The Luxury of Hunger

I ended my fast today with a bowl of homemade ramen. I had frozen the broth over a week ago, a gift to my future self. Even though I was so ready to eat, I found the soup hard to swallow, and my mouth almost refused to chew the soft noodles and shiitakes. I was hungry and done with beet-orange juice, yet the act of eating felt like an admission of a privilege I wasn’t ready to reclaim.

I had spent the last seven days in a solidarity fast for the men and women detained at North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, the largest ICE detention center in the Midwest. While I was sipping complex juices, hot ginger tea, and the occasional liquid IV in the comfort of my home, the detainees were entering their third week of a hunger strike against conditions that strip away the very essence of human dignity.

North Lake is a place where grief is not an event but a state of being. Smuggled-out reports from the facility detail the constant systemic neglect: inadequate and delayed medical care, spoiled or nutritionally void food, and the psychological warfare of prolonged detention without bond. Non-English-speaking detainees are often handed legal documents in English regarding the custody of their children or the forfeiture of their rights. Even fluent English speakers cannot be expected to understand the legalese and nuance of documents thrust in front of them.

Witnessing from the Secular Sacred

I joined this fast through the Michigan Interfaith Clergy Rapid Response Network. For someone like me, who carries the weight of significant religious trauma, intimate engagement with a faith-based network isn't a casual choice. It has required years of personal healing to be able to sit at this table.

I am here because this group practices a rare kind of humility; they lead through principles of justice rather than religious litmus tests or exclusionary dogma. In my work with them, I’ve found a vital niche: providing secular sacred care to activists. We are all grieving, and we all need ritual and healing, regardless of whether we have a god to name it for.

I claim my Humanist identity more boldly now than I used to. I’ve realized that being "just an organizer" isn't enough. By standing firmly as an AHA-endorsed Humanist funeral celebrant and layperson—and as a grief and death doula—I’m trying to create a wider clearing for conversations about the sacred. The work of a doula is the work of witnessing. And right now, we are witnessing a profound, collective loss of safety and agency in America.

Mapping the Unique Geography of this Fast

In the past, I have used fasting as a tool for personal transition. Those fasts were curated; I would clear my calendar, leaning into rest and treating my hunger as a meditation. I gave myself the luxury of time to expand into hunger, creativity, and new ideas, no matter how leisurely they arrived.

This week was different. The world did not stop because I stopped eating. I was mothering a teenager, navigating a particularly heavy workload, and participating in a packed community-organizing calendar, including a physically demanding May Day rally, a 4.5-hour workshop, and three late nights.

I found myself tethered to a thermos of hot ginger and lemon tea. It became my "fidget toy," a sensory anchor that kept me steadfast. When the tea ran out, my energy usually did, too.

I also noticed a strange phenomenon: because I had so little time to reflect, my insights became more precise. When you can only meditate during your shower and dog walks, you don’t waste those precious minutes on what-ifs and musings; you go straight to the heart of what you need to sort through.

I also noticed my shame. And then that shame made me feel embarrassed. I felt it most acutely at our nearby YMCA. I have recently built a consistent routine of working out with my daughter, but this week, I simply didn't have the caloric reserve to move. I found myself walking the track slowly or leaving abruptly after dropping her off, feeling the imaginary weight of judgment from the "healthy" world around me. I wanted to wear a sign that said, “I’m not lazy; I’m in solidarity.” I felt out of alignment, caught between the sacred space of the fast and the secular pressure to be productive.

Moving With Grief, Not Through It

If you are in grief over the loss of a loved one, you might read this reflection about ICE detention and solidarity fasting and think, "This won't help me get over _____'s death."

I'd like to gently challenge that assumption.

We are taught to "move through" grief, as if it’s a tunnel with a clear exit. If only we check off all the boxes on our list, we'll complete the tasks of grieving and return to normal. But the detainees at North Lake don’t have a "normal" to return to. Families lost to mass incarceration and deportation are grieving a living absence. We are all, in various ways, grieving the loss of a version of America that we were told existed but was actually designed to serve only a powerful few.

Grief is not a box; it is a movement. When we learn to navigate the "small" griefs—the loss of comfort, the choice to be hungry, the discomfort of political awakening—we are actually training our hearts for the "big" deaths. We are learning how to live in the sacred space of truth, even when that truth is heartbreaking.

The Internal Protest

The detainees at North Lake are being pressured and threatened to end their strikes. (North Lake officials are claiming the hunger strike isn't even happening, but we have testimonies from the detainees themselves.) For them, refusing food is the final reclamation of human dignity; it is the only choice they have left.

For me, the fast was a choice I could rescind at any moment. My friends would have comforted me—praised me even!—for "practicing self-care" if I had eaten a sandwich on day three. That is the chasm of privilege. My discomfort was a chosen cloak; theirs is a forced cage.

My fast has ended, but the conditions at North Lake remain the same.

As I move into tomorrow, I will eat complex foods. I will slowly return to my workout routine. I'll shift my protest from internal to external.

In my work as a doula, I advocate for a values-aligned death. But you cannot have an intentional death without a dignified life. We must stop denying that grief is part of this fight and start letting it inform how we show up for one another. We don’t need to "get over" the heartbreak of what’s happening at North Lake. We need to be exactly this heartbroken.

When we are heartbroken, we have nothing to lose but our apathy and our chains. When we are heartbroken, we’re cracked open enough to refuse the cheap comforts meant to keep us quiet. And when we’re heartbroken, we’re vulnerable enough to write timeless love songs.