I have built a career on family and love. On glee. I have no glee today.
Before I started writing, I worked with breastfeeding moms.
One incident stands out to me. A mother who was going in for open heart surgery
and wanted to continue breastfeeding her baby. I worked with her and her doctor
and she managed it. This was a mother
who would do anything for her child. She
was in the middle of a health crisis and her first thought was for her child.
I totally understood, because I would do anything for my
kids and family. I would take bullet for
them. I would do anything. Anything. I would do anything to see that
they were safe and had a better life than I had. I want to give them the world.
So I understand parents who are leaving countries where
murder and mayhem reign. They bring
their children and make the hundred/thousand mile trek to our country hoping
for asylum. Hoping to keep their
children safe. Hoping to give their
children a better life. And when they
get here, we take their children. We put
them in cages. We put them in detention
centers. We put them in tent cities. We
take babies and put them in cages.
Babies in cages.
I haven’t slept for the last couple days. Every time I close
my eyes I can see these children. I can hear their cries. And my mother’s heart breaks because a baby
is a baby. A child is a child. My human heart breaks. And yet, I know that nothing I feel can begin
to approach what these parents feel.
What these children feel.
Babies in cages.
I have built a career on family, love and glee.
I do not post political things here. I don’t want to bring
politics to my sites. I want to bring
glee, optimism and hope.
But I can’t find the glee today.
This isn’t about politics. This is about
children. About babies.
This is about our government taking children away from their
parents and turning them into political pawns. Using them as hostages. This
about them putting babies in cages. This
is about them setting up a system with no procedure to reunite these children
with their parents.
We have had black stains on our country’s history. Slaves. Taking Native American children from
their families to “educate” them. Japanese internment. I was aware of our past, but I thought we as
a country had moved beyond those horrific stains. And yet, here we are in 2018
putting babies in cages.
So this post isn’t political. It’s about the kind of country
we are. This is about the soul of our
country. And I say, we are better than
this.
Today, please make calls to your representatives. Not only on a federal level, but on a state
level. Tell them that babies don’t
belong in cages. Tell them to do their
jobs and put a stop to this atrocious policy.
Because babies don’t belong in cages.
Those are words I never thought I’d say.
