Look for the Helpers: Depression and Immigration

Dropping off water in the desert.

I’ve spent much of the last two years crawling my way up out of a dry valley where only the thin weeds of depression and anxiety grow. And finally in the last couple of weeks I’m finding the myself again in a field where the green grass of hope grows.

Those twin marauders — anxiety and depression — came riding into my life like renegade cowboys in an Old West flick — pillaging, shooting, whipping and hollering with ferocity, haphazardly spraying of bullets any which way. Bullets named doubt and loneliness and pain and grief. 

My bout with depression and anxiety came about for many reasons — fate (some things just happen), genetics (my family has a propensity toward mental health woes), age (that mid-life crisis shit is real), illness and death (my father and my in-laws all died within a year and half of each other), and my own internal struggles (perplexity about life and my purpose in it). 

I’m fortunate. I have good insurance, a supportive spouse, a job that invites and affirms grappling with the internal self, kind doctors, an insightful therapist, wise friends, and a decently balanced dose of my own smarts and self-intuition. 

That circle of support, doses of prescribed pharmaceuticals and traditional medicines, a regular meditation practice, a little yoga, lots of running and biking and swimming, and time are having a healing affect on me. 

Last week I had the privilege of taking part in a really good church-focused conference. The leader of that conference led with honest and enthusiastic celebration. That’s what the world news, she said: Joy and Celebration. Sure, there’s plenty of racism and homophobia and pain. To offer joy and celebration in the midst of that is to live counterculturally. Joy and celebration—in the face of war and oppression — are acts of social justice. 

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news,” Fred Rogers famously told his television neighbors, “my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

In scary times , look for the helpers.

A preacher leading a conference and reminding me to offer joy and celebration—she was a helper. 

This week I’m been spending a few days on the borderlands where Arizona and Sonora meet. I had the opportunity to make a water run in the mountainous desert with a man named Ricardo and with some other pilgrims here to learn about immigration issues. Ricardo is a helper. 

He works with a group called Sahuarita Samaritans. These volunteers oversee a series of drop off stations in the desert. They place food, water, and blankets along the trails that travelers use as they make their way from Mexico to Tucson. It’s about 60 miles, a six day walk of the walkers are lucky. There are cactus, heat, cold, dirt, scorpions, snakes, fear, loneliness, grief, and pain along the way. Dozens of bodies are found each month. The water, food, and blankets that Ricardo and the Samaritans place in the wilderness saves lives. 

Our current immigration issues are a mess. A tragedy even. One speaker at the Border Issues Fair referred to the crisis as a holocaust. Certainly a scary time. A political pit, full of fear. 

“Look for the helpers.” 

People like a preacher at a conference and Ricardo dropping off food and water and blankets. 

“You will always find people who are helping.”

The situation is a mess. And the helpers give me hope. They save lives.

This blog is one of a series of reflections that I am writing while taking part in the Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Fair and Common Ground on the Border. The Border Issues Fair is one the causes supported by the Briggs Center for Faith and Action, where I serve as the Executive Director.