Untamed

One morning I woke up and read a story unfolding at our southern border. Children as young as four months old were being stripped away from their asylum-seeking parents’ arms, loaded into vans, and sent without explanation to detention centers. I searched the web for Americans’ reaction to this, certain that all would be as heartbroken and outraged as I was. Some were. Others were hardened. Again and again, I read: “It’s unfortunate, but they shouldn’t have come here if they didn’t want this to happen.”

Privilege is being born on third base. Ignorant privilege is thinking you’re there because you hit a triple. Malicious privilege is complaining that those starving outside the ballpark aren’t waiting patiently enough.

Despair is physical for me. With each new heartbreaking image and heartless response, I felt hope drain from my body. Hope is energy. That morning, I ran out of both. I shut down my computer and climbed into bed at 3:00 P.M. Abby tucked me in, kissed my forehead. Out in the hallway, I heard my daughter ask, “Is Mommy okay?” Abby said, “She will be. She’s feeling it all now. She has to feel it all so she can use it. Just wait. Let Mom sleep. When she gets up, something amazing will happen.”

What if we let ourselves feel it all? What if we decided that it is strength—not weakness—to let other people’s pain pierce us? What if we stopped our lives and the world for things that are worth stopping for? What if we raised our hands and asked, “Can we stay here for a minute? I’m not ready to run out to recess yet.”

I slept for twelve hours and then woke up at 3:00 A.M. on fire. By the time Abby walked out of our bedroom, I’d set up a command center in the dining room. As soon as she saw my face, the piles of papers, and the easel covered with phone numbers and ideas, she understood. She looked at me and said, “Okay, babe. Let’s do this. First, though: coffee.”

As soon as the sun rose, we called the Together Rising team: my sister, Allison, and Liz. One was on vacation, one in the middle of a big project at work, one caring for a sick relative. They stopped their worlds and set up their own command centers in the beach rental, in the office, in the hospital room. We began the way we always begin our responses to large humanitarian crises: We contacted the people on the ground who understood the crisis firsthand and knew which organizations were responding with wisdom, efficiency, and integrity.

Together Rising exists to turn our collective heartbreak into effective action. We do this by serving as a bridge between two sets of warriors: the everyday warriors across the globe who—in their kitchens and cars and offices—refuse to go numb to crises in distant countries and their own communities; and the boots-on-the-ground warriors who devote their lives to world-healing, life-saving work. With a most frequent donation of just $25, Together Rising has ushered more than $20 million over that bridge from heartbreak to action.

At Together Rising, we are not the warriors—we find the warriors. This is crucial work because the most effective teams are often not the large well-known organizations people tend to give to. The fiercest groups we’ve worked with have been smaller, scrappy, women-led teams—those already trusted by the affected communities and nimble enough to respond in real time. Our job is to find them, ask what they need to continue their fight, and listen deeply. Then we introduce them to our heartbroken people. Our people give in order to get these warriors the help they need to carry on with their work.

So we wrote up the story of the administration’s lawless cruelty at the border and the warriors working to end it. We posted it for our community, and other brave, compassionate artists helped share it widely. Within nine hours, we raised $1 million to reunify families. Within a few weeks, we raised $4.6 million. We spent the next year funding and working alongside other organizations to hold the government accountable and return those children to their parents’ arms.

One morning, I posted a video of my sister escorting a six-year-old boy named Ariel back to his family after having been separated from them for ten months. Ariel’s father had brought him to the southern border to lawfully seek asylum. When they arrived, American border patrol took Ariel from his father’s arms. He begged authorities to just deport them both—all he wanted was his son back. The officials refused. They deported him and sent Ariel into government custody alone. This father had to return to his community—plagued by extreme poverty and gang violence—and tell his wife that he had lost their son. He and Ariel’s mother were losing hope that they would ever see their son again when a team funded by Together Rising found them in Honduras. A month later, the Together Rising team stood on the U.S.-Mexico border for nine hours with Ariel’s father, mother, and sister until the authorities agreed to follow the law, allow the family to present for asylum, and move to reclaim Ariel. One week after she crossed the border with his parents, my sister picked Ariel up in Washington, D.C., and drove him to the airport to reunite with his family. Ariel told her that he was afraid because he didn’t remember what his mom and dad looked like. When my sister pulled out her phone and showed him a picture, he beamed with joy, recognition, and relief. Minutes later, Ariel sprinted into his parents’ arms—ending ten months of excruciating separation. The video I posted of the airport reunion was haunting: both beautiful and utterly brutal. Reactions of gratitude and rage flooded in.

