I think all of this is a bit much. There’s a fair amount of poetic phrasing on this page. Unfortunately, I mean it. So in avoidance of the alternatives...

The Philosophers that Raised Me

I come from people who speak plainly or incomprehensibly
Rarely in between
Just enough to get in trouble on both sides

From those who saw the world bending around power and said: not like this.

I come from Bell Hooks, who taught that love is an ethic of action
From James Baldwin, who named lies as violence and truth as devotion
From Barbara Ehrenreich, who clocked in, took notes, and showed the world what work costs
From Hannah Arendt, who warned that the ordinary becomes evil when left uninterrogated

I come from André Comte-Sponville, who showed that spirituality needs only presence, humility, and wonder
From Audre Lorde, who said our silence will not protect us
From Angela Davis, who showed that liberation is a daily practice, not a distant dream
From Gloria Anzaldúa, who found truth in the in-between and made contradiction a homeland

I come from Cornelius Eady, who told us: Cynicism is a form of obedience
From Paulo Freire, who taught us that to name the world is to change it
From Erich Fromm, who asked us not just to survive systems, but to be human within them
From Judith Butler, who made visible the rules we never agreed to follow

I come from Martha Nussbaum, who said dignity is not a luxury; it is the baseline of justice
From Immanuel Kant, who insisted that we must treat every human not as a means, but as an end
From Michel Foucault, who mapped how power hides in the everyday, disciplining us through what seems neutral
From Edna St. Vincent Millay, who kissed like a rebel and wrote as a sovereign

And also from my life of twenty lives.

Clarity is care
Language is power
People are the point

Not all our lives get canonized, but they can all be courageous.