Holly Jacobs
Thanks to romance writer and family friend Holly Jacobs for this powerful guest blog post. I try to stay away from non-media politics here, but the recent events on the US-Mexican border are not about politics, they are about basic human dignity.
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.
Thanks for sharing, Ralph. I think it’s an important message.