The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays.
I love the flags lining Main Street, the small-town parades, families gathered around picnic tables, the smell of hamburgers on the grill, and the evening sky filling with fireworks. This year feels different because I’ve stopped loving this country. Quite the opposite. I love it enough to worry.
As America begins celebrating its 250th year and Colorado prepares to mark its 150th anniversary, I find myself experiencing two emotions at once.
Gratitude. And genuine concern. Both are true.
Normally, this would be a season of celebration across our beautiful state.
Instead, Colorado is living through another difficult wildfire season. More than 100,000 acres have burned. Firefighters are working around the clock. Families have packed treasured photographs and keepsakes into their vehicles, hoping they won’t need to leave, but preparing just the same.
The celebrations will adapt. The cities will have big displays, and the small mountain towns will focus on boat parades like in Grand Lake, or on community events, children’s games, and music in town squares, because there will be no fireworks during a State Two fire season.
Is this year’s celebration different?
But this year doesn’t feel entirely celebratory. It is possible to celebrate while carrying sadness. To be grateful while worrying. To stand in awe of something beautiful while recognizing how quickly it can change.
For families like mine, America has been a place where extraordinary progress became possible.
When my daughter Mikelle was born, many people with significant disabilities were still expected to live separate lives—often away from their neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and communities.
Today, Mikelle is a homeowner. She has lived in her own condominium since 2007. She directs her own support team. She co-hosts a podcast. She owns a bracelet business. She votes. She makes choices about her home, her work, and her life.
None of that happened by accident.
It happened because generations of people refused to accept that disability should determine destiny.
Parents.
Self-advocates.
Professionals.
Friends.
Lawmakers who listened.
Judges who recognized that freedom belongs to everyone.
Together, they transformed institutions into neighborhoods, segregation into inclusion, and charity into civil rights.
That is worth celebrating.
And yet…
Over the past several months, many families have watched changes in education, healthcare, Medicaid, civil rights enforcement, and disability policy with growing concern. Recent discussions surrounding community living, the future of special education, and the interpretation of long-standing disability protections have reminded many of us that progress should never be taken for granted.
Those conversations matter. But over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking less about Washington and more about Colorado. Perhaps that’s because nature has a way of teaching us things politics never can. A few days ago, I drove through Rocky Mountain National Park.
Colorado is dry this summer. The drought is impossible to ignore. And yet… The wildflowers didn’t seem to notice. Indian paintbrush. Lupine.
Blankets of yellow arnica stretching toward the mountains. Beauty has a remarkable way of refusing to wait for perfect conditions.
A few years ago, the East Troublesome Fire raced toward two of Colorado’s most beloved mountain communities—Grand Lake and Estes Park.
Many of us watched with our hearts in our throats. Entire hillsides turned black. It would have been easy to believe the story had ended there. But nature rarely finishes the story when the fire goes out.
Today, tiny lodgepole pines are pushing through the ash.
Aspens are returning.
Wildflowers bloom where smoke once settled. The forest isn’t pretending the fire never happened. It is simply doing what healthy forests do.
Beginning again.
As I drove through the park, I couldn’t help but think about the disability movement.
For more than fifty years, we’ve been widening the circle of belonging. We’ve built neighborhood schools, community jobs, accessible homes, person-centered planning, supported employment, self-determination, and communities where people with disabilities are increasingly recognized for their gifts instead of their limitations. That work wasn’t easy. And it isn’t finished. Perhaps what unsettles me most isn’t any single policy change. It’s the reminder that every generation inherits something precious. Some inherit thriving forests; others inherit forests recovering from fire. And some generations inherit movements in full bloom. Others inherit movements that need tending once again. None of us chooses the season we are born into. We only choose what we do with it. It is all about the choices we make.
For years, we’ve talked about Person-Centered Planning as a process. Maybe it’s something even deeper. Maybe it’s the belief that every person deserves the conditions to grow, belong, contribute, choose, and flourish. Yes, flourish.
Just as a healthy forest needs sunlight, water, and space to grow, people flourish when communities are built around their strengths instead of their limitations.
I’ve been around long enough to remember when people with disabilities were expected to fit into systems. The last fifty years have been about changing systems to fit people. My hope is that we never lose sight of that simple but revolutionary idea.
The questions before us today—about artificial intelligence, education, community living, workforce shortages, aging caregivers, and disability policy—are real. And deserve our attention and our hope. Because hope isn’t pretending there has been no fire. Hope is noticing the small green shoots that have the courage to appear long before the forest has fully returned. Hope is mentoring the next leader and welcoming a new support professional. It is about helping a young self-advocate discover their voice. It is believing that our communities can become even more inclusive than they are today.
I’ve come to believe that renewal is the natural work of hopeful people.
Maybe that’s what citizenship asks of us, too. Not simply to celebrate our country’s accomplishments. Not simply to point out its shortcomings.
But to accept responsibility for the landscape we have inherited. Because every generation inherits a landscape. Every generation decides what will grow there.
This Fourth of July, I will still watch the fireworks. I’ll still feel grateful. And I’ll still speak up. Because loving our country doesn’t mean pretending it has always gotten everything right. Sometimes loving your country means believing so deeply in its promise that you’re willing to help it become the nation it still has the capacity to be.
That is the America I still believe in.
The America worth celebrating and the America worth protecting.
And like those tiny lodgepole pines pushing through the ash, I believe its next chapter is already beginning.
We just have to be willing to help it grow.