On the heels of last week’s vote to triple ICE’s budget (so that it can seize and lock up more people in more cages), cut Medicaid and SNAP (leaving vulnerable people more vulnerable), and cut taxes on billionaires, I found myself ruminating and wanting to post snarky things on the internet. Both of these activities are sure to be a super productive and positively impactful use of my time and energy (side-eying myself here).

Rumination, snarkiness, and a desire to use my words as a weapon are all clear signs that I am flirting with my own pain. After a few days of mental churn and a fair amount of time spent writing this email–while also being aware that something still felt charged in me in a way that would perhaps ensure my well-intentioned missive would completely miss the mark–I made space to invite my hurt into this moment.

You see, when I first started writing this, I was focused on the ways in which I have experienced being on the margins. Allowing the pain, isolation and shame of those moments to fuel animosity and separateness. Hoping somehow that by “outing” myself as someone who you might not imagine has lived on the very edges of needing government support (and who has benefitted from it at times) you might bridge your own perceptions of who this moment is hurting.

And I do think that could be a valuable exercise. To connect with the story of a human being you recognize who may have been on the edges or who is still living on these edges (or perhaps even fully submerged in a cycle of poverty or being unable to meet the cost demands of this society). To remember the face(s) of other humans who might be negatively impacted by all of this. Perhaps even more powerfully, to look them in the eyes.

But I also know that writing (or acting) from my hurt can mean that I perpetuate the very things I claim to be against. Sitting on a cushion on the floor this morning, the message came, “let the ways in which you have been an outcast fuel your empathy but not your shame (or a willingness to harm other people in the name of ‘good’).“

What was it inside of me that needed witnessing? Longing and shame. The shame wasn’t a surprise. It had been percolating alongside my angst for days. The longing, well that was less expected. But I get it now.

I dropped into my body. Where do I feel the shame? Ah, in the upper right quadrant of my chest, right below the clavicle. Hello, shame. I see you. Let me be with you here. What are you trying to protect me from?

I got an image of my 15 year old self, full of rage and deeply hurt. People saying one thing and doing another. Saying how much she was loved while expunging her mother from a community that had been woven into the very fabric of her life from before her birth.

Using the processes I now have at my fingertips, I tended to the needs of that younger version of me. I released her of the burdens she had been carrying. “You are not an orphan, you belong to ME (to heaven, to earth, to your highest self, to the divine realms).“ I tended to her protector, releasing the part of me who carried shame as sword and shield, inviting that space to be filled with light, love, strength, and belonging.

And now I am able to offer this message from a different place. From a place of greater wholeness. Of hope. Of deep rooted belonging. Instead of anger, consternation, condemnation and judgment.

When we see other humans afraid, suffering, being dehumanized, even dying, it is understandable that our protective mechanisms kick in. Our capacity for self-protection is powerful. And given the sheer magnitude and constancy of our exposure even the healthiest nervous system will freeze, collapse or numb out.

We start looking for “rational” arguments to protect us: “That can’t happen to me. That person isn’t ‘like’ me. They live in another country, another community, their skin is a different color, they are part of another culture, another religion. They don’t live by the same values and beliefs as me. They don’t follow the ‘rules’. They are ‘other’.”

It doesn’t help that many of us were raised in churches that taught us that morality and a “good life” were somehow inextricably linked. That if we were “good”, we could avoid suffering. And that if someone is suffering, they must not be “good”. In other words, they must “deserve” what is happening to them. We see it on the news, in political propaganda, and coming from the pulpit. We are regularly encouraged to use our pain, fear, isolation, shame, self-righteousness, and anger to reinforce the illusion that we are separate.

But for me, all of this hits a little close to home in ways I can’t ignore. Because I have lived on the margins in more than one way in my life. I have been the “other”:

I have been accused (and beaten) based on someone else’s interpretation of my “bad” intentions (as a child). I have been told that I was “so worthless” that I should sleep outside with the animals.

I have been locked in severe mental illness as the result of unresolved complex PTSD from that abuse and addiction (not mine).

Unable to work a job that would meet the cost of living and reliant on the income from a long term disability policy I paid premiums on for twelve years before I needed it–a privilege many cannot afford. The income from that policy was approximately one-third of the salary I was earning before I became ill. Not nearly enough to cover my expenses, but a safety net nonetheless.

There was a time when just my medication and therapy–the only support that was keeping me here long enough to heal and sort of pretend to be a “productive member of society”–cost $1000/month out of pocket.

I have been unable to afford health insurance for my children (compounding my shame).

I have explored personal bankruptcy only to realize that the debt that couldn’t be relieved would have still been too much. I have liquidated all of my retirement assets (penalties and all) to survive the here and now.

I have counted pennies to buy enough gas to get to the next stop. I have left groceries at the checkout line when the money ran out. I have skipped meals to make sure my children had enough to eat.

