While I was growing up, my father shaped how I saw public service. He worked for the federal government as an urban planner, after serving the city of Detroit in the same role, and before that, the U.S. Navy – first in World War II, then in Korea.
He believed in the power of government to make people’s lives better. He fought for safer, more affordable housing. He believed in environmental regulations because he knew, left to their own devices, developers would prioritize profit over the health of the people who lived in the houses they built.
And, by and large, I still think he was right.
When a society uses money as its primary measure of success and of worth, businesses will cut corners, skirt regulations, and try to get away with as much as they can.
What I once saw as cynicism, I’ve come to recognize as heartbreak – the ache of watching something you love lose its way. Over the years I’ve realized: what’s true in business can also be true in government. Money rules. Regulations shatter. Dysfunction reigns.
So I no longer look to either business or government to save us.
We have to save ourselves.
We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.
The Myth of the Hero
Our stories perpetuate a myth of an outside force coming in to fix what’s broken – a superhero swooping in to fight our enemies and set things right. The Avengers. Superman. We have been trained to look up to the sky, but the real story has always been horizontal, not vertical. It’s about the ground beneath our feet and the hands beside ours.
When we picture heroes as larger-than-life, we excuse ourselves from the story. We wait for someone stronger, wiser, or braver to fix what’s broken – the government, the next generation, the mysterious “they” who should really do something about this.
Yet every movement toward justice, every wave of compassion that’s changed the course of history, began with someone who didn’t look like a hero – everyday people who, in small and faithful ways, choose love over indifference.
Heroism rarely looks like a grand gesture. It can start small – with a refusal, with empathy, with one person saying, “No More.”
The Spark of Refusal – Saying “No More”
Think of Tarana Burke(1) – long before the hashtags and headlines, she was listening to stories of survivors of abuse who’d been silenced. She didn’t have a marketing team or a movement plan. She just refused to let pain go unnamed. The phrase Me Too was her way of saying, You’re not alone. And from that quiet act of empathy, the world began to shift.
Or Candy Lightner, whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver. (2) Her grief could have turned inward, but she channeled it outward, founding Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She was an ordinary mom who decided that one more preventable death was one too many.
What unites them isn’t fame or power; it’s that moment when heartbreak crosses the threshold into courage. They didn’t set out to be heroes. They simply reached the edge of what their hearts could bear and said, Enough.
That’s often how transformation begins — not in power, but in heartbreak, and the courage to do something about it.
The Power of Love Made Tangible
There’s another kind of heroism – not born from protest, but from presence. Some heroes build their revolutions quietly – one act of care at a time.
In the 1970s, Clara Hale, or “Mother Hale” as her Harlem neighbors called her, began by caring for one child whose mother was addicted to drugs(3). Then another. And another. Her small apartment became a sanctuary. Eventually, it became Hale House, where nearly a thousand babies were given a chance at love and life.
In the 1990s, Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative(4). Their mission is “committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable….” He reminds us, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” His work is about restoration, about remembering our shared humanity.
This is love made visible, the kind of heroism that restores dignity and says, You matter.
This is what happens when love refuses to look away, when justice becomes an act of tenderness.
The Ripples of Imagination
Other heroes begin by imagining a world that doesn’t yet exist. Where refusal confronts what is, imagination reaches for what could be.
Grace Lee Boggs, in Detroit, called it “growing our souls.” For seventy years she worked with neighbors to reimagine community — gardens in empty lots, art in abandoned buildings, a revolution rooted in creativity and care. (5) She said, “You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.”
The Trevor Project, the organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ+ youth, began when a group of filmmakers saw the need.(6) What started as one phone number became a national movement of hope, saving thousands of lives.
Heroism requires imagination – the willingness to create something life-giving where despair once lived.
Becoming the Heroes Ourselves
There’s a pattern in these stories – a map of the human soul that mirrors what I call the Three Loves: Love for Self. Love for Others. Love for the Infinite.
Love for Self begins the moment we refuse to stay numb — when we honor our conscience, our heartbreak, and our voice.
Love for Others moves us outward, toward compassion and connection.
Love for the Infinite reminds us that we are part of something larger — a love that ripples outward in ways we cannot comprehend, multiplying every small act of courage.
We don’t have to fix everything. We just have to answer the call that’s burning inside us – the part that ours to love, ours to live.
How do I love? Who do I love? How can I put my love into action – today?
Every generation that waited for its heroes learned … eventually … that the heroes were already here. They were mothers and neighbors, teachers and healers, students and dreamers who refused to give up on what’s possible.
So maybe the question isn’t “Who will save us?”
Maybe it’s “What will love look like through us?”
Because that’s how the world changes.
One small, courageous act at a time.
One person remembering: We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.
Joni Miller, Ph.D., is a writer, researcher, spiritual coach, and speaker who uses her knowledge, education, and love of all things spiritual to help spiritual wanderers find a place they can call home, navigating by the light of Love. www.SpiritualGeography.net
(1) https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/tarana-burke
(2) https://www.biography.com/activist/candy-lightner
(3) https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Clara-Hale/325565
(5) https://www.boggsfoundation.org/
(6) https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-with-red-cape-sitting-on-a-wheelchair-6195467/
