I fell on the ice; my bicycle slid out from underneath me and I landed on my butt.

I am fine. Of course I am fine.

I watched a video of a woman being shot by a federal officer from three different angles: from every angle it looked like an execution. The photos of her and her partner look like me; they look like my friends.

I am fine. I have no right not to be fine.

The job which pays my rent is in retail. I work in a big store which sells groceries and other necessities. Most of my coworkers were not born in the United States. Many of them are just out of high school.

I am fine. I have to be fine.

The Supreme Court says that racial profiling — for the purposes of indefinite detention in inhumane conditions — is legal. I read about federal officers storming into a Target and dragging out U.S. citizens, who they detained for hours and then dumped in another parking lot.

I am fine. There is no point in not being fine.

I think about a tamale steamed in banana leaves, left in the breakroom fridge for me to eat later; I think about brie and cheddar cheeses I aged in my basement and brought in to work to share. I think about the infinite patience of repeating irregular verb conjugations dozens of times: eu fui, ele foi, eles foram. I think about explaining how health insurance and retirement accounts work in broken Portuguese.

I am fine. I will be fine.

There are hundreds of Minnesota businesses closed today in solidarity with immigrants being persecuted by ICE. I have watched videos in Portuguese and French from both official news sources and individual content creators in other countries talking about the protests after Renee Good was murdered, many of which have happened in sub-zero temperatures and in spite of increasing violence on the part of federal officials.

I am not fine; I am afraid and angry and grieving. It is hard for me to think about anything except: what I am going to do. What am I going to do.

A website which has made a big list of ways we can help Minnesotans defend their neighbors from outside the state is Stand With Minnesota.

Author Naomi Kritzer, who is very plugged into Minneapolis politics and has been for a long time, has written some great guides for how to help if you are in the Twin Cities area and if you are somewhere else in the country. I strongly recommend reading these; she has a wide variety of suggestions which you can adapt to your specific circumstances and resources.

I feel very strongly that this is the time to start connecting with resources and immigrant rights organizations in your own city, if you haven’t already. Indivisible has hosted community defense trainings online, and hopefully they will have another one soon, but your local groups may also be doing constitutional observer trainings which you can attend.

In these wretchedly stressful times, I have embarked on a reread of Robin McKinley’s entire backlist, starting with Beauty, proceeding through Rose Daughter, next hitting Chalice and Deerskin and The Outlaws of Sherwood, and currently working on The Hero and the Crown. I think, if you are person for whom rereading is a comfort, it may be time to break out the heavy hitters: the books which remind you of beauty and strength and resistance.

McKinley’s books are pretty much all about people who consider themselves very normal being shoved into circumstances which require dogged persistence, bravery, and a sense of humor. Her protagonists are revealed throughout the course of each book to be incredible, of course, with magic powers and usually spectacular horsemanship and sometimes the ability to talk to bees, but every one is, without fail, stubbornly, practically compassionate.

The turning point of Deerskin (which gave me great solace in this moment when violent men are being allowed and allowing themselves to act out their worst fantasies on the less powerful, but which, fair warning, deals extensively with violent sexual assault; it is a retelling of Perrault’s “Donkeyskin”), at least to me, is not when the escaped princess is physically healed by a moon goddess, but when she chooses to spend weeks hand-feeding a litter of six day-old orphaned puppies, who she knows will probably die but who she refuses to let die.

(As someone who has had a hand in raising three-day-old kittens to adulthood: that shit will absolutely change you, and also give you nightmares for the rest of forever.)

What will I do pounds in the back of my head as I read. What will I do.

(Our four kittens all made it.)

The winners of my giveaway of three paperbacks of Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox are A.L., Alison Y., and Simon C. Look for an email in the next few days so I can get your books to you!

Yours in hope,

Sharon

P.S. What are you reading? What is keeping you steady as you work?