Somewhere Out There
I was eight years old waiting outside our hotel with our luggage in Orlando. Mama had surprised me with a trip to Disney World for the first time. She had dropped me off in front so we didn't have to carry our luggage from the parking lot in the back. Somehow while driving to the back of the hotel, she took a wrong turn and ended up on the interstate! She told me this story often, so I remember this was the part where her eyes would get big, as she dramatically reenacted the horror she felt, having made the wrong turn while I was waiting for her. She had trouble navigating in a new city but only for about thirty minutes. When she found her way back to me she hugged me for what felt like twenty minutes and told me she would never leave me alone again! I had no idea she had gotten lost. I was too excited about the trip. I had stayed put, I knew she would get back to me...eventually!
So when the policy was initiated and enforced by the federal government, where people seeking asylum in this country, would be forcibly separated from their children, I instantly tried to imagine how I would've felt if I were them. Empathy is the word for such an instance. And there was no scenario that I could fathom it. No crime had been committed by these people, yet all of them have been forced to suffer. And now, months later videos are surfacing of families finally being reunited, children seeing their parents after enduring only God knows what by strangers in a strange land! In most of the videos I have seen the kids look numb, almost like little zombies who have endured weeks of estrangement from their land and people that are most familiar.
The first few weeks after Mama passed away were a challenge. I was thirty-one, yet it still felt like I was on punishment somehow, like I had done something wrong. I wouldn't stop feeling that way for over a year, so to think about being a child separated from her my heart aches. Separation anxiety is defined as anxiety provoked in a young child by separation or the threat of separation from their mother. This definition from Google doesn't even describe what the experience does to the mother. How do you even begin to explain to your child the situation, especially when you may not even understand it yourself? How could we, the people allow this to happen again?
It only took thirty minutes for my Mama to realize leaving her kid unattended was not a safe option. People from all over the world are still trying to make it to this country, from places that just aren't safe for them anymore. Instead of enforce this wicked and unnecessary policy that is costing tax payers millions, why not use those resources to figure out what countries people are trying to escape and figure out how we can help them?
Thousands of children and parents are still waiting to be reunited. To forcibly take a child away from their parent is to punish a child for a decision they did not make and the affects of that separation will be felt by everyone involved for years to come.
Here's to the families still waiting, may you return to each other safe and sound.
So when the policy was initiated and enforced by the federal government, where people seeking asylum in this country, would be forcibly separated from their children, I instantly tried to imagine how I would've felt if I were them. Empathy is the word for such an instance. And there was no scenario that I could fathom it. No crime had been committed by these people, yet all of them have been forced to suffer. And now, months later videos are surfacing of families finally being reunited, children seeing their parents after enduring only God knows what by strangers in a strange land! In most of the videos I have seen the kids look numb, almost like little zombies who have endured weeks of estrangement from their land and people that are most familiar.
The first few weeks after Mama passed away were a challenge. I was thirty-one, yet it still felt like I was on punishment somehow, like I had done something wrong. I wouldn't stop feeling that way for over a year, so to think about being a child separated from her my heart aches. Separation anxiety is defined as anxiety provoked in a young child by separation or the threat of separation from their mother. This definition from Google doesn't even describe what the experience does to the mother. How do you even begin to explain to your child the situation, especially when you may not even understand it yourself? How could we, the people allow this to happen again?
It only took thirty minutes for my Mama to realize leaving her kid unattended was not a safe option. People from all over the world are still trying to make it to this country, from places that just aren't safe for them anymore. Instead of enforce this wicked and unnecessary policy that is costing tax payers millions, why not use those resources to figure out what countries people are trying to escape and figure out how we can help them?
Thousands of children and parents are still waiting to be reunited. To forcibly take a child away from their parent is to punish a child for a decision they did not make and the affects of that separation will be felt by everyone involved for years to come.
Here's to the families still waiting, may you return to each other safe and sound.
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