I’m a writer, so of course I believe that words matter. If they don’t then what am I doing here? I don’t mean like here on Earth. I mean here writing about writing.

There’s been a lot of talk about the value of words lately, especially in the context of what the former president had said on January 6, and in months leading up to that horrible day. I don’t know about you, but I’m still exhausted from dodging four-year’s worth of his weaponized words. Words that he had thrown around in angry tweet-storms, aimed at a new target almost daily. His words were like the worst of times.

But on January 20, as I watched the lovely, poised, wise Amanda Gorman perform her inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” I couldn’t help but hear her words as the flip side of those earlier dark, cruel barbs. Her words rang truer than the ugly ones spewed weeks earlier. Her words were of hope and promise and renewal.

And as the events of January 6 are replayed during this month’s Senate trial, the contrast between moments and words seems so stark. We’re lucky to live in a country where we have freedom of speech. Freedom to say what’s on our minds. Freedom for me to blog about words. But that doesn’t mean we have freedom from consequences for the words we choose to use. Why?

Because those words we choose–

They matter.