Somehow, the past month has self-destructed and disappeared! … That’s not quite accurate; I spent over a week preparing for the Healing and the Ever-healed Workshop; then spent a week co- leading it. But the three weeks before that were filled with chaos, contraction, and shortage of sleep, too much on which to reflect, no time to write, nor much time to meditate .
It started on the Saturday we all witnessed live, the killing of Alex Pretti. We watched it again and again, murder live on tv. I was shaken and am sure many of you were too. M, Hal’s very kind, skillful 20-year-old caregiver of 4 months came in 2 hours later, literally shaking. He’s a young man from West Africa and has been here in the US for 2 ½ years. Orphaned in Africa and on his own since 9, finding his own food and shelter in a cruelly politicized country, he faced an enormously challenging path to get here, he crossed the ocean, made his way north and crossed the border in Mexico, He turned himself in and received the proper paperwork to stay for now, and to work. He feels he would be killed if sent back.
He went through two years at the local high school and graduated, an amazing feat made greater in that he has little formal schooling and English isn’t his native language. But he’s so bright and eager to learn. Now he was set to start community college; he has big dreams, wants to get an education and to be of service in the world. Such courage. So, he came to work that day, holding a letter from ICE that he was to report for an interview; no reason was given.
After endless hours of consulting with experts and doing research, we hired an immigration lawyer and my son Davy, M, and lawyer went to the ICE facility in Detroit. Despite everything we could do and for no clear reason they detained M and sent him to a detainment prison camp four hours north of Detroit.
I’ve rarely been so shaken, so angry. I know rationally that anger is just more negative energy in the world, but I couldn’t turn it off. What do we do with such rage? Aaron reminds me to take care of my anger. That doesn’t mean feeding it, enhancing it, but also not denying it. “Breathing in, I am aware of anger; breathing out, I invite space for the anger.”
Yet, I was still extremely agitated. I had to stop every few minutes, note the experience of agitation, stop and breathe. Stop and breathe…. I did a lot of compassion meditation too. And all of it in a compacted few days when we had to put together something to hope to protect M as we accompanied him to ICE. And to make sense of the murder we’d just witnessed on tv
Hal and I had spoken of literally adopting M and thought we would do that but because he’s over 18, that would not keep him from being deported. In the end., we just had to let go and see him sent it to the detention center. More on the future in another journal…
Working those days too on assembling the parts of the workshop; healing and the ever-healed. What is the Ever-healed right there with all this pain, anger, frustration, and feelings of helplessness? What supports opening to the ever-healed, and stabilizing it?
To be continued…