Fierce Love ~ The WOMN Project
13 Minnesota women, one federal occupation,
and everything we swallowed in the driveway
before we went inside and made hotdish for dinner.
Fierce Love is the home of the WOMN Project — a book, a growing story archive, and a grassroots community preserving the stories of Minnesotans who lived through Operation Metro Surge.
Fierce Love of Minnesota
Uffda— ICE came to Minnesota, pissed off the hotdish ladies, and Minnesota Nice got Fierce.
The federal government called it Operation Metro Surge. ICE agents brought cruelty and violence that we didn’t want to believe could exist inside a human soul. We are here to tell you that whatever you think you saw on the news and in your social feeds, it was worse. Far, far worse.
It changed us.
At first, we showed up with whistles and protest signs, went through legal observer trainings, and joined mutual aid efforts. But the surge kept getting worse, and the worse it got, the more love poured out of us.
It was extraordinary, because there were 3000 of them and likely more than 300,000 of us.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction
At first we thought we were just being the helpers that Mr. Rogers told us to look for in times of tragedy, but now we realize. . .
We are the equal and opposite reaction to the horrors put in front of us.
We are WOMN
We are 13 Minnesota women who lived through Operation Metro Surge as teachers, nurses, mothers, grandmothers, social workers, artists, business owners, medics, legal observers, mutual-aid organizers, and ordinary neighbors who saw something that needed doing and did it. Some of us have spent years organizing and protesting. Others of us had never been to a protest in their lives, but now we go at least once a week.
Most of us are old white ladies (OWLs) who have suddenly found power in our privilege. At a time in our lives when women usually feel an eerie sense of going invisible, the surge gave us a megaphone with a message.
Some of us are strong, independent young women who are passionate about our careers. And the surge infiltrated our workplaces and forced us to become fierce advocates for our students, patients, clients, customers, and co-workers.
We don’t want attention or accolades for our efforts. We just want to help because we can’t not.
But we do want our stories told, because the world needs to know and feel and experience and grow this kind of fierce love as we have.
Our stories are the ones that go beyond the journalist reports. Our stories are the emotional interior ones that never made the news or social media feeds.
These stories live inside the tears we shed behind bathroom doors, the crumbs we left underneath car floor mats while delivering mutual aid, and the weird self-talks we gave ourselves before pulling into the driveway and going inside to make dinner for our families after dealing with ICE all day in our workplaces, our children’s schools, and our front sidewalks.
The WOMN Project
The WOMN Project is a collective literary memoir featuring stories from women who lived through and showed up for Operation Metro Surge, finding ourselves forever changed in ways we never knew possible.
But these stories are only the beginning.
We’re also building an archive where more can bring their stories, because there are thousands more. Eventually, we want to gather a team of writers, storytellers, creators, and artists to document the deep effects of this time in history, because there are far too many stories to hold.
The WOMN Project is a living, breathing, growing record of what we did here, what it cost us, and who we became because of it.
What Happens Here
Every Tuesday, we publish a new story of Fierce Love for The WOMN Project.
Sometimes it is one woman’s story.
Sometimes it is a piece about Minnesota culture — ope, uffda, hotdish, old white ladies, loons, winter, grief, neighborism, and all the other strange ingredients that help explain why Minnesota responded the way we did.
Sometimes it is something happening right now that connects directly to the women and stories in this archive, because Operation Metro Surge may have officially ended, but its impact most certainly has not.
I’m TeriLeigh
I’m one of the WOMN of Minnesota, and I’m collecting and writing these stories.
After Renée Good died, like many women in Minnesota, I lost myself. For weeks, everything I tried to do felt frivolous and pointless in light of the horrors happening on the streets of my home state.
When Alex Pretti died, I picked up my pen.
Writing helped, but writing is a lonely venture, and healing happens best inside of community. So I put out a quiet little call inviting sensitive-soul Minnesota women to gather. We sat in a circle in my living room and poured our stories onto the ottoman between us.
And I kept thinking: I need to write these stories.
So that’s what I’m doing.
For whatever reason, these women felt safe telling me their truths, and I don’t take that lightly. Being the face and the voice of these stories is the most important work I have ever done.
This Is Grassroots on Purpose
I am an independent, self-employed author working full-time to gather, research, and write these stories. There is no publishing house, newsroom, or institution funding this work.
I’ve purposely structured WOMN the way Minnesotans built our response to ICE: from the ground up, with heart, trust, and ordinary people contributing what we can.
The women whose stories are in the book are my editors. Others are helping build the website, design graphics, format the book, advise me on technology, help with publicity, and figure out all the things one person cannot possibly know how to do alone.
Paid subscriptions help make that possible.
A paid subscription keeps me at the desk gathering, researching, writing, fact-checking, and preserving these stories. It helps carry WOMN toward publication without requiring me to hand ownership and control of the project to someone who didn’t live through this.
Also, all posts are paywalled after two months. Paid subscribers have unlimited access to all posts.
WOMN is a commercial publishing project, and this work is how I earn my living. The WOMN Project also believes that stories gathered from community should continue to nourish community. Each year, we return some of the project's resources to Minnesota through mutual aid—sometimes through established organizations and sometimes directly to individuals and families who need help. At the end of each year, we'll tell you what we gave.
If a paid subscription isn’t possible, please stay anyway. Read. Comment. Share the stories. Restack them. Send them to somebody who needs to hear them.
There are a lot of ways to bring something to a potluck. Everyone appreciates the person who puts all the chairs away and wipes down the tables afterwards.
WOMN Is Coming
Pre-sales for WOMN open in fall 2026.
Until then, the stories continue here every Tuesday.
Come sit with us.
It’s nice to know you.
I love you fiercely,
Thank you for giving a shit,
TeriLeigh 💜
I also run two cohort programs for sensitive souls here on Substack.
And I write two more publications just for funzies…
