#I refuse to blame my other grandparents for forgetting how to speak their other languages after childhood

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

Me learning Norwegian: okay, a few new letters, I can figure it out alright… I think.

Me trying out a Swedish lesson while not being fluent in Norwegian yet (still working on it): oh no, new alphabet just dropped (actually English just got rid of a bunch of letters, but still! New to me!) and I keep using the Norwegian spelling

Me glancing at the Icelandic to English dictionary my grandma (who’s parents were bilingual) let me borrow: oh no. Oh man. Even MORE new letters! No wonder it’s rated so high on lists of languages that are hard for English speakers to learn 😳 (growing resentment at my great grandparents for not teaching their kids how to speak both languages)

[sienna-walsh]

[plaidred]

Dear America,

In these time of trouble please be kind to one another. If you are Christian please know that you are not very Christ like if you are not following the 13th commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Yes, this means loving your Islamic, Jewish, non-Christian, LGBTQA, non-binary, non-white and immigrant neighbors. You don't have to agree with someone's religion or way of life to show compassion as a human being. In all of this do not forget your humanity. I myself am moving away from the Christian label I was raised with because I see so little of the virtues they esteem. I don't see the love or forgiveness. I don't see the compassion. All I see is small minded people refusing to accept another view point. As a person who lives with a debilitating chronic illness for which there is no cure (aka, a pre-existing condition) I am afraid I will be directly affected by the President's motives. As a woman I am afraid of what he is trying to do to the rights to my body and my decision on when, how and if I want to have a child. I am worried about a great deal of things that are rapidly being put out by Congress right now. And yet I know that there are others out there that have a much more to fear from Trump's regime, and I am frightened for you. I am frightened for my gay and trans friends, I am frightened for my non-binary friends. I am frightened for my friends with a different skin tone. I am frightened for my friends who came here from a different country. Please remember that America is a country that was built on immigration. Long ago the first people to step on this land migrated across a land bridge by the Bering Strait. Centuries later Europeans came across the ocean to this place, and soon it was a continuous stream of different people coming to settle. These people came from different ethnic groups, they came from different religions, they came from different political and economic situations. And yet they bonded together to form the 13 colonies and found the government of this country. Now there have been many atrocities in America's bloody history. The white Europeans, and later Americans, have done, and still do horrible things to the native peoples that first colonized this land since the last ice age. Americans have also done awful things to other ethnicities, they systematically segregated people of African descent and created an ethic of hatred towards them. America devalued these peoples lives. Throughout time American has always had growing pains, placing hatred on the newest or largest wave of immigration and placing all blame on them. What Americans seems to forget is that if you go through every single one of our ancestries you will see that we are all literally children of immigrants. Maybe some of us have had families here for generations, or maybe you are the first generation in this land. Maybe your parents or grandparents still speak the tongue of their mother land and struggle with English. This is nothing new. For those of you that say "You are in America, speak English!" you must be forgetting that unless your ancestry is purely English that your great-great-great grandparents were once foreigners here and struggled to understand the language. I have stories of my ancestors to this land who didn't speak a lick of English. It was their children who went to school and learned English and taught a few words to their parents, but their parents never truly learned English. It didn't matter much, they were farmer people who worked the land. As long as they worked hard and didn't treat their neighbors unkindly they got along fine. So have some compassion. Be kind. Be loving. Don't give in to hate. I don't know how to not be afraid. I don't know what will happen in the coming time. Be watchful, stand up with your neighbors and don't give in to the hate rhetoric that is freely flowing around you. Dear America, I don't know what you are coming to, but I believe that as long as we remember to keep our humanity above all else that we as a nation can pull through this.