Fuck ICE.
Abolish ICE.
I want to name that clearly. This is where I stand.
What we are living through right now is not abstract policy. It is violence. It is state-sanctioned cruelty that is touching children, young people, elders, families, entire communities. And many of us are feeling a kind of grief that is hard to describe.
As a therapist, people ask me what to do. There is no worksheet for fascism and no amount of CBT or coping skills can undo any of the shit that is happening right now.
I can help people regulate their nervous systems. I can help them survive the day. But some days it feels like shoveling snow while it’s still blizzarding. I was not trained to help people cope with ongoing political harm.
As a social worker, I was at least taught to look systemically. To understand that what’s happening now didn’t come out of nowhere. The communities being targeted have always been targeted. But the violence is more overt, normalized, and harder to look away from. People are being kidnapped, detained and killed across shades, statuses, and stories. And honestly a lot of the organizing I was taught for systemic issues depended on the oppressor at least pretending to stay within the law.
This Is Grief
When I look around, I see people grieving in very human, very predictable ways. Some people avoid.They stop watching the news. They don’t want to talk about it and/or they isolate because caring hurts too much.
Others are hyper-focused. They read and share everything, and talk about it constantly. They look around and think, How can everyone act so normal?
Many people swing between the two.
That oscillation, numbness to overwhelm, distraction to rage, is right in line with grief.
My own grief changes day to day. Some days I feel consumed by how unjust everything is. I feel resentful toward people who seem untouched, unbothered, comfortably distant. Other days I distract myself on purpose, because I cannot survive being fully present to all of it.
And yes, sometimes guilt sneaks in when I’m laughing.
That quiet, cruel voice that says: People are suffering. How dare you feel joy?
I know that voice isn’t fair and I know joy is not betrayal, but I’m being honest about how grief works. Some days I’m convinced we’ll have to leave the country. Other days I’m defiant “They’re not running me out of my own home!”
Why This Grief Is So Exhausting
This isn’t grief after a single event. It’s cumulative and ongoing.
Every day brings another story. Someone got questioned, picked up…most recently children used as leverage against their own parents. People you serve look at you like you’re supposed to know what to do, and you’re barely holding it together yourself. And somehow, you’re still expected to show up, lead, and always be regulated. We preach resilience so we should be resilient, right? Ugh! It’s exhausting because the harm is still happening.
What I Say to People And What I’m Saying to Myself
I say the same thing I say to people grieving a loved one:
There is no right way to grieve. And your grief will not look the same every day, or even every hour. Some days you’re coping and some days you’re ambushed.
Let go of self-judgment.
Let your grief be what it needs to be in that moment.
Lean on your community.
Say yes when people offer help.
Take support without apologizing for it.
Make yourself do the basics, even when you don’t want to:
- Sleep
- Hydrate
- Eat something
- Move your body
- Leave the house when isolation is pulling you under (if it feels safe)
Show up to community spaces when it’s safe to do so. Even quietly. Even imperfectly. At this point if someone shows up in pajamas, I wouldn’t even blink!
I would be no social worker if I didn’t also point out that radical self-care and radical joy cannot exist in isolation from resistance.
Rest and joy matter, but they are not meant to replace action, they are meant to fuel it.
Action doesn’t have to be grand or heroic:
- Call your (often useless) representatives anyway
- Donate or volunteer with groups doing direct work on the ground
- Share resources
- Spend your money intentionally
- Withhold it from systems that fund harm
- Say the truth out loud, even when it makes people uncomfortable
It may never feel like “enough”, but it is something. And right now, something is what we have.
You are not broken or weak for grieving this. This is just what it looks like to be human in the middle of an unjust world.
And if all you can do today is survive, rest, and stay connected, that counts! It has to.