Hope in the Face of Heartbreak

Looking forward and taking action

My kids came over on Mother’s Day, cooked me breakfast tacos, and did the dishes. We played a game that one of them had given me recently, called Tales. It’s a box of cards with interview question prompts about different phases of your life. The five of us–my two grown kids, Camille and Tucker, Tucker’s spouse Gabe, and my husband Michael–sat at a round table on my deck. Tucker, ever the group leader, selected the questions and we all took turns answering the same ones.

“What is one thing you’ve learned from your spouse?”

Camille said she’d learned from her husband, “How to live in the present, because I’m always obsessing about the future.” When it was Michael’s turn he paused, looked at me, and said “That it is possible to wake up optimistic. Every single day.” We all laughed. I mean how silly is that, right? The planet is on fire, democracy is being dismantled, and some very wicked humans are in charge of the government right now, so how could anyone wake up feeling good about anything?

And yet.

It’s true. For me, most every day is a reset. Don’t get me wrong–I can wake up in the middle of the night full of angst and fear, worrying about everything from climate change and another Hurricane Katrina, to the seemingly incessant inhumanity being wrought on innocent people, for seeking asylum in our country, or participating in a peaceful protest, most of whom are being denied due process. I can make big, bold pictures of disasters or vague ones that bounce around my monkey mind and leave me feeling anxious and helpless.

But when the sun rises my spirits rise with it. That and the promise of caffeine. Strong black tea gives me hope.

I experience the essential goodness of my fellow humans every day. Last week an elderly brown-skinned woman walked with her cane towards me as I waited for the elevator to take me from the parking garage to the doctor’s office. “That color looks fabulous on you!” she said about my thrift store bright magenta dress. We got in and the metal doors closed. “Now, what floor are we on?” she asked. “Five?”

“Six, the purple floor,” I said.

“I don’t see any purple,” she said, peering at the elevator buttons.

“It’s just how they painted the walls on the sixth floor of the parking garage,” I said. “I got out of my car repeating ‘six, purple, purple six,’ so I’d remember.”

“Well,” she said, her eyes widening, “Now I know where I’m going, thanks to you.” We both smiled and went our separate ways.

After my appointment I entered the elevator again and nodded to a very fit young man who was wearing black shorts and t-shirt and bright red athletic shoes. We waited while a petite older woman got on, wearing black pants, a black turban, and a red blouse. The two strangers standing next to each other looked like a Gap ad. “Y’all match!” I said and they looked at one another and grinned.

It was a moment. One of many moments of connection that give me hope in the face of the brutality of this life we are living.

There is overwhelming pain and suffering in our world, both physical and psychological. There’s the relentless genocide in Gaza, the destruction in Ukraine, starvation and disease in a world where there should be enough of everything for everyone if only the greedy would share. The Buddhists believe suffering is a fundamental aspect of human existence, propagated by greed, hatred, and ignorance.

To those ills I would add fear, because I believe it drives our darkest impulses: fear of the unknown, or of people who do not look and sound like us, fear of loss–of possessions or position or people dear to us. Just last week we witnessed some United States senators and representatives so afraid of their president’s ire, and of his threat to back rival candidates in the mid-term elections, that they narrowly passed a sprawling piece of legislation that will cause 12 million people to lose access to healthcare and add between three and four trillion dollars to the national debt over the next ten years.

Just shaking my head. Still, I find reason for hope in the face of despair.

Five million people across every state in our nation marched in protest on June 14th sporting signs that reject authoritarianism while a military parade limped along past nearly empty bleachers in Washington. People are waking up to the effects of overreach by the executive branch of our current government.

Efforts to preserve individual liberty extend well beyond our borders. Two hundred thousand people marched in the annual Budapest Pride parade, in defiance of a government determined to deny LGBTQ people basic human rights.

Over 3.9 million students graduated from high school in the U.S. in 2025, the largest number ever, while another four million students earned post-secondary degrees, ranging from bachelors to doctoral degrees. No government, not even an oppressive one, can rob us of that collective knowledge.

And then there are the small, unexpected wonders. In May Australian marine scientists announced the discovery of a new species of octopus, the Carnarvon flapjack, a dome-like creature with large eyes that measures about eight inches. It was one of ten new species collected from the ocean floor during a 2022 research voyage. Discoveries like this tell me that there is so much we don’t yet know and human curiosity is unstoppable.

