The Woman Who Talked Back

I have to decompress. Putting words to unexplainable emotions is how I cope, how my nervous system regulates. Talking with friends and family won’t work this time because, what is there to say? We find ourselves shaking our heads, breathing deeply, staring into the distance, sharing silence. This time, it will have to be writing.

It’s disturbingly easy to forget how routine this has become, or how it has been a part of the fabric of America from the beginning. Legal murder to serve specific interests. Until something shakes loose our ability to ignore.

I’m not in the States right now. I don’t advertise that, partly out of caution and partly out of guilt. I didn’t “escape,” that word implies safety or certainty, but I am currently out. Anything could drag us back. Exile, I’m learning, is never clean.

Distance should make it easier to dissociate from American politics, especially in the year of tyranny, terror, and Trump. But after talking to family and friends back home, I’m not convinced anyone is truly present for any of this. Everyone is dissociating. How else does a person fold laundry and make school lunches while also absorbing the news of another government-sanctioned killing? The nervous system isn’t designed for fascism and caretaking at the same time.

I removed myself from social media six months ago because my brain couldn’t survive the constant drip of dread and still function as a mother, wife, human being. But I broke my rule a few days ago, when Renée Nicole Good was murdered. I needed to be near other people who understood the grief, rage, and exhaustion from watching this happen again and again.

For some communities, this isn’t news, it’s Tuesday. State-sanctioned murder of Black and brown people is a constant in the U.S., and ICE has been working overtime to catch up in body count since Trump began his reign. I have felt this grief before, and the sick helplessness that comes with it. But Renée’s death landed differently, and I’m honest enough to say why: I see myself in her.

She was my age. She had three kids, nearly the exact ages as mine. She lived in the same neighborhood at one time that I did. We undoubtedly bought cereal in the same grocery aisle and watched our kids play in the same park. She left the U.S. when Trump claimed his second term, for the same reasons we left. She drove the same car my friend drives. The same make, model, color, and year. The proximity is almost mocking.

And I can hear the words she spoke out her window. They were gentle and kind. I can imagine myself screaming far worse; wishing inhumane things to befall the ICE agents. It is not illegal to vocally disagree with armed agents of the state, or to peacefully observe their actions. It’s called dissent. It’s called protest. It’s supposed to be protected, but protection only matters in a country that recognizes dissent as part of democracy. The U.S. no longer pretends.

Renée was unarmed. She was in her car. She was terrified and trying to get away. They escalated. They are not police. They cannot arrest citizens, yet they stepped into the path of her vehicle with guns out, as if dissent itself were a crime punishable by execution. They chose to shoot a mother in the face because they didn’t like what she represented.

ICE holds all the power in any encounter they create. That’s the point. They operate with impunity, hidden behind masks, and behind a manufactured obsession with borders that convinces half the country they are defending “sovereignty,” when in reality they are orchestrating terror and driving a monumental divide among neighbors and families. ICE became a way to put guns into the hands of angry racist white men with little oversight, training, or accountability. Their unchecked power spills blood in the streets, and our president seems more concerned with agents being doxxed than people losing their lives.

Renée was powerless. I am powerless. My family back home is powerless. That’s the part I can’t shake: not just the brutality, but the powerlessness. The way the state expects you to witness its violence, accept it, then go back to making dinner.

If fascism has a tell, that’s it.

I’m writing because I can’t hold all of this and still read bedtime stories like nothing happened. And because I know I’m not the only one who needs to process in order to keep moving. Renée was literally my neighbor once, but more than that she was figuratively my neighbor. America’s neighbor. A woman sick of driving past ICE raids, sick of pretending the system isn’t rotting from the inside out, sick of watching her country slip into the hands of fascists.

It could have been me. It could have been any of us. That’s not hyperbole, it’s the point. When a government publicly defends the killing of an unarmed citizen for voicing her opinion out a car window, we have lost the plot. The concept of “enemy” stops mattering because dissent itself is the threat, and threats are disposable. Any of us could be framed as deserving of death if it suits their agenda. Safety in the U.S. isn’t guaranteed; it’s conditional and revoked without warning.

Leaving a place doesn’t make you immune to what’s happening there. I am no less American just because I am not living in the United States, and my grief and anger watching it slide further into fascism isn’t any less real. I tried leaving and logging off, but distance doesn’t protect you from what you love or what terrifies you. Some things collapse the space between here and there whether you want them to or not. Renée was one of those things.

Right now I am working overtime making protest shirts, and I can't keep up with all that needs to be said, but it's cathartic to turn grief into something someone else might also want to say. And it's helping my guilt for not being there in person. A message can’t resurrect a person. It can’t give those kids their mother back, or make us feel safe. In fact, wearing one of my shirts might actually put you in danger, so wear at your own risk. But I need to do something with this feeling.

I encourage you to find an outlet that isn’t dissociation, to help you process what’s happening. We have to stay present, within reason and while protecting ourselves. Because if we disappear into numbness, they win. Renée’s death shouldn’t be normalized; it should be turned into power. History is paying attention, and our response matters. Alone I am powerless; together, we write the ending.