When ICE rips children from their parents, they are causing irreparable harm to their brains. Childhood trauma and PTSD are very serious. They cause permanent changes in the brains of kids who are still developing. I know all about it: our youngest daughter lives with PTSD.
We adopted her when she was a toddler; the details are hers alone, but the trauma she endured impacted her deeply. Circumstances took her from her biological parents and not a day goes by when she doesn’t grieve them with all of her heart.
I keep looking at her and thinking of these mothers and children who have been and will be forcibly separated by the US government. No mother flees with children unless home is so dangerous that running is the only alternative.
Any good mother who loves her children would make that choice. Some of my best friends were once asylum-seekers and they ran rather than seeing their babies raped, tortured or killed. Of course they did.
Having endured the extreme stress of the road—the heat, the dangerous conditions, the lack of food, the perilous worry—these mothers and children are arriving already deeply traumatized. And then they’re separated. I can hardly bear it.
The effects on their brains and bodies of this trauma are profound: it impacts their physical health, like their ability to control their bodies. They lose their ability to focus, to learn, or to retain information.
They are unable to attach in developmentally appropriate ways; they can’t always sleep. Their brains are literally rewired at the synaptic level and they will deal with the impact of that trauma for the rest of their lives. Google “impact of childhood trauma” to learn more.
There are hundreds of articles about it. What our government is doing is unethical even if it’s not illegal. It will impact these children for the rest of their lives.
We cannot allow this to go on.
