The snow is falling, and the world has gone cold. A little boy sits in my living room watching Sesame Street and sucking his fingers while other little boys who look just like him sit inside detention centers all across this country. I sit by my phone, waiting for it to ring. I have been waiting since Tuesday, since she was born. Another baby in search of safety, another baby who will need so much more than her mother or this country is willing to provide. I wonder where she is and who is caring for her. I wonder if she is being fed or held. The little girl’s big brother toddles over to me and hands me a plastic microphone. I sing into it and hand it back. Smiling, he echoes my notes, then wanders away. I wonder for a moment if anyone is singing to that little girl or any of the other disregarded children stuck inside jail cells or piles of I’ll-get-to-it-later paperwork, but I already know the answer.

I’ve been thinking about The Handmaid’s Tale a lot lately. It took me years to watch the television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s book, and to this day, I still haven’t been able to open her novel. Words on a page hold power that the screen can't capture, so I will likely leave those tucked away safely within their binding. Growing up as a girl in America formed scars that split open when confronted with the themes that run central to Atwood’s story, so for years, I just avoided it altogether. The timing of my entry into the author’s fictitious post-American Gilead could not have been better or worse as I made it to the final season while simultaneously watching our country shift into reverse. America had begun, once again, to prove itself the unwavering patriarchy we always knew it to be, but this time, things felt even heavier. This time, people weren’t hiding where they hoped this rerun would lead. They laid out their plans in 900 pages of policy recommendations to fast-track our multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy toward a monolithic “Christian” state where God is used solely as a means of control. Not the best time to wrap up a dystopian drama where Christ calls women to serve as either walking wombs, domestic slaves, or docile, celibate wives.

Through our involvement with foster care, I have seen families dissolve right in front of me. Regardless of the reason, this undoing is unbearable. The wounds that follow sink deep, deep down inside the hollowed-out chest of those children left behind. These wounds refuse to be soothed—not with nighttime lullabies or daily reassurances, not with adoptive mothers or fathers wrapped tight around abandoned children, a human bandage to try and ease the hurt. Nothing can replace the bonds of blood, not love or time or the best-intentioned hope. These things, of course, can help, but I’m not sure they can ever fully heal what has been broken. This is the double-edged sword of foster and adoptive care. To build the ties of a new family, the first must be undone. Sometimes, this is the only choice that remains. Sometimes, the obstacles in the way of reunification are just too heavy for a family to lift, and the dissolution of that family is the heartbreaking last resort.

“Write about how what’s happening right now shouldn’t keep us from celebrating the Fourth of July and everything it’s meant to be,” my husband says as he glimpses the blank screen staring back at me. “But I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel that way at all,” I say. I would like to. I would actually love to. I would love nothing more than to cloak myself in red, white and blue this Friday and belt out the Star-Spangled Banner (undeniably off-key) as a chorus of fireworks stream down from the sky. I would love to join the crowds downtown and watch my boys snag Tootsie Rolls and Smarties from the street as waving neighbors walk the morning parade. I would love to look at those neighbors, covered in the colors of the flag, and not wonder who they voted for. I would love to go back to a day when that wasn’t the first thing I thought when I saw the Stars and Stripes waving from someone’s front yard or the back of their Silverado.

“The true measure of a society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Mahatma Gandhi I am spending my day at a non-profit, one that serves children with physical, mental and emotional challenges. I sit tucked away in a back office that could use fresh ceiling tiles, a new door, and a coat of paint. The carpet, unraveling beneath my feet, needed replaced long ago. A decades old sound machine fires a hum from the threshold as an extension cord snakes along the hallway behind it. Passersby are alerted of the trip hazard by a bright orange traffic cone. This is the setting in which children who have undergone trauma are evaluated, at least those who find themselves pigeon-holed by state funds. This is the best we can do for our kids. Upon my arrival, I’d missed the driveway, ending up in the parking lot of my dermatologist instead. This medical mecca, freshly constructed with floor to ceiling windows, modern furniture and tasteful artwork, was the vision I thought I would be walking into this morning. But, to no one’s surprise, physical appearance is far more lucrative than mental health. Who wants to cover the cost of children’s emotional recovery when there are laugh lines and thin lips to be filled?

In the aftermath of the 2016 and 2024 elections, it has been made clear: badly behaved men will continue to be rewarded over exceptional women. Men can grab, harass, degrade, lie, and abuse. Women can’t even smile right. In the public eye, females are either distrusted for their stoicism or mocked for their joy and laughter. They are crucified for not following the unwritten rules that have been set for them, rules that it seems are impossible to master. But as much as America’s disdain for women breaks my heart, the portrait of “manhood” we have just solidified for our boys destroys me even further. The emotional expression, the fullness of humanity that we criticize our women for becomes even more disqualifying when displayed by our men. As a mother who works to raise sweet and strong boys, I had hoped for so much better this time around. When given the opportunity to highlight a family whose husband has sacrificed his career for his wife’s (a picture we rarely see in American culture) we said “no.” When given the opportunity to choose a Vice President who not only checked those “manly” boxes—military service, football coach, gun owner, hunter, flannel aficionado—but who expanded upon those boxes with emotional capacity, devotion to his family, and the ability to teach and nurture, again, we looked away.

“It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?” “Guerrilla Radio” Rage Against the Machine White women, nice women, suburban moms and Insta dolled-up wives, college girls and grandmothers - you have been conditioned your whole lives to be quiet and polite and pleasing. All the while, every day, people are stripped of their dignity and humanity because of it, because of you, because of me. People in this country are quite literally dying because of our conditioning, our gentle nature. There is nothing gentle or polite about indifference to suffering. Many of you believe that because the people in the crosshairs don’t look like you, you are safe. Understand that, now, no one is safe. I know you are tired. I know you are empty and broken. I know how it feels to hold everyone together while the ground cracks beneath your feet. Give yourself a minute or a day or the week. Then when the ground stops shaking, sit and listen. Listen to your own breath pace with the ticking of time. It will not wait any longer for you. It has called and called, but you have not answered for fear of making a sound. It is time to shake off the burden of politeness and get loud. Really. Fucking. Loud. It is time to make people uncomfortable, even if that person is you. Trust me. That discomfort quickly becomes freedom, and you will like it.

As I sit down to write this November column, it is 24 hours until election day. Last month, I spent my time crafting an article that the Tribune refused to publish as it related “too directly to national politics,” a crime I have most certainly committed time and again over these past five years as a columnist for this newspaper. And while I understand why the Tribune might enforce such a policy to help limit contention, I object to any form of censorship whether it pertains to my words or anyone else’s. Given the crossroads we are facing in this moment and all that we stand to lose, I think one of the most notable losses we could suffer is the extermination of our freedom to disagree. I ask the Tribune to reconsider their decision on my October column and any other pieces by columnists who ventured into this forbidden territory, as national politics is sewn directly into our everyday lives. There is no escaping it. My previously unpublished column centered on how sexism continues to impact women in our homes, our workplaces, and on the national political stage in this current election. Without open dialogue surrounding the double standard that remains between the sexes, we can never hope to create an equitable community for ourselves and our children – a goal that far surpasses any single election, no matter how divisive this one may be. Moreover, by limiting our space for public disagreement, what else do we stand to lose as we head into voting day and beyond?