Adele McKiernan is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they studied history and integrated liberal studies. They are now a second-year Loretto Volunteer in St. Louis working at Missouri Health Care for All, as a Grassroots Organizing Fellow.
Show full bio ↓
Meaning of identity for faith-based communities in the modern era
Notes from the Field - To me, intentional communal living can be an antidote to the isolation we are feeling across the generational spectrum as well as the very real effects of economic strain that are changing millennials' outlook on the housing market and the trajectory of our future generally.
Loss, distance and resilience have marked my volunteer year
Notes from the Field - In the face of various forms of loss this volunteer year, I often feel more like I am living in the absence of others than I am present to my own life.
Volunteers need structures for personal and systemic anti-racism work
Notes from the Field - Without the foundational trust necessary for our community to broach these topics of privilege and racism organically or a formal framework for them built into the Loretto Volunteer program, I began to unpack my whiteness and its implications independently.
Good Friday poem brings comfort during a painful spring anniversary
Notes from the Field - I'd been concerned I was fated to repeat last year's trauma, but Robert Frost's poem and the deacon's interpretation reminded me that though the darkness of winter happens annually, so does the brightness of spring.