Minneapolis Mori

It’s a new year and the first days of 2026 have been heavy with change. Part of my practice with death meditations is to try and welcome the world and its changes as it is. The practice is to let go of what I think the world should be so I am not disappointed when the world doesn’t care what I think. It’s been a hard week to welcome change.

I’m speaking of heavy news events. The first is how US special forces kidnapped a foreign leader and his wife because the US President didn’t like him and wanted his oil. He literally just said it in an interview. He did it because he could and because of oil.

The change I have trouble welcoming here is how much more dangerous the world becomes when powerful nations no longer follow international rules. Before this system came into being, we had two world wars within forty years. The needless death that happens when the powerful have no restraint is well documented history book.

The other news event that weighs heavily upon me is the murder of a thirty-seven-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent at a traffic stop in Minneapolis. Renee was unarmed, riding with her wife and her dog after dropping her six-year-old off at school. ICE agents stopped her car and we don’t know what was said. But then, Renee tried to do a slow three point turn to leave and an ICE agent shot her in the head. I doubt there has ever been a clearer cut case on video of a United States law enforcement agent executing an American citizen.

The masked desperados known as ICE don’t act like federal law enforcement. They don’t seem to have the training to uphold the US Constitution nor the directive to protect the lives of US citizens. They seem to become unwelcome in every community they visit no matter the politics of the state. They have no restraint and so far the federal government is shielding them from investigations and accountability.

As well as being a mother, Renee Nicole Good was also a poet. A few words of her poetry have been ringing in my head these last couple of days,

“maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.”

Unwelcome change feels like a fever to me this week. I don’t like living in a more dangerous world. I don’t like seeing American law enforcement murder citizens without accountability. 2026 isn’t even ten days old.

And so, I practice the tools that have helped me in the past. I do a meditation where I remind myself on each exhale that the world has never promised me another breath. I hold my exhale out at the bottom for a count of four and remind myself any breath could be my last. I inhale again and notice I can relish this gift of one more breath.

After some time, I become calmer and more connected to a truth that walks hand-in-hand with the need to accept the world as it is. I must deal with the world as it is but I am also part of the change happening in the world.

I can use this precious gift of being alive today and embody the values I want to live. I can practice the compassion and restraint I see lacking elsewhere. I can join in common cause with people who also want to live their lives according to values they hold dear.

I’m adding a quote from the Poet Renee Nicole Good to the WeCroak app today. Not only was she a fine poet, she was a woman who expected to be alive today and now isn’t. My hope is that when you see this quote, you pause and take a moment to consider how precious life is and how it may be over in the most unexpected moments and unwelcome ways. I hope you consider what poems you might write before your time comes. I hope you consider what paintings you might paint, what love stories you might live, and what actions you might take that you’d feel good about at the end of day. If you are reading this, you still have this day to do what matters most to you.

I hope that this can be a space where we can discuss our values and what matters most to us starting with memento mori work but not ending there. I’d like this column to feel like an oasis of sanity in a world where that quality increasingly feels like a rare and special thing.

I’ll be sharing more kinds of writing here in addition to the advice column where I answer questions from the imagined perspective of death. As always, you can send your questions for death to askdeath@wecroak.com .

Also, if you have topics or ideas you’d like this column to address, I’d love to hear from you. My goal is to make this a space that can help support all of us in 2026 and I appreciate your perspectives on how to do that.

Sincerely,

Hansa Bergwall

P.S. The best way to support everything WeCroak does is to download the app and join LEAP. You’ll get the biggest database of quotes and some daily and weekly mortality reflection tools.

P.S.S. If you are looking to make big changes this year, my coaching practice is designed to support you. Write to me here or through Tidepathcoach.com if you’d like to find out more about a coaching relationship.