Rain Perry

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We begin with music, get inspired, and — at the bottom of the essay — use a set of tools for community and accountability. This is a cross post also available on substack.

Week two of this experiment! Thank you for being here. Let’s start, as we usually will, with a song: Los Lobos’ lovely “A Matter of Time,” about a father leaving his family to cross the border, hoping someday to send for them once he finds work. From the heartbreaking opening lyric “Speak softly / Don’t wake the baby / Come and hold me once more / Before I have to leave” to the repeated mantra/plea at the end “we’ll all be together, in a matter of time,” it’s an old, old story. Like water flowing downhill, people have forever been compelled to migrate for work, for safety, in the hope of a better life. My great-great-grandparents did it; yours probably did too.

About border policy: in the summer of 2018 I was regularly protesting the Zero Tolerance strategy of the first Trump administration, sitting in vigils outside facilities in Southern California that were holding children who had been taken from their parents at the border. In July I went to Austin to work on a record, and I figured that on the weekend, when I wasn’t in the studio, I’d protest the policy while I was in Texas too. Most of the locations holding these thousands of kids — detention centers, group homes, converted big box stores — were in Texas, so I had my pick.

Holly and Kendra, a couple of Ojai pals who had moved to Austin, volunteered to join me. There happened to be a Beto O’Rourke rally in San Antonio that day, so we decided to spend a few hours sitting outside a youth facility there and then go to the rally.

Some people glanced over confused, some (including a truck coming out of the facility) honked in support, and at one point an employee came over to ask us to leave because we were drawing attention to the “international kids.” We explained that we were abiding by all laws and that drawing attention to those kids was the reason we were there.

While we were sitting there, Holly asked if they ever let American families foster the kids. I said I didn’t think so.

Not long after I got home from Texas, an El Paso immigration lawyer in an activist group I was in asked if anyone knew anyone in Texas who might be willing to be a legal test case for fostering a separated kid while their dad’s asylum claim was pending. “I might know one,” I responded.

Which brings us to our person of the week

…who are actually two people: Holly and Matthew Sewell, who without hesitation volunteered to foster eight-year-old Byron Xol of Guatemala, who was taken from his dad at the border. Byron’s father had a compelling asylum claim (he had been persecuted by gangs for his religious beliefs) and had properly filled out the paperwork for asylum, but he was deported, leaving Byron alone in the US.

Holly and Matthew were willing and able to sponsor Byron, who had been in detention facilities for eight months, at home with their own two kids, and had the blessing of his parents. But the policy of the ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) was only to release kids to relatives, and they refused. That’s why Byron was a legal test case. If the Sewells could convince the ORR to approve them, then other families in the US could presumably sponsor kids too and get them out of detention centers while they waited for their parents’ claims to be processed.

Spoiler: the Sewells succeeded.

You can read about the Sewells’ long fight for Byron here, which did indeed pave the way for more families in the US to foster separated kids. It’s a happy turn of events in a very unhappy tale, which continues to reverberate today. Eventually, Byron’s father was allowed to come to the US on a work permit, which was joyful and painful in all new ways. And his mother and younger siblings ultimately came too, and they are building a new life out of the devastation.

Now to the habit part of this newsletter

With my designer friend Kayleigh Morrison, I'm currently developing a cute little daily planner for our practice of hope. You can start your own practice on notebook paper before we’re done, though. Here's the rough draft of the instructions, and here is a link to the QR codes that will be in the final version. It’s simple - just a place to track things like “community” and “grief” and “creativity.” The premise is that with repetition, we can make ourselves more joyful, resilient and effective in the times to come.

Check it out. I just got a sneak peek from Kayleigh for the category “connections”:

If you'd like to be accountable to others, you can use the chat section of this Substack, above, to share and discuss with our group. My dream is that we create a community here that can support and encourage each other.

How is it going this week? Were you able to make a connection with someone you hadn’t seen in person in a long time? I find myself feeling grief for a lot of things right now. What are you grieving? In a crisis, were you able to spot some helpers? Etc. (Obviously, please keep it respectful and supportive.)

And if you want another level of community, I'm going to host a weekly hourlong zoom for talking about how we fared in terms of joy, creativity, and grief, etc. on Mondays from 5:00 to 6:00 pm PST. Depending on how this goes I may come up with a more official signup system, but for now simply email me for the zoom link to the next one, which in this case is Monday, December 16, at 5 pm PST.

In person gathering

After the holidays, I'll schedule something local -- a time and place to get together for community and creativity. I'll keep you posted!

Thank you, so much, for subscribing, and please feel free to pass this on.

xo Rain

P.S. In 2004 Los Lobos released an album called The Ride, which included originals and some covers of earlier songs. On it is a stunning version of “A Matter of Time” by Elvis Costello. The band said that when they got the recording they just “fell over” and couldn’t work the rest of the day. Hearing Costello’s British voice on the song brings to mind another migration — of coal workers displaced by the collapse of the coal industry in the 1970s who had to leave their industrial towns to seek work somewhere else. Fiona Hill wrote a whole book about getting out of her blighted North England coal town.

Everyone thinks someone else is going to be a refugee. We never imagine it could be us. We should be merciful.