Why horsetails grow
Grief is not the same as giving up. Grief is what proves you were paying attention. Grief is what proves you loved something.
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson
I have been living outside the United States for the past 9 months, the time it takes to grow a new life. This past year has mirrored a pregnancy: losing of an old life, being hijacked by creation, seeing everything in a new light, gaining weight and gaining perspective, preparing, grinding, meditating and ultimately surrendering.
When my mentor, Joaquin G. Avila, was 2 days from death and I searched Aurora (Highway 99) for white roses to bring him -because I had learned from a curandera in Oaxaca 20 years earlier that white roses soothe exhaustion and pain - I knew it was the end of an era.
Here was the man who had transformed American democracy, who had won cases at the Supreme Court that became foundational to forge true multi-racial democratic elections. Here was the man who, in the late 1990s, foresaw that our federal government would eventually eviscerate the federal Voting Rights Act, throwing us into a civil war. And with this foresight, he drafted the California Voting Rights Act, the first ever state voting rights act so the state itself could protect its population. After the California Voting Rights Act was passed in 2001, state after state began fighting to adopt their own voting rights laws - with Joaquin at the helm.
In 2018, as I put white roses in a vase in his kitchen, sitting next to him, holding the phone to his ear so he could get the last call from an old friend, as his spirit began to free itself from his broken body, Washington State passed the the Washington Voting Rights Act. When I shared the news, he didn't say, "We did it." He said, "Now onto Colorado." He fought until his dying day. And the fight killed him.
January, 2025 - I am working around the clock leading confidential immigrant family safety planning in a local church; glued to Signal tracking ICE; attending school board meeting to pass policies and implement training and practices to protect immigrants students. February, 2025 - teaching Know Your Rights to students, school social workers, teaching civil rights and ICE response plans at our food bank, local counseling agencies, businesses, organizing a volunteer legal clinic. March, 2025 - I am raising a 11-year old who only sees her mom in a state of Emergency. April, 2025 - Trump begins kidnapping innocent people off the streets, shackling them onto airplanes to CECOT, a 40,000 person maximum security prison known for torture in El Salvador, to house "terrorists". May, 2025 - I am sitting with pro-se immigrants from all over the world in our federal courthouse before their hearings (telling them their rights and making safety/escape plans from the courthouse) while simultaneously tracking the movements of ICE in the building; May, 2025 - my partner and I are looking across the table at one another acknowledging it is time to leave. May, 2025 - the Colorado State Voting Rights Act passes.
As his seeds grow, I am here, outside the country. Looking back. Looking in. Looking beyond.
I planted Pimientos de Padrón last month on my balcony: delicious green peppers, a staple in Galician kitchens.
Before Trump, voting rights seeds only had the pressure of soil to break through. And, sure, the soil was toxic: polluted with racism and greed and corruption. But hearty seeds can grow in toxic soil.
In fact, I learned from Doña Enriqueta Contreras Contreras (nearly 30 years ago now) that the earth responds to the environment that humans create. It is why horsetails grow alongside smog-filled highways. Horsetail is traditional medicine for bronchitis, inflamed lungs caused by asthma, lungs inflamed by pollution. The earth is responding to us. This still blows my mind.
If the seeds are hearty, they will break through no matter what soil they are planted in.
And, here comes the loss, where grief walks in. The Trump political climate is not just toxic soil. We no longer have to work to break through soil. We must break through stone.
I live surrounded by stone.
Beautiful, ancient stone that everyone wants to take selfies with. A life of privilege to rent a piso across the street from a 900-year old carved statute of a breastfeeding mother, the church dedicated to Maria Salomé. In the heart of a UNESCO world heritage site. Guided tours stroll by hourly, stopping beneath our balcony and, depending on who is guiding, I hear that the statute either represents, "Saint James as a baby" or "Pagan Galicia and the importance of fertility, honoring nature and the seasons." I am living - visually -inside a Hayao Miyazaki film. 100% stone. Not even a small shrub for a dog or a drunken college student to pee in. Stone. And not just an American presidency-time of stone but nearly 1,000 years of it.
And you know what? Tiny ferns push through 900-year old stone walls. Earth breaks through because it is alive. And when grief sweeps me under and I recognize what we are losing, I remember that I am alive, and that the majority of us also seek life.
"People who won't grieve won't fight well, because they'll never let themselves feel and know what was at stake. The folks I trust in this work are the ones who can cry on Monday and organize on Tuesday. That is not weakness. That's sound practice."
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson
Yesterday, I pulled laundry out of the dryer and heard the jingle of a coin on metal but found instead a small piece of green sea glass. From the beach. As summer saunters in, I have the time and temperature to forgo the dryer and hang up clothes on a line.
Today I watched my daughter try to catch fish with her bare hands. I'll never forget: she and my partner splashing around in a lagoon, up to their thighs, chasing schools of fish rushing out toward the sea. Arms flailing, one using a ball cap as a net. Like two puppies in water. One 13-year-old and one 53-year-old puppy. Laughing, tripping, soaked to the bone, in the beautiful Ardora. Thousands of miles away from where Trump wants to use billions of taxpayer money to fund domestic terrorists like the Proud Boys.
We will go back. And I will be proud of our lineage. This lineage of strong and resilient women and multi-racial movements, revolts, freedom fighters.
But this is time I need. I have not one ounce of guilt for this time. If there is any regret, it is the fact that I waited so long to take it.
But here it is. Right now. A year of truly letting go. Of not being on the front lines. Of not even following the news some weeks. Just existing outside the range of the punch, the push, the pull. The tug of war.
I am letting go. I have to. Because I believe when each of us steps back, someone takes our place. I believe. I have no proof. Maybe I'm wrong. But it is my belief. I envision a fresh-faced law grad ready to defend the right to vote; a barista waking up to realize her charism and intellect could power an organization; a retiree registering youth to vote at their local high school.
We can't be in the fire all the time. Aloe. Cucumbers. Water. We must retreat. Hydrate. Head to the coast and sit and watch our children fall foolishly into the ocean, with the hope that they catch a fish. These memories, these moments, also have a lineage that must be carried forward. And this lineage never has to be set down because of its burden. These memories and moments are what heals when pain returns. As healing as horsetails and white roses.
