The House That Smelled Like Pee (And Other Reasons I Disappeared)

Why I'm back with fewer platforms, greater purpose, and a daughter who deserves better conversations.

Coming Back to the Work

The house smelled like urine when we bought it. You can see it soaked into the hardwoods in the photo above.

I'm not starting there to shock you—I'm starting there because that's where the last few years actually began. Standing in what would become our living room, breathing through my mouth, realizing we were about to spend months living out of suitcases while we took this place back to the studs. The military had already shit-kicked most of our belongings during the move home, cutting corners on shipping like they always do, so we didn't have much left to unpack anyway.

If you've been here with me for a while, you know I disappeared for a few years. No new content. No regular writing. Radio silence from someone who used to have a lot to say about policy and systems and how we build better communities.

Here's the cliff notes version of why I dipped out: I came back to a country that broke my heart. I was heartbroken at what I left behind overseas. I was heartbroken at what I came home to. I needed a moment—actually, I needed a few years—to find new footing.

What I know now is that sometimes you have to stop talking about building better systems long enough to actually live inside broken ones. To renovate a house that smells like piss. To take a job in a part of the city where opportunity and violence live on the same block, where market adjustments have human consequences you can't policy-speak your way around. To help build an organization from the ground up. To have a daughter. To sit with a therapist and unpack all your shit.

We did all of that. I did all of that.

And now I'm back—not with fanfare, not with apologies, but with something I didn't have before: clarity about what actually matters, and how to tell that story.

What Changed

I used to write about policy as a whole, but that was too broad. It let me talk around the edges of things without getting my hands dirty with the real work. What I know now—what I've learned from renovating houses and building organizations and watching communities struggle and thrive—is simpler and more specific.

I'm doing the work now. During the day, I sit in the privileged position of community leadership, designing programs and making delicate decisions about how to spend people's hard-earned tax dollars to make their neighborhoods better places to thrive. At night, I'm here telling you about it—not because I have all the answers, but because you might be able to glean some wisdom or avoid some hard-earned lessons from what I'm learning as I go.

Lastly, having a daughter has made this work more pressing, more loving, more urgent. We all carry a torch that I will eventually have to pass to her. She deserves for today's adults to have hard and thoughtful conversations about the communities we're building for her generation.

What's Next

I'm back to writing, but quietly this time. This newsletter will fit into my life rather than be the center of it. I'm not here to build an empire or become the loudest voice in the room — there are too many papier-mâché empires on the internet already. I'm here to share what I've learned about how communities actually work—the messy, practical, human parts that don't make it into policy papers but determine whether people have places to belong.

If you're reading this, it's because you care about building something better too…or more likely because my mom is my biggest fan-girl and she blasted it all over her Facebook.

Either way, you are here. And you understand that policy without people is just paperwork. You know that the work of community happens in neighborhood coffee shops, and the stories we tell each other about who we are and who we could become have the power to ignite and unite people.

We have work to do. Not abstract work—real work. The kind that gets your hands dirty and your heart invested. The kind that smells like fresh paint and fresh sweat. The kind that creates places where people can build lives worth living.

I'm ready to get back to it. Are you?

Yours in sincerity,

Taylor Patrice

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A Few Housekeeping Notes

You'll notice this isn't coming from "Policy Out Loud" anymore. I'm changing the name to The Exchange because it better captures what this work actually is—exchanging ideas, stories, and resources with people who are building better communities.

The website will be undergoing renovations soon to focus on community development and nonprofit consulting. All content is moving to Substack, where all of my correspondence will live, for now at least.

There are several reasons for this shift: I want to do less overall, and do more of what I love better. Marketing across multiple platforms might be the way to gain fame, but it's exhausting, inauthentic for me, and focuses on showing the work rather than doing it. I'd rather have fewer readers with greater intimacy.

So you can find me exclusively on Substack or in your inbox. That's it. No more chasing me across platforms.

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What's one intersection in your community where you see potential for change? Hit reply and tell me about it. I read every response, and these stories shape what I write about next.