Survivor’s Guilt

This is not normal. It can't be. We won't let it be.

“Normal” is one of the words I’m fighting with the most right now. My normal day today involved going to the dentist’s office, walking slowly through the grocery store with a cart, and cleaning my pottery studio. Some of my friends experienced a different normal of listening to whistles go off outside their homes, watching ICE sit outside their kids’ schools, fielding texts about masked and armed bounty hunters. I am living inside one “normal,” and they’re being forced into another. My worry is not only about the violence itself, which is enough. It’s about what happens if this, too, becomes normal—just more noise in the background of Minnesota life.