History teaches us that the political pendulum swings back and forth, reliably. Sometimes, like with the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, it feels like one step forward and two steps back. I truly believe, if we are able to have free elections, that we will prevent our nation’s democratic institutions from crumbling completely. But until then, people will suffer–children in the poorest nations for lack of USAID provisions of food and medicine, and the most vulnerable people in our own nation will go without. Last week we learned that $ 7 billion in federal funds for after-school and summer programming for public school children that were awarded for fiscal year 2025 have been withheld, leaving schools and community groups wondering how to keep kids occupied and safe while their families work. We’re talking about money for tutoring, homework help, sports, arts classes, and supper for hungry kids.

But one local story about a 64-year old Iranian woman, Madonna “Donna” Kashanian Milne is particularly disturbing and illustrates our current policy regarding immigrants. Ms. Milne has lived in the United States for 47 years, having come on a student visa when she was 17 to attend college. She applied for asylum from the repressive Iranian government in the early 80s but was denied. She eventually married an American, Russ Milne, had a child, and was granted the right to stay in the U.S. with supervision. She dutifully attended every mandated immigration hearing. Her Lakeview neighbors say she has been an asset to the community, volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to rebuild houses post-Katrina, feeding the poor, and helping with her daughter’s school fundraisers. On June 22nd she was taken from her front yard while gardening, handcuffed, and whisked away to an ICE detention center. I wrote to our U.S. Congressional delegation asking that they speak up about this injustice, allow this woman due process, and return her to her family. She has committed no crime and is certainly no threat to national security.

Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian Milne prepares food in the Navarre neighborhood in New Orleans. Photo provided to the media by the family.

I have read that ICE has been given a quota to round up 3,000 immigrants per day (thank you, Stephen Miller!), only they can’t find enough who have actually committed crimes so they are arresting those who are in the process of applying for citizenship, regardless of status. Apparently even if some of those folks are released they still “count” towards the quota.

A week or so later I got a call from a Washington, D.C. area code. A young woman said that she was calling for Congressman Steve Scalise in response to my letter to him.

“The one about the Lakeview woman who was arrested by ICE in her front yard, or the one about the Big Not-So-Beautiful Bill?” I asked, as I had written about both.

“The one about the Iranian woman,” said the caller, probably a summer intern in Scalise’s office who had received training on how to speak with potentially riled up constituents.

“Well, what can you tell me about that?” I asked.

“We are in touch with the woman’s family,” she said. “And, as you might imagine, the situation is delicate.”

I imagined how delicately the black-clad ICE agents treated Ms. Milne when they handcuffed her and put her in the back of a pickup truck.

Hot tears came unbidden to my eyes, surprising me. I imagined how helpless I would feel if my husband or one of my children disappeared from my front yard, the arrest taking less than 60 seconds, and then they’re gone. Where did they go? What will happen to them? I wouldn’t even know who to call.

My throat constricted, choking my usually calm, steady voice to a tense whisper.

“Well,” I said, “I appreciate you calling, but you’ve gotta see that this is about six different ways of wrong.”

“I’ll pass your message onto the congressman,” she said.

After the call ended I sat there feeling deep sadness over what is happening to people in our country, all of whom, except for Indigenous people, are the descendants of immigrants. If the point of these policy changes is to make us feel helpless and hopeless we cannot give in to this.

It is more important than ever to speak up, march, call, and write to your elected officials. Let them know that we see what is happening, not only to immigrants, but to all of us in this country. The ripple effects are profoundly damaging.

But it is equally important, and more immediately effective, to take care of those in need in our community by volunteering time and donating money to organizations whose work is vital but whose funding is disappearing.

I realize that it is a conscious choice I am making to remain hopeful. I believe in the inherent goodness of the vast majority of people. Some days I view this dark time as an opportunity to let that goodness shine, like it did in the aftermath of Katrina, when people came together to rebuild New Orleans. Believe me, we could not have done that without help from our neighbors from Mexico and Honduras who brought their energy, skills, and heart when our own government failed us.

I hold on to those images of people protesting in the streets. I think of all those smart young people graduating from high school and college, looking forward to their lives. At least once a day I think about that new octopus and its big, beautiful eyes.

As always, we are each other’s best hope.

Update on Donna Kashanian Milne: She was released from ICE custody on the evening of July 7th and is on her way home. Thank you to all who advocated for her.

If you would like to help organizations and programs that are being defunded:

Give to Planned Parenthood, which provides healthcare to thousands, or to public media like your local PBS station, or NPR. Find a neighborhood organization that serves those children who will lose their afterschool safety net. Cook for a community fridge.