Protest outside the National Congress building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, against policies of Javier Milei’s government. Photo by Santiago Oroz/SOPA Images/LightRocket is a scientist working across microbiome science, translational biology, public health, and scientific communication. She writes the Substack Quiet Mechanisms.
If reading or watching the news feels less like staying informed and more like a daily horror or heartbreak, you’re not alone. Many of us are carrying a kind of civic homesickness. It’s what happens when the truths we presumed were universal start to crumble.
Sometimes, differences of worldview so profound have emerged that even dinner conversations feel like foreign policy negotiations. How do we give shape to this disquiet? We might call it fatigue, burnout, or ‘just needing a break from the world’, but often it’s grief – mourning for a faith we once had in fellow citizens to recognise a certain decency or sense of fairness.
It isn’t partisan; it’s human, and it has a name. Civic grief doesn’t care which side of the table you sit on. It can visit anyone who has seen their values of citizenship and belonging abandoned or even opposed by their neighbours or friends or country.
If this sounds familiar, take heart. The ache itself is proof of care, a sign that some part of you still believes we can do better. Around the world, survey after survey shows people losing faith in institutions, leaders, and even each other.
Freedom House’s 2026 report found that global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025, with political rights and civil liberties deteriorating in 54 countries and improving in only 35. Those numbers have lived counterparts: military coups, efforts to weaken constitutional safeguards, violence against peaceful protesters, attacks on courts and journalists, and families increasingly unable to discuss public life without treating one another as hostile witnesses. The grief, in other words, is not floating above reality.
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