Like most writers, I’m constantly trying to strike the perfect balance between time for my writing and time for the rest of my life. And, like many activists, I struggle to balance responding to the demands of a situation, while setting boundaries so I can stay focused and not burn out too quickly. This past week has certainly been a test in maintaining all these balances. Nearly every day I’ve had 2 or 3 long meetings, some of them highly frustrating in the amount of disappointing new information revealed, or in their lack of productive outcomes.

This doesn’t even include time dealing with the text threads and email chains to plan and debrief these meetings, and sorting through the hundreds of issue-related texts and emails that have come into my inbox–many of which need to be responded to or forwarded to the right people.

Nor does it include the demonstration a few of us planned last Saturday as part of a regional day of action to boycott Citizens Bank, one of the few banks that still provides loans to CoreCivic and GeoGroup, two major players that run most of the ICE detention centers. And it doesn’t include the insomniac hours I spent worrying about the zero-degree wind chill forecast for that day and pondering whether or not we should postpone. (We decided to go for it, but set a shorter time frame. Happy that we got a good turnout and the sun kept the cold tolerable.)

It also doesn’t include dealing with the numbing grief as one shocking news story after another unfolds in Minneapolis and elsewhere. A second murder of a protester, the abduction of a preschooler used as bait to detain his parents (my grandson has the same bunny hat), a gunpoint wrongful arrest of a US citizen who was taken in his underwear in the frigid cold, and 5-year old twins being denied release after 8 months in detention in Texas because the judge said they have no access to collateral.

These are just a few of the horrific stories that can easily send me reeling into a state of numbness.

While people now seem to be galvanized by DHS’s murders of Tim Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, it’s important to know that they are only 2 of the 8 people who died in dealings with ICE just in the past month. Perhaps it’s easier to see ourselves in Pretti and Good, since they were protesters, but let’s not forget the other six people who died in ICE detention centers this January, often under questionable circumstances: Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Víctor Manuel Díaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz, and Heber Sánchez Domínguez. Campos’s case is particularly disturbing, as ICE claimed he committed suicide, but the medical examiner determined that his death was clearly a homicide.

So, yes, friends, it has been hard to find balance. And hard to find the psychic space to write, though in some ways being inundated with all these meetings and emails and events and projects does make me feel like I’m doing something to fight the tsunami, even if at times, I worry that I’m just wading right into it with my surfboard. Still, the cold water pouring over me does help wash away the numbness. And somehow, I’m still managing to stay afloat. And if you’re moved to take a small but important action right now, you can ask your Senator to vote against continued funding for ICE, using this call script from Indivisible.

Image by Elias from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/wave-ocean-sea-storm-tsunami-1913559/

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