That afternoon, I stood in the hallway of my daughter’s school. Another mother approached me and said, “Can we talk?” Her tone made my stomach drop. “Sure,” I said. We stepped outside.

She began, “I’ve been following you for a long while, but I unfollowed you today.”

I said, “Okay. Sounds like you made the right choice for you.” I began to step away.

Nevertheless, she persisted: “With all due respect, I have to ask: Why don’t you care about protecting America as much as you care about protecting illegals? We follow the law; so should they. You know, I read that many of these parents know their kids could be taken from them. They know it, and they come anyway. I’m sorry, but I look at my daughter and I just think: I cannot IMAGINE doing that. I cannot IMAGINE.”

I looked at her and thought: Really? You can’t imagine risking it all—doing whatever it takes—to give your child a chance at safety, hope, and a future? Perhaps you’re not as brave as these parents are.

People use one of two tones when they say the words I cannot imagine.

The first tone is one of humility, awe, softness, gratitude. There is a quietness about it. A There but for the grace of God go I quality.

The second tone—the tone this woman used—is different. It is one of dismissal and judgment. There is a definitiveness about it. A Well, I would never quality. We invoke that tone like a spell, like a clove of garlic around our neck worn to distance ourselves from a particular horror in case it’s contagious. We look for a reason, for someone to blame, so that we can reassure ourselves that this horror could never, will never happen to us. Our judgment is self-protection; it’s a cage we put around ourselves. We hope it will keep danger out, but it only keeps tenderness and empathy from coming in.

What I realized, right there in the hallway, is that when people use the first tone, it is because they already are imagining. They are using their imagination as a bridge between their known experience and the unknown experience. They are imagining themselves into the other human being’s shoes, and that is making them tender because they can somehow—through the magical leap of imagination—see and feel what the other might see and feel. That’s when I realized that imagination is not just the catalyst of art, it’s also the catalyst of compassion. Imagination is the shortest distance between two people, two cultures, two ideologies, two experiences.

There is a little boy in my daughter Amma’s fifth-grade class named Tommy. Tommy never brings in his homework, so the kids never earn the class reward promised to them if they all comply. Tommy falls asleep in class repeatedly, and the teacher has to stop to wake him, which interrupts her lessons and makes her cranky. Amma is baffled by Tommy.

Amma walked in the door after school the other day, threw her book bag down on the floor, and said, “Again! He forgot his homework again! We are never going to earn our pizza party, never! Why can’t he just do what he’s supposed to do?”

Thankfully, I remembered the power of imagination.

ME: This is frustrating.

AMMA: I know!

ME: Babe, why do you imagine Tommy might not do his homework?

AMMA: Because he is irresponsible.

ME: Okay. Do you think that you’re responsible?

AMMA: Yes. I am. I always do my homework and I never fall asleep in class. I would NEVER do that.

ME: Okay. How did you learn to always get your homework done?

AMMA: You taught me to do it right after school. And you remind me every day!

ME: Okay. Do you imagine that Tommy has parents at home who can sit down with him and make sure his homework is done like yours do?

AMMA: He must not.

ME: Also, baby, why do you imagine Tommy is so tired during the day?

AMMA: He must stay up too late.

ME: How late do you imagine you’d stay up at night if you didn’t have us at home making you go to bed?

AMMA: I’d stay up all night!

ME: What do you imagine might happen to you during the day?

AMMA: I’d probably fall asleep a lot.

ME: Yeah. Maybe you and Tommy aren’t all that different after all. You’re responsible, Amma. But you’re also really lucky.

Amma still gets annoyed at Tommy, but she has her imagination to keep her soft and open. She knows how to imagine her way into his shoes. I’m not sure it matters if what she imagines is true. I just know that the softening matters. She is learning how to use her imagination to bridge the gap between her experience and the experience of another, and this skill will serve her, her relationships, and the world. I think a kid who practices imagining why a classmate keeps forgetting his homework might become an adult who can imagine why a father might risk everything to cross a desert with nothing but his child on his back.