Last week, I attended the County Commissioners Association of Ohio (CCAO) Winter Conference—a gathering I always look forward to. These convenings let us step outside our own counties for a few days and focus on learning, listening, and comparing notes about how we’re solving problems back home.

Ohio’s families deserve a system grounded in real life, not the rose-colored memories of days gone by. A single snow day shouldn’t be enough to send a working parent into crisis or reveal how few supports we’ve built for modern family life.

Maybe it is age or perspective or just the reality of this next season of life, but I find myself living more intentionally in gratitude these days.

Seven in ten Americans now say raising children is too expensive. That is a thirteen point jump in a single year. When raising a child starts to feel like something only a few can manage, it is a sign that our priorities need attention. We can fix this. Not by asking families to stretch further, but by updating our policies to reflect the real cost of raising the next generation.

At Groundwork Ohio’s Momentum Institute in late October, political pollster Robert Blizzard of UpONE Insights began his presentation with a slide that quieted the room. Nearly 80 percent of Americans, he explained, believe the opposing party’s agenda will “destroy America as we know it.”

For nearly a month, the federal government has been shut down and millions of families are on the brink of losing access to food assistance. Hawley’s essay urging Congress to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program open was not a partisan argument.

John Corlett’s new paper, “Fragile Financing,” reframes the Medicaid conversation. On its face, it’s about Medicaid dollars—provider taxes, state-directed payments, and the complicated machinery that allows Ohio to keep $43 billion flowing through our health-care system each year.

These friendships are what bring me back in tune when life gets noisy. When I get home from time like this, I’m clearer, lighter, and more grounded. I lead better, listen better, and live better.

This is the rare kind of policy report that doesn’t just compile data—it tells a story about how the rules we’ve built can quietly punish parents for doing the very things we claim to value: working hard, supporting their children, and building stability.

A government shutdown is the loudest kind of political standoff—full of headlines and blame-shifting. Yet even in that noise, the voices you never hear are those of babies, toddlers, and children who bear the invisible cost.

What freedom, responsibility, and restraint can teach us about building trust again. One of the bedrock principles of our nation is the freedom of speech. The First Amendment is not a guarantee of comfort. It protects even the words we don’t like, because if speech can be silenced whenever it offends, then none of us are truly free.

Child care isn’t just a private transaction between parents and providers. It’s a public good. And it’s long past time we treated it that way.

In an era when gerrymandering is often blamed for political polarization—when we say representatives are choosing their voters instead of the other way around—this shift tells a different story. Because here’s the truth: county lines aren’t gerrymandered. They’ve been the same for generations.

Instead of spending energy complaining about who’s in office, invest it in building genuine relationships with the people who are there—not wishing for the ones who aren’t.

When I started this blog series, I wasn’t sure how it would land. I just knew it needed to be written. Too many good people are showing up in policy spaces feeling frustrated, unheard, and exhausted. And I get it. These aren’t easy times.

In my final post of this series: Remember, if you want a seat at the table, don’t just knock on the door when it suits you. Stick around. Pay attention. Find ways to be helpful—even when it’s not your bill on the docket.

I’ve spent enough time in and around policymaking to know this: it’s not just what you say that matters—it’s who says it. I’ve seen lawmakers mentally check out of testimony—not because they disagreed with the message, but because the messenger didn’t carry the credibility or connection that earns their attention.

As a former Republican legislator, I sat through hundreds of policy pitches. And I can tell you this: data alone never closed the deal.

Often advocates' intentions are good—but they lose the room. Not because the lawmakers don’t care about the issue, but because the solution feels like exactly what they’ve been elected to resist: a big, expensive, centralized government fix.

If you’re not solving the same problem—or even agreeing on what the problem is—you’re not going to get traction, no matter how strong your proposal is.