Dear friends,
This time last year, I was in Mogadishu.
Following elections back home in the United States, people were openly talking about fleeing—leaving, retreating, pulling back. Yet at a table in Somalia, a country emerging from decades of collapse, I sat with women’s rights activists who all held passports from Western nations. They could have left. Many had already lost family members because of their human rights work. And still—they stayed.
I asked why.
Because “life is too short” did not mean staying safe in order to prolong it. It meant spending one’s short days in compassion, service, and connection. Why else be alive?
You’ve heard of “fight or flight.” That stress-response framework was developed in 1915—based exclusively on male subjects. Decades later, when women were finally studied, additional responses emerged: freeze, fawn, and…flock.
Women come together in times of epic stress. As I transition to a new role as a strategic advisor and Cofounder-in-Residence, I have endless gratitude for the way we’ve come together to stay the course for a safer world for women and girls.
As Dr Maliah Khan, CEO of Women Deliver, recently observed: Conservatives can disagree on 98 per cent of issues, but the remaining 2 per cent—they will come together and push hard. That’s why they are winning. Those seeking progress, on the other hand, can agree on 98 per cent of issues, but that final 2 per cent…we will die on those hills.
Friends, we are living through a global stress event—the most critical moment for women’s rights in more than fifty years, perhaps a century.
This moment cannot be about fighting.
Or freezing.
Or fawning.
And certainly not fleeing.
This moment demands something else.
It demands that we dig deep, listen hard to our sisters-in-arms, and offer bottomless grace to one another. It demands alignment.
It demands we flock.
Flocking means checking ourselves at the door, listening deeply, and choosing generosity over fracture. It means honouring, with humility and gratitude, every member of this coalition who puts their life on the line for the greater good—for human dignity, safety, and flourishing. Like the women I sat with in Somalia. Like all of you. This work is not symbolic. It is brave. It is costly. And it is the future of human flourishing.
In 2026, let’s make flocking our practice. As Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned, may we continue to build a community rooted in unconditional, community-creating love—where we challenge behaviour fiercely, and hold the humanity in all of us close.
Let’s keep building the beloved community we are already living in.
Find your people.
Create safe circles.
Love big.
Offer bottomless grace—even, and especially, to those you disagree with.
I’m grateful and proud that we have, together, deepened our beloved community, as MLK called us to. We have held each other through pressure, grief, exhaustion, and fear—and continued to move forward with a bold vision to end violence against women and girls as the world order is being remade.
Thank you for staying.
Together, we flock.
With deepest gratitude,
Lisa Shannon
Cofounder-in-Residence
Every Woman
