Kelli Klymenko

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Artist · Photographer · Writer (he/him) — We Have Friends Everywhere ✊🏼
Sedona, Arizona
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦🇺🇸
Substack → wehavefriendseverywhere.substack.com
kelliklymenko.com • sedonaincense.com • sedonamagic.printify.me Kelli Klymenko is an artist, storyteller, photographer, teacher, yogi, husband, father, science aficionado and free thinker - experiencing life in one of the most inspiring and pict

uresque places on earth with his fabulous wife and children.

“Remember: grow; learn; conserve; preserve; create; question; educate; change; and free your mind.” – KelliKlymenko.com

Spaces like this do not exist by accident.One of the things I have been thinking about a lot lately is how easy it is to...
06/04/2026

Spaces like this do not exist by accident.

One of the things I have been thinking about a lot lately is how easy it is to assume the spaces we love will always be there.

That the festivals, organizations, gatherings, and communities that make people feel welcome somehow just continue on their own.

But they don’t.

People build them.

People protect them.

People choose, again and again, to show up.

Across the country, LGBTQIA+ communities are facing an incredibly difficult moment. Programs and organizations built around inclusion and belonging are navigating funding challenges and a climate where conversations around diversity and representation have become increasingly complicated.

But diversity was never something to fear.

It simply means recognizing that our neighbors, friends, family members, coworkers, and community members all deserve dignity and respect.

Here in Arizona, we have already seen how fragile some of these spaces can be. Tucson Pride recently announced it was ending after nearly 50 years. Phoenix Pride has faced serious financial challenges.

And here in Sedona, when the future of Pride was uncertain years ago, Sedona Arts Center stepped forward to continue what the community had created — because visibility matters.

Because artists matter.

Because people matter.

The Big Gay Art Show, opening tomorrow at Sedona Arts Center, is not just an exhibition.

It is a reminder.

A reminder that art has always given people a way to say:

I am here.

My story matters.

I belong.

Right now, there are a lot of people who need to know they are valued, supported, and seen.

And that is why showing up matters.

Support your neighbors.

Support your friends.

Support your family members.

Support the people in your community who are simply asking for the dignity everyone deserves.

Because spaces like this do not exist by accident.

Neither does kindness.

Neither does community.

Neither does a better world.

We build them.

Together.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

I have not written about Ukraine in a while.Not because I stopped caring. Quite the opposite, in fact.It still weighs on...
06/04/2026

I have not written about Ukraine in a while.

Not because I stopped caring. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It still weighs on me every single day.

I am a first-generation Ukrainian American. This is not a distant foreign policy debate for me. It is family history. It is inherited memory.

And maybe that is why one part of this moment has been so difficult to process: watching people who spent their entire lives claiming to defend freedom suddenly struggle to recognize it when Ukrainians are the ones fighting for theirs.

Because the basic facts have never been complicated.

Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia crossed internationally recognized borders. Russia continues bombing cities, targeting civilians, and kidnapping children.

This was never just about territory.

It was about power.

Ukrainian families are still waking up to air raid sirens. Russia is still launching missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

Patriot systems are not symbols. They save lives.

They are the difference between a missile reaching a city and a missile being intercepted before families are buried beneath rubble.

And somehow helping families survive missiles launched by an invading authoritarian government became controversial.

That should tell us something about where we are.

This is the part I keep coming back to.

I grew up in a country where opposition to Russian authoritarianism was not controversial.

Americans understood propaganda. They understood censorship. They understood political imprisonment. They understood that governments built around one powerful leader and one approved version of reality were dangerous.

We did not agree on everything.

But at least we understood that.

And now we are watching some of the loudest voices who claim to represent patriotism continue to repeat narratives that benefit the Kremlin.

That is not strength.

That is forgetting.

The fight for Ukraine was never only about Ukraine.

It is about whether freedom means something. Whether sovereignty means something. Whether “never again” means something.

Ukraine deserves the right to survive. And Ukraine deserves the right to choose its future.

Slava Ukraini. 🇺🇦

Standing in a landscape like this changes your sense of time.These formations in Grand Staircase-Escalante carry a histo...
06/03/2026

Standing in a landscape like this changes your sense of time.

These formations in Grand Staircase-Escalante carry a history far older than us. The stone beneath our feet began its story before humanity existed, and wind, water, erosion, and time shaped this landscape slowly — grain by grain — over millions of years.

Long before us, this planet was constantly changing.

Long after us, it will continue.

That realization can make us feel incredibly small.

And we are.

Our entire species exists in the final moments of Earth’s story so far. All of human civilization — every empire, every invention, every achievement, every war, every border ever drawn — is just a speck of dust against geological time.

But small does not mean insignificant.

That may be the most extraordinary part.

