We had a soft, fluffy, abundant snow today. The world is so quiet. As soon as my kids settle down, I have to step outside and take a picture. Breathe it in for a moment.

Of all the shitty news of the past weeks, the one that has hit me the hardest, strangely, is the news about shutting down USAid. I can’t believe it is all ending like this. All symbols of power and progress of my youth shattering before my eyes. They weren’t very good symbols, but without them I feel unmoored. I can’t believe it is ending like this. Not in a bang, or a whisper, but in an incomprehensible ramble.

I feel resentful. I certainly feel the loss of what little agency I’ve built over past year and the years before and I feel fucking angry. All this work, all this sacrifice, all this trying to become someone – just to find out, twenty years later, that this someone doesn’t exist. Maybe, never existed in the first place. The irony – my first scholarship program, the one that sent me to Alabama, was called Freedom Support Act. Now there is neither support, nor freedom. I am thinking of the ones who are twenty now. What do THEY believe in? Are they smarter than we were?

My daughter today said that she wished she’d lived at the time before the colonisation of the Americas. I don’t think she really means that, but who knows. I said, carefully, that life was not that easy at that time. She said, I know, but at least I wouldn’t be afraid of the end of the world. I still don’t know if I’m doing it right. Would it be better to let her believe that everything is alright? Or could I do a better job at teaching her how to live as the world is ending?