I am a Therapist and I am a Mother. What Is Happening in Minnesota Is a Personal and Political Crisis.

by Blake Macurdy, MSEd, LPC

It is my job to sit with people who are struggling. Anxiety, exhaustion, grief that rattles their bones. I listen and I teach them what tools can help them to survive *this world*.

However, as of late, it feels like the world itself is not just unsustainable. It is actively unsafe and a threat to our well-being.

Nowhere is that more clear to me – a licensed professional trained to listen, to observe, to hold complexity and nuance – than in what is unfolding before our eyes in Minnesota right now.

Minnesota Is a Microcosm of a Broken System

Over the past few weeks, we have watched through our screens of variable sizes, as Minnesota has become the epicenter of a crisis that exposes and directs a spotlight on the gap between policy rhetoric and real human cost. A spotlight that we cannot and should not look away from.

Two Minnesota residents have been murdered in the streets during federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. Renee Good was a 36-year-old mother on her way home from dropping her 6-year-old off at school when she encountered ICE. Good was murdered on January 8th. Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old nurse who worked in the ICU for the VA who was documenting and attempting to de-escalate a confrontation. Pretti was murdered on January 24th. There is clear video evidence to support that the events leading to these fatal shootings did not necessitate the excessive use of force that led to their deaths.

These are not isolated tragedies of gun violence that can be swept under the rug or explained away (incorrectly) by mental health issues or poor gun control regulations. They are direct outcomes of federal policy choices. These murders are the result of decisions made by elected officials about how we fund and empower agencies like ICE and Customs and Border Protection, how lethal force is tolerated, and how power is wielded in communities that never asked for occupation by militarized agents.

We’re all wondering, ‘How Are We Supposed to Teach Our Children Right From Wrong Like This?’

I am raising children while the supposed adults in charge of our country model moral incoherence and sociopathy on a daily basis.

I want to be honest about how impossible that feels to have to co-exist with trying to raise a caring, empathetic, intelligent and loving person.

We tell our kids:

• Don’t hit.
• Tell the truth.
• Use your power responsibly.
• If someone gets hurt, you take accountability.
• If you make a mistake, you repair it.

And then they watch a world unfold before them where none of that is true.

• They watch people in power harm others and call it policy.
• They watch lies be rewarded if they are loud enough.
• They watch accountability evaporate when authority enters the room.
• They watch cruelty get reframed as ‘following the law.’
• They watch empathy mocked as weakness.

And then we look at them and say, ‘Be a good person.’

Good according to what fucking rules?

We’re all wondering, ‘How do we keep our children safe?’

Us mothers are out here oscillating between:

• Pack lunches
• Make breakfast
• Witness a public execution on Instagram
• Get the kids dressed
• Make it to school drop off in time
• Listen to DHS attempt to gaslight American citizens
• Get in a few hours of productive work time while the kids are in school
• Watch the president sundown on live tv
• Make dinner
• Get homework done
• Bath time
• Bed time
• Check social media to see that a 5-year-old legal immigrant was detained by ICE today while you were simultaneously rushing to make it in time for pick up
• Try to stop yourself from doom scrolling long enough to get some sleep before you rinse and repeat tomorrow

Safety is not just about seat belts, vaccinations, or emotional regulation.

Safety is about:

• Whether our children’s bodies are valued by the state
• Whether our children’s communities can breathe without fear of federal force or occupation
• Whether our children’s humanity is protected by law rather than threatened by policy

When policy decisions result in death, that is a form of trauma.

When laws protect masked ‘agents’ who kill and disregard community outrage and cries for reform – that is a form of trauma.

When politicians argue about funding after people die – that teaches children that human life is secondary to ideology and capitalism.

Our children are watching this.

Telling them to ‘stay calm’ and ‘worry about yourself’ while federal agents shoot citizens in suburban streets, that is not grounding or self-care. That is gaslighting.

Anger Is Not a Flaw. It is Information.

One of the tenets of therapy is to direct people to identify and then listen to their emotions. Especially anger. Anger identifies when something is WRONG.

We do not need to be soothing about this moment.

We need to be honest.

We need to mobilize.

We need to ask:

• Why do we continue to fund agencies that operate without sufficient accountability?
• Why do politicians tolerate lethal force as an acceptable outcome?
• How does the death of U.S. citizens – mothers, nurses – become a token in a spending bill debate?

These are political questions with moral weight.

As a therapist, as a mother, as someone who has to help people survive this world, has to help raise small humans to be good people in this world, I refuse to wash this away with regulation, resilience, or quiet dignity.

This is a political crisis AND a human one. We must treat it as both. If you aren’t, what the fuck are you doing?