Sanctuary in a Country That Has Forgotten How to Love Its Own

 

Sanctuary in a Country That Has Forgotten How to Love Its Own

There are mornings when I wonder if I still belong to this country, or if it slipped from beneath my feet while I was sleeping. The streets I once walked without thought now feel charged with suspicion, lined with the quiet dread of patrol cars and unmarked vans, of ICE raids that arrive like storms with no forecast and no mercy. Somewhere, a family door splinters at dawn; somewhere, another mother cries into her hands. Safety has become so fragile that even silence feels like a risk.

Exiled at Home

I live in the place where I was born, and yet I move through it like an uninvited guest. The language of “law and order” now sounds like an elegy for the living. Men in suits write policies that turn neighbors into targets and whole communities into crime scenes. Fascism does not always announce itself with grand speeches and marching boots; sometimes it arrives in memos, in budgets, in the practiced calm of a press conference. It is a cold thing, this new order, and it is spreading.

Each new headline adds weight to the day. Another raid. Another child taken. Another murder justified in the name of security. I tell myself to keep going: to work, to organize, to write, to show up. But every endeavor feels heavier now, as if grief has been stitched into the very fabric of time. The body remembers what the mind tries to outrun.

The Work of a Sanctuary

And yet, here, within these walls, we have made a small world that holds us steady. Our home is a sanctuary. Out back, the garden is my grounding place, a place where I can still trust the rhythm of the seasons more than the promises of any politician. I till the soil and press seeds into the earth with a care that feels ancestral, as if I am consulting with ghosts every time I plant another future.

I sit in the back garden listening to the birds trade songs like local gossip, watching the cats stage their small dramas among the plants. The bees move from blossom to blossom in a joyous feeding frenzy, drunk on abundance. They do not know our human struggle, our raids and cages, our borders and bans. Their world is simple and profound: food, shelter, continuation. I am thankful for their innocence. Their devotion to life, to sweetness, feels like a lesson I am still trying to learn.

Traveling Without Leaving

Inside, the house holds its own maps. My spice drawers, cabinets, and cookbooks are journeys I can take without crossing the threshold. A pinch of cumin, the smoke of paprika, the bright sting of citrus, each one is a passport stamp from another kitchen, another history, another table where people gather to eat and argue and laugh and grieve.

I travel with my hands: toasting seeds in a dry pan, stirring a simmering pot, kneading dough until it yields and breathes. I move from country to country without ever opening the front door. This is not escapism; it is survival. In a nation that makes us feel unwelcome even in our own neighborhoods, cooking becomes a way to insist that we are still here, that our stories still season the air.

“In a country that would rather see us disappear, I plant seeds, salt the beans, and call this small plot of earth home.”

Holding On After Each Blow

Then the next blow lands. Another brutal murder. Another life excused away by a statement, a press release, a shaky video replayed until it becomes its own kind of violence. The destruction of so many lives has become background noise in this country, but in this house, it is felt in the bones.

When the news comes, I retreat to the kitchen or the garden, not to turn away, but to gather myself back from the edge. To process the pain and hold space for those who have left us by placing their bodies on the front line of fascism. To hold space for those in the streets protecting their neighbors and marching for a better tomorrow for their kids and all of us.  I press my palms into bread dough and feel the stubborn insistence of life rising under my fingers. I step outside and watch the bees at work, the cats stretching in the last of the sun, the birds stitching the sky with their flight. The world, in its quiet corners, refuses to stop living. Thoughts of how I can help, Minnesota, California, Phoenix, all the cities and spaces being targeted for no other reason than we resist a monoculture built on violence and hate. 

This home is where I replenish my soul as best I can. It is where I let myself weep, where I write, where I remember the names and faces behind the headlines. It is where I hold the tension between terror and tenderness, between a country that feels increasingly uninhabitable and a small patch of earth that still feels like mine.

Rooted in a Dangerous Time

I do not know what this country will become. I know only that fascism is no longer a distant warning but a daily weather report, that state violence has woven itself into the ordinary hours of our lives. I know that displacement is not only about crossing borders; it is also about standing in your own doorway and wondering if you are safe.

But I also know this: as long as I can till the garden, listen to the birds, watch the bees at their work, season a pot of beans, and share a meal with those I love, I am not entirely lost. This house, this garden, this kitchen are the places where I resist becoming only a witness to harm. They are where I remember how to be fully human.

Here, even in a country that has forgotten how to love its own, I plant, I cook, I write, and I grieve. Here, in this small sanctuary, I refuse to disappear.

Jeffrey Lazos Ferns

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