I have been unable to purchase a car after totaling one in an accident that wasn’t my fault; driving a borrowed pickup truck that only had three seatbelts for the four bodies riding in it.

I have watched my kids’ self-employed, uninsured father rack up hundreds of thousands of medical bills as he almost died from a freak health crisis. Unable to earn an income (or co-parent our children) for six months.

When the “stable” job I took while the kids’ dad was sick vanished within a few months, a dear friend paid my utility bill. Another one met me at the gas station and filled up my tank. Others sent me gift cards for groceries.

Unable to afford rent, I moved back into my ex-husband’s house. I am grateful that we chose to pool our resources in order to provide the most stability possible to our kids. I am grateful that, by the time this decision was made, I was able to re-occupy the home without losing traction on my mental health. And also, I haven’t had a home that was truly mine, rental or otherwise, for seven years.

I have worked multiple jobs at the same time, all well below my experience level and prior earning capacity, because I couldn’t be sure that my health would hold in other professional contexts.

The balance of my student loans was forgiven after being locked in at 8.25% APY for twenty-six years and accruing capitalized interest during seasons when I couldn’t afford to pay the monthly payments.

Because my credit score was eviscerated during this season of my life, the credit I am able to access is insanely expensive. The kind of rates that make it almost impossible to get out from under the debt load.

I am still paying down tax bills that are almost a decade old.

There were years that I chose not to receive medical, eye and dental care because I didn’t want to owe anyone any more. Only now, in 2025, am I “current” (aka not carrying balances from prior years) on the between $8-12k per year in medical bills I pay for me and the kids (even in the years we have had good health insurance).

I have been bootstrapping this business since Day 1.

Perhaps because of the ways I have seen and personally experienced power being misused (and sold as “good”) throughout the course of my life, I am particularly sensitive. Perhaps because I lost everything that I worked so hard to accumulate (while playing by the rules) to an illness first rooted in someone else’s actions and inaction when I was a child, I am particularly enraged. Perhaps because I know intimately what it looks like for a health crisis to bring us to the brink, I am particularly aware of how close each of us lives to the edge and that it wouldn’t take much for any one of us to cross over and find ourselves living in a world we do not recognize. Perhaps because I know that it actually costs more to be broke. Perhaps because I know how long it has taken me to heal and embody someone other than the most traumatized version of myself, I look around and wonder, wtf are we doing?!?

And I am privileged. White. Educated. Born in America. Professionally trained. And by some measure of grace had access to healing resources and enough safe space(s) that allowed me to recover from the mental illness that almost took my life. Many are not so lucky. Many are still being (re)traumatized every single day (and so they do not have the space or the resources to heal what they carry).

We already know that there is a direct correlation between unresolved trauma and poor physical and mental health outcomes (everything from heart disease to addiction). We already know that trauma is carried through the generations through gene expression. We already know that traumatized people are more likely to be victims (again and again).

The reverberations of the conscious choice(s) we as a country are making to traumatize, harm and remove safety nets out from under other humans without anything to replace them with will have ripple affects for generations to come.

We can stop. We can heal. We can replace broken and harmful systems and structures. But we have to have the willingness. The fortitude. The audacity to look at the whole truth of who we are and the ways in which our systems assume that some humans will be sacrificed for the “benefit” of other humans (a zero-sum game).

We have to stop bypassing, blaming other people for their own suffering without equipping them with what it actually takes to heal or change their circumstances, and slapping band-aids on hemorrhaging wounds and calling them fixed.

We have to develop the capacity to be soft and hold our own grief, rage, and suffering before we are fully able to open our eyes to the grief, rage and suffering of other people. We have to own the truth of how we got here before we can write a new story. Only by honoring the pain do we move through it in ways that don’t just perpetuate harm on someone else.  

In other words, we have to learn to hold our own humanity before we can truly honor the humanity of others. As long as we believe that we are separate and not at risk, we are vulnerable. As long as we are afraid of each other, we are subject to manipulation.

This weekend I finished reading What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World by Prentis Hemphill. If you are searching for a new way, if the way things are is breaking your heart, I highly suggest this read.

And then I invite you to decide to choose the path of healing. Whatever that means for you, in your own life, in your family, in your community. 

None of us has all of the answers, all of the resources, all of the strength to right what is wrong. But we can begin. We can begin with ourselves. We can begin with us.

Before I knew anything, I knew that I was not going to perpetuate the abuse I experienced as a child on my own children. And I knew I didn’t want to live in fear. Those were the two seeds I planted. Those were the decisions I made. Those were the asks I made of the universe. 

You don’t have to know “how” yet. You don’t have to see the full roadmap. You don’t have to do it “perfectly” all of the time. You just have to decide that you are going to  claim something else. Something more life giving. A path that recognizes our humanity, inherent worthiness and interdependence.

Love,
Booth