What do you
love most?
I am a licensed psychotherapist practicing in the state of Oregon since 2018. I looked forward to this relocation after living in Las Vegas for 11 years, and was rather startled to find myself in a county with a suicide rate 17 times the national average, higher than Las Vegas even at the time I left. I struggled to reconcile the gap between such a beautiful natural landscape and such a stark mental anguish reality. In 2018, there was already a well recognized mental health crisis in Oregon, especially among young people - manifesting in high rates of self-harm, suicidal behavior, and aggressive acting out in the schools. And then we entered the tunnel that began in 2020 and brought even more psycho-emotional distress and social division along the front lines of Covid policy, race, sexual and gender identity, the environment, and personal responses to all of the aforementioned. Now we have added two wars that have many concerned once again about the possibility of global conflict threatening apocalyptic effects.
In my lifetime, I have never observed a succession of events to have such a devastating impact on mental health at scale. The closer we edge towards November 2024, and very likely the most contentious presidential race in modern US history, the more concerned I have become for the well-being of my country in particular. It is these observations and concerns that motivated this project.
Beginning in June of 2024, I plan to begin a roller skating journey across the northern United States to ask as many people as possible to answer three questions:
What do you love most about America?
What do you love most about human beings?
What do you love most about your life?
I have never been across the northern states, and starting in Boston, MA to end up at Tillamook Lighthouse, OR will afford countless opportunities to encounter a wide variety of urban and rural communities and everything in between. Consider this a mass psychological intervention for myself and anyone and everyone else willing to weigh in. It may be ridiculously ambitious to hope that three little questions and some skates might improve this state of affairs to any significant degree, but I can be a rather ridiculous person and perhaps ridiculous times call for ridiculous measures.
Please join me in getting refocused on the things we love most about America, about each other, and about our own lives - at least for a little while. What could it hurt?
alise weaver
Mission
A grassroots effort to focus the attention of American people on what they most admire and appreciate about their country, each other, and their time on earth in hopes of facilitating greater national unity and reduced socio-political division.
Vision
An America where people are able to identify and value their common humanity more so than their social and political views, affiliations, or objectives.