Because somehow, in this tiny window of existence, atoms that were forged in ancient stars became conscious. The universe produced beings capable of standing in a desert, looking at stone carved by millions of years, and realizing how extraordinary it is that we are here at all.

We are the part of the universe that gets to look back at itself.

And with that awareness comes responsibility.

The Earth will continue. Life will adapt. Given enough time, the scars we leave behind will become another layer written into stone.

The question was never whether the planet can survive without us.

It can.

The question is whether we can learn enough humility to survive with it — and with each other.

And whether a species capable of understanding billions of years of cosmic history can also understand something much simpler:

That this moment matters.

That kindness matters.

That what we protect matters.

Because our time here is brief.

And that is exactly what makes it precious.

Last October, I shared this photo of a cardinal with a thought I had after a conversation with my wife.I wrote that we w...
06/02/2026

Last October, I shared this photo of a cardinal with a thought I had after a conversation with my wife.

I wrote that we were not going to change everyone’s mind online. That most of the people arguing were not really there to listen.

And she was right.

But what I learned afterward surprised me.

That little cardinal and those words reached more than a million people. Not because of outrage. Not because of division. But because thousands of people quietly said:

I feel this too.

That post became a reminder I didn’t even know I needed.

There are so many people out there who still care. People who still believe in kindness, truth, empathy, equality, and each other.

That conversation with Tera, and the response from thousands of strangers, became why I started We Have Friends Everywhere the next month. Because I understood something:

I was never writing to change the minds of people committed to misunderstanding.

I was writing to bring clarity — sometimes even to myself.

I was writing for the people scrolling quietly, wondering if they were the only ones seeing what was happening.

You were not.

And we were never as alone as we were made to feel.

There are more people who believe in empathy, honesty, kindness, equality, curiosity, and basic human decency than we realize.

We really do have friends everywhere. ✊🏼

Everyone says they believe in freedom.But the real test is whether they still believe in freedom when someone else is th...
06/02/2026

Everyone says they believe in freedom.

But the real test is whether they still believe in freedom when someone else is the one exercising it.

Too many politicians and right-wing voices have spent decades wrapping themselves in words like “freedom,” “liberty,” and “patriotism” while showing us something completely different.

This was never about protecting freedom.

It was about deciding who gets to have it.

Women had a constitutional right for half a century. Millions lived with more bodily autonomy than their daughters and granddaughters have today.

And the people who took that freedom away still called it freedom.

Because movements built on control never admit they are taking something away.

They rename it. Rebrand it. Repackage it.

The language changes.

The pattern does not.

Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. It was never supposed to mean using government power to impose your beliefs on everyone else.

Freedom itself was never supposed to mean freedom only for people who look like you, worship like you, love like you, or live like you.

That is not freedom.

That is control.

And we are seeing this same pattern everywhere.

Immigrants who came here seeking a better life are turned into enemies instead of treated as human beings.

Families are ripped apart.

People are placed into systems where suffering becomes a political talking point instead of a human tragedy.

And the people causing that suffering call it protecting America.

Because a right you only defend when you approve of the person using it was never a principle.

It was a preference.

Real freedom means understanding that other people get to make choices you would not make, believe things you do not believe, and live lives you would not choose.

Freedom is not a limited resource.

Someone else having dignity does not take away yours.

Someone else having rights does not diminish your own.

A country that understands freedom expands it.

A country that fears freedom restricts it.

So let me tell you who deserves freedom:

Everyone.

The other day I watched footage from outside Delaney Hall in New Jersey as police directed protesters to a designated “F...
06/01/2026

The other day I watched footage from outside Delaney Hall in New Jersey as police directed protesters to a designated “First Amendment Zone.”

That phrase has been stuck in my head.

A designated First Amendment Zone.

As though constitutional rights exist only where law enforcement decides they may be exercised. That is not freedom. That is not what the First Amendment says.

And the more I learned about Delaney Hall, the more that phrase seemed to capture something much larger.

Because this isn’t just about a protest. It’s about a detention facility operated by a private corporation. It’s about detainees engaging in hunger strikes and labor strikes. It’s about a company that profits from incarcerating human beings.

Private detention creates a fundamental conflict of interest.

Delaney Hall is operated by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison and detention corporations in the United States.

A corporation exists to generate revenue. A detention facility generates revenue when people are detained.

The goal should be fewer people incarcerated. But the business model depends on keeping cells occupied.

Those are directly opposed to one another.

That is the uncomfortable question underneath all of this.

What happens when human confinement becomes an industry?

Because once confinement becomes a business model, care, staffing, food, medical treatment, and basic living conditions stop being purely human obligations.

They become expenses.

Across the country, detention capacity is expanding. New contracts are being awarded. New facilities are being opened. Billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing into detention, enforcement, surveillance, and incarceration infrastructure.

We already incarcerate more people than any other country on Earth.

