Hey, maybe you are struggling here at the beginning of the year, a year that has not started easy after a year that never let up.

I know I am.

Every day feels like a fresh hell and every day it's more and more clear that the only ones who are going to stand up for us is us. Same as it ever was, for certain, but it feels all the more stark in the cold of mid-January made colder still by the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week.

But here's the thing to remember, even amidst all this: we are strong enough. We always have been.

So as I reminder of that I offer up, on this cold January day, this beautiful performance of the song "Cold At Night" by the Mountain Goats, complete with a string section. I've come back to this song so many times since it came out last fall because of one refrain:

The first thing you learn is how strong you can be, if you have to.

Over and over again in the last couple hard months, and especially in this last impossible week, I've reminded myself of that fact, and today I remind you too:

The first thing you learn is how strong you can be, if you have to.

The whole performance is beautiful and the entire song is great—a story of survival and perseverance and hope. And it's a good reminder both of our strength and as John Darnielle sings,the first thing you learn will be the last thing to go.

It's important to find hope where you can right now and so it's with a little bit of surprise that I've found myself getting a lot of hope from the Chicago Bears improbable come-front-behind victories this season.

I am not normally a fan of American football, but I am a big fan of Chicago and I am a big fan of keeping hope alive even when the chances seem impossible, and so I found myself screaming late Saturday night as the Bears overcame a massive deficit to beat their century-long rivals the Green Bay Packers and advance in the playoffs.

Partway through the night, as the odds got longer and the team fought like hell to stay in it, I realized that this struggle was actually quintessentially Chicago, a city that seems like it is always down, but never out.

So I made a shirt, ALWAYS DOWN / NEVER OUT (set, of course, in Cooper Black), and you can order it for $25 today.

Right now it's good to remember our strength and it's good to remember that even when we are down, even when the odds are long, we are never truly out.

We will always come back.