Like many of you, this past Wednesday I woke with a knot in my stomach and quickly fell into a state of mourning. First came the shock and disbelief, the initial panic, then the race for a thread of hope, and finally the numbness, the cold paralysis. Though I went to the office and worked through the day, once I got home I found I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t read. My heart prayed without words. I felt a deep sense of solidarity with all the frightened ‘others’ in the country and the world who were justly terrorized by these horrifying election returns. In my mind’s eye I saw many families in agony, anticipating their loved ones being torn away from them—their fathers, mothers, children, aunts, uncles, cousins—their own circle of support wrenched and broken by immigration officials.
As she was walking down the street, a friend told me later, she met the eyes of a newly arrived neighbor she had smiled at once before. The woman, Latina, saw my friend’s smile and hurried across a busy street to ask for a hug, though the two had never met. The woman dissolved in tears in my friend’s arms, speaking in a rush of Spanish my friend didn’t understand. Holding her close she simply said “we are with you. I live just up the street. You are not alone.” (more…)