The Ferocious Love of Being a Minnesotan Facing ICE

A letter to fellow sensitives about holding space when everything hurts

My note yesterday about a few of the good things happening in Minnesota went viral. Welcome to this quiet space where we are building a community of Highly Unapologetic Sensitive Humans. I’m glad you’re here.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'”
~Mr. Rogers

Last week on my daily early-morning dog-walk at a local city park, the normally empty parking lot had 8-10 eight ICE vehicles backed into parking spaces at an angle, lights off, no license plates, idling in the morning moonlight.

As I waited for my walking partner, a little older man wearing a reflective vest and neon hat got out of the bright blue VW parked by the entrance and started walking the perimeter of the parking lot.

I called my husband.
If something happened, he needed to know.

Jo drove up and parked between me and the giant dark green Jeep. As Frank bounded out of her car and greeted me I was more grateful for his husky/shepherd energy than I ever had been before.

Mr. Reflective Vest continued to walk the perimeter of the lot.

When we got back from the short loop by the lake (it was -4 degrees) fifteen minutes later, the six ICE vehicles parked in the same aisle as ours pulled out one-behind-the-other. We stepped off onto the snowbank to let them pass. We felt their message “you’d better behave, old lady. . . and we don’t give a fuck about your dog.”

Mr. Reflective Vest kept walking, about 15 yards away, one steady calm step at a time

The rumble of their vehicles activated my tinnitus into a penetrating squeal inside my head. As they approached, the vibration of the engines peeled off my defense layers, like pulling away scar tissue skin after a burn. And the smell. . . rancid, pungent, eye-watering stink flooding my system, penetrating my bone marrow like a spinal tap. This is what it’s like to be a highly sensitive person in the midst of trauma. My five senses on such high alert that they glitch out.

I couldn’t see their eyes, or their bodies, so I couldn’t rely on my usual fawning-de-escalation super-powers. I’m used to responding instinctively and intuitively to body language, facial expression, vocal tones, and the auras I see coming off the human souls.

But I wasn’t dealing with human souls.
These were giant machines.
Staring me down with headlights in the early morning moonlight.

So I took a cue from Mr. Reflective Vest and stood strong and tall in mountain pose. I melted my heart, and I breathed.

They drove by us in formation at less than 2mph, speeding up after they passed us to complete a loop around the lot and re-park taking up 3 spots per vehicle. A Jeep, a pickup truck, and four SUVs behaving like National Guard humvees.

As I drove the ten minutes home, I noticed more reflective vest helpers.

A woman wearing teddy-bear ears at a bus stop. A crossing guard wearing a unicorn onesie at the corner by the school. Everyday Minnesotans doing what we do, holding each other. Because of them, I could breathe.

Five days later I watched 109 clergy and faith leaders kneeling on concrete singing Amazing Grace as they were one-by-one compassionately arrested for trespassing and over-extending their protest permit (they had a permit for 55 people, and brought with them over 5000).

And the very next day, as I watched Alex Pretti die, a guttural explosion of sobs that mixed laughter-like squeals with ear-drum piercing screeches with deep gut-rumbling groans gurgled out of me for more than 20-minutes.

The helpers knew that ICE wouldn’t preserve the scene. So they built a barricade of garbage bins and wooden pallets, resisting the federal agents and their tear gas and pepper balls. Once ICE left, Minneapolis police kept a perimeter from blocks away (just like Mr. Reflective Vest) as neighbors built a shrine and sang to Alex well into the night.

In talking to my friends and neighbors here in Minnesota, I know that my ice-encounter story is extremely minor. I am well aware that my story is heavily laced with white-lady privilege. And, I know, as does every Minnesotan in the Twin Cities Metro area, that everyone, I mean every-single-person here has their own ICE encounter stories. And for every ICE story, there are dozens of Mr. Reflective Vest helpers.

Two days after I met ICE in person, and two days before Alex Pretti joined the ancestral realm, I stepped up my own helping game. We welcomed a Buddhist chaplain from Virginia, a total stranger-turned-dear-friend into our home for a three night stay. He was here with a thousand other multi-faith clergy and leaders from across the country to support the January 23 ICEOUT protest that drew crowds of 75,000+ out in -20F weather. Offering my peaceful home as a sacred space to this Buddhist chaplain was my way of donning a reflective vest and walking the perimeter.

There may be 3000 ICE agents swarming our city, but there are 3.69 million Minnesotans in the greater Twin Cities Metro area donning reflective “helper” vests walking the perimeters of each other’s lives.

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As sensitives, the contradictory emotions swirling around inside us right now is almost too much to bear.

Almost.
But now we are stretching our super-powers.

Because, as sensitive humans, its our job to hold these contradictory feelz, and to serve as sacred space holders of it ALL. This is what it means to be a sensitive soul right now, to feel everything, all the time, with no off switch, and to wear a reflective vest anyway.

NOW is exactly when we’re needed most.

We Highly Unapologetic Sensitive Humans need to “get big” in our care and compassion.

Our sensitivity is the medicine needed to heal this world.

And it starts with the little things we can do, loving each other, bit by bit, moment by moment, piece by piece, no matter what.

Reflective Vest stories are vital to our healing and growth. Let’s make the helper-stories bigger than the ugly news ones. If you feel so moved, I invite you to share your own helper-stories here.