And instead of moving away from systems of confinement, we continue investing in larger ones.

More detention beds. More contracts. More facilities.

That is not a correctional philosophy.

It is an economic model.

No corporation should profit from filling human cages.

And no society should ever build a business model around human captivity.

——

I wrote more about this on Substack because this conversation matters.

The people fighting for democracy, equality, truth, freedom, bodily autonomy, public education, science, and basic human...
05/31/2026

The people fighting for democracy, equality, truth, freedom, bodily autonomy, public education, science, and basic human dignity are still here.

And we will keep showing up.

Last night I spent a couple of hours with members of Democrats of the Red Rocks and like-minded neighbors.

What stayed with me afterward wasn’t politics.

It was community.

The simple reminder that there are other people out there who care. People paying attention. People looking for ways to help. People who haven’t given up on each other or on the future.

And honestly, I think we need more of that right now.

Because it’s easy to spend so much time watching what is breaking that we stop noticing what is holding.

This week alone, a federal judge blocked the regime’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” before the money could be distributed to insurrectionist loyalists and political allies. Another judge ordered Trump to remove his name from the Kennedy Center after ruling he had no authority to rename one of America’s premier cultural institutions after himself.

Those things didn’t happen by accident.

They happened because people kept pushing back.

Because people spoke up. Because people organized. Because people refused to quietly accept what they knew was wrong.

That’s how change happens.

Not all at once. Not through a single election. Not through a single leader.

Through millions of people doing what they can, where they can, with what they have.

Sometimes we forget that because outrage is loud and community is quiet.

But community is where hope lives.

It’s where people discover they aren’t alone. It’s where courage grows. It’s where movements grow.

Not every battle will be won.

But every time someone speaks up, volunteers, votes, joins a group, supports a cause, or simply shows up for another person, the resistance becomes stronger.

That is what gives me hope.

Not politicians.

People.

And there are more of us than they want us to believe.

We have friends everywhere. ✊🏼

This was never really about “life.”It was always about ownership.Somewhere beneath all the slogans, court rulings, relig...
05/30/2026

This was never really about “life.”
It was always about ownership.

Somewhere beneath all the slogans, court rulings, religious talking points, and political theater, the truth about abortion bans is actually very simple:

They are about who gets authority over women’s bodies, futures, medical decisions, sexuality, and autonomy — and who does not.

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, researchers estimated there were more than 64,000 rape-related pregnancies in abortion-ban states alone.

Take a minute and sit with that number.

Not hypothetical women.
Not abstract political arguments.
Actual human beings.

And yet the same politicians demanding forced birth rarely seem interested in what happens afterward.

They are not treating maternal healthcare, childcare, housing, paid leave, or maternal mortality like national emergencies.

Instead, women are increasingly the ones being investigated, criminalized, monitored, and threatened.

Because consistency was never really the point.

Control was.

Pregnancy does not happen inside a politician’s body.

The people writing these laws will never be forced to carry the consequences themselves.

And if anyone still doubts where this movement is headed, look at what was proposed this week in North Carolina: a Republican-backed bill that would classify abortion as murder, define legal personhood at fertilization, and include language that could potentially be used to justify deadly force in defense of a fertilized egg.

They are not moving toward greater freedom, privacy, or bodily autonomy.

They are moving toward criminalization, surveillance, punishment, and state control.

That is not freedom.

That is hierarchy disguised as morality.

Not “family values.”
Not “protecting life.”
Not moral superiority.

Ownership.

Somewhere over the past several months, I realized how much of my emotional life had become organized around reaction.An...
05/29/2026

Somewhere over the past several months, I realized how much of my emotional life had become organized around reaction.

Another headline.
Another escalation.
Another cruelty.
Another thing demanding urgency.

I think many of us are feeling that now.

The world seems determined to keep us in a constant state of emotional activation — outrage, anxiety, fear, exhaustion, division. Every day arrives carrying another reminder of how unstable, unequal, performative, or openly inhumane parts of our society have become.

But I’ve also been realizing something else lately.

Human beings cannot live on outrage alone.

Not emotionally.
Not spiritually.
Not creatively.

I don’t believe surviving this moment means living entirely inside fear and reaction.

I think we need beauty too.

Art.
Music.
Science.
Humor.
Wonder.

We need clouds over the desert.
Morning light on red rocks.
Conversations with people we love.
Dogs and cats asleep nearby.
Community gatherings.
Photography.
Small moments that remind us what we are actually trying to protect in the first place.

The world is loud right now. Cruel in ways that can feel relentless. But I still believe beauty matters. Community matters. Art matters. Truth matters. Wonder matters.

And I still believe there is value in building spaces that help people remain human through all of this.

Address

Sedona, AZ
86336

Website

http://wehavefriendseverywhere.substack.com/

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