, and why the work of staying soft with one another matters.

Suggested search topics: social media and empathy, emotional contagion online, online outrage psychology, deindividuation, moral outrage and polarization, and weaponized reactivity.

The point is simple: our reactivity is being shaped every day. Staying human with one another is not passive. It is practice.

• • •

Jenn Board is the host of Just Jelly Unfiltered and the founder of Lavish Life Living, where the tools and frameworks live. Her debut book Silent to Spoken releases October 6, 2026. Join the waitlist at silenttospoken.com.