There are so many poems to post. So many that bite at the thrashing evil from separate ends… Warsan Shire, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, this…

Mostly what think about now is the ongoing neurological damage the children in this country’s concentration camps are experiencing. It’s something I’ve studied enough to know fairly well what is physically, psychologically, and emotionally occurring, and what it means long and short term, while their young brains are simply trying to do the work to make sense of the world, and to grow.

Here’s a reading list if anyone wants to think about what this means for the children held in chain-link cages, and their lives, now and later.

• Becoming Attached – Robert Karen
• The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity – Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
• Waking the Tiger – Peter A. Levine
• The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk MD
• The Heart of Trauma – Bonnie Badenoch
• Trauma and Memory – Peter A. Levine

Please use resistbot (twitter is cheaper, but you can also text RESIST to 50409) Please protest, please do whatever your life and self can manage. Maybe if you can, donate money. RAICES and ACLU are just two places to donate.

It can be hard for introverts or folks with anxiety to make calls, I know from my own experience. Many people feel like they are barely taking care of themselves and their families, let alone with energy enough to protest the constant horrors. Maybe once a week or once a month folks can manage to use resistbot or email the companies profiting from holding kids and families as hostages. Put it on your calendar and set aside 5 minutes. Something. Anything. Go to protests. Or support protesters.

And, because prioritizing our horrors is also dangerous, don’t forget that *Flint is still without clean water.* A problem Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk could fix right now.

I feel too afraid to start crying. I have so many tears compressed that I don’t made space for; I just keep tamping it all down. My throat and heart are going to splinter, and cleave.

Though in all, it feels complicated to personally be in what’s overall a happy place these last months and now. It’s hard to stay balanced, self caring, and present when so much is so awful; those are always such difficult emotions to have sustaining. Give yourselves permission to care for yourselves, to find joyful things each day, take only bite sized doses of news and media, and let yourself check out when you need to.