Dear President Trump,

I keep thinking about her, wondering whether she is ok. I don’t know this girl but I’ve spent a lot of time with her in my head since Friday afternoon when my daughter came home from school and told me that her friend found another girl passed out on the bathroom floor in their high school, an empty pill bottle next to her. My daughter was shaken and upset. I am grateful she could tell me about it.

I’ve been concerned about the friend who found the girl; what an awful, scary thing to have to deal with at any age let alone at 16 or 17. The girl who overdosed, though, holds most of my attention and heartache right now. I’ll never know what led her to take those pills. One could say that her motives and situation are none of my business and yes, the particulars are for her and her family to confront and deal with. But we all need to be worried about children who are so desperate that they make suicide attempts; what is driving this desperation and hopelessness?

It would be convenient if I could just point to the legion of catastrophically poor decisions streaming out of your administration as the main culprit to all that ails us as a society, including teenagers who are so hopeless that they overdose on pills in their high school restrooms. But that would be illogical, lazy, and dangerous. The issues propelling such acts have been going on for years and years and you didn’t cause them. There is, however, that wise adage “if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem” and at this point, I’m afraid nothing you are doing is pointing us toward anything remotely resembling solutions to address young people’s desperation and hopelessness. In fact, most everything you all are doing is going in the opposite direction, making the world scarier and less safe for kids who don’t quite fit in and can’t imagine a future that includes safety, happiness, health, or peace for them, whose parents have no idea whether they are going to be able to afford health insurance to take care of their child who has overdosed and needs ongoing care to stay safe and in this world.

We all need hope and we all need safety nets and I pray that you not continue to strip away hope and the few safety nets we have.

May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May your life unfold and intersect in peace.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson