Should You Leave America Before It's Too Late?

The Impossible Math of if and When to Go

I’d been researching European cities and tropical destinations for years, but a few months ago, I made a decision.

Lisbon, Portugal.

I booked my flight. I booked accommodations for six months. I hired an immigration lawyer and began the Digital Nomad visa process.

But that’s when things got real.

I’m leaving my 19-year-old daughter. I’m leaving a relationship with a wonderful man who continues to love and support me, even though he can’t come with me. I’m leaving my friends and my country. I don’t know if I’ll stay for six months, a year, two years or forever. But I’m leaving.

In normal times (i.e. not on the precipice of democracy’s demise), I’d expect to struggle with the many and varied aspects of such a choice.

The grief of leaving behind loved ones, the uncertainty of what’s ahead, the complicated logistics of getting a visa and moving to another country, and the doubt of choosing such a major self-imposed fork in the road.

But these are anything but normal times, and so all the expected doubts and fears have been overshadowed by the disturbing reality unfolding in our country right now.

What the Actual F…

I’ve been trying to write this post for the last few days. I’d planned for it to be about a more broad examination of the murky terrain between making a decision to move abroad and actually leaving.

But I’ve been paralyzed by fear and grief and anxiety as the daily news rolls in—bad, then worse.

So tonight, after a half hour of staring at a blank page while grinding my teeth and doomscrolling my Substack notes feed, I decided to run myself a bath. It was too much to digest—all the cruelty and horror. It lodged in my gut like poison.

I sank beneath the steaming surface of the water, surrendering the tightness in my chest to the heat.

That’s when I started crying for all the unnecessary suffering that has already been inflicted, the injustice of it, and the many seeds of suffering yet to be harvested. A wave of anger shot through me and I screamed “What the actual fuck!” Out loud. To no one.

How Do You Make a Plan on Quicksand?

No, these are anything but normal times. The past few days feel like the early days of Covid—when we all knew something much larger than we could yet comprehend was in progress and would change life as we knew it.

But this is so much more harrowing, at least to me, because it is willful. It is malice. It is a choice. It is by design.

The forces of evil are gathering.

Does that sound dramatic? It’s not. It’s observation. It’s a chill up the spine.

And so how does one make a plan to leave the country and move abroad when the calculus keeps changing?

Two weeks ago I was questioning if I was being alarmist. Now those concerns seem quaint. Now it’s a full-on dystopian five-alarm fire.

So I keep asking myself, how do I assess risk and make choices when we’re all standing on quicksand? For example, I never thought I’d have to ask myself this question:

What percent risk are you willing to tolerate that you or your daughter could end up disappeared to a concentration camp in El Salvador? It’s a trick question, because the answer is NONE PERCENT.

NONE MOTHERFUCKING PERCENT.

And yes, of course I recognize my privilege in having an option to leave, which so many don’t for myriad reasons. And yes, I know I’m not the (current) target demographic, being a white, American-born citizen and passport holder, as is my daughter. We’re not the target…yet.

If They Can Disappear One Person…

We keep hearing from the experts on constitutional rights and authoritarianism, as well as the judges currently making decisions on the Abrego Garcia case, that if they can disappear one person, they can disappear any person.

Although for me, as a Jew, and I’m guessing many others, this fear is not about logic—it’s an echo of generational trauma that lives in our cells.

The fact that you can get kidnapped off the streets or from your home and taken to a concentration camp to die—those were horror stories I grew up steeped in, hearing about in my family, watching in movies, and then from the man I married, who was the son of a Holocaust survivor.

But it was the past. That was why you didn’t have to worry anymore. It was in the past. But never forget.

So what’s happening now…it activates a terror inside me that doesn’t look logical from the outside. It’s not about what demographic of person they’re targeting right now. One person kidnapped can be any person kidnapped.

Maybe it’s not tomorrow. But we’re not even 100 days into the administration and our country is already radically transformed. How can we know what it will look like in six months? A year?

Is it just me or maybe you’re also trying to adjust to the fact that the words “concentration camp” and “gulag” are now part of our everyday lexicon.

Political Asylum?

So as I think about my move to Lisbon, which just a few weeks ago still felt like the beginning of a long-held dream—expansive, exciting, and full of freedom and possibility—a dark pall has fallen upon it.

When I met with my lawyer a few days ago, we were going over the template of my personal statement for the visa application. It asks you to fill out why you’re seeking to move to Portugal.

She said, “Just write political asylum.”

I said, “Oh?” I was shocked. “Is that okay to write?” It seemed dramatic, but hey, that was five days ago.

And she said, “Yes, we understand here, about the U.S. That’s what you should write.”

Her matter-of-fact reflection jarred me. But the truth is the world is watching what’s happening in this country. They see it.

I’m not suggesting that I am a refugee. But I am saying this country no longer feels safe to me. I am fortunate to have choice in where I go and enough means and a U.S. passport to do it. I recognize that privilege and that not everyone has it, for many different reasons.

I don’t have any illusions that Lisbon will be a utopia, just a more humane place to live. It’s a country with its own flaws and history and culture and I will do my best to integrate and contribute positively to it.

If you want to know more about why I originally decided to move, see Why I’m Leaving the U.S. and Why I’m Leaving the U.S Pt. II.

But for the last week my mind has become a hamster wheel of what-ifs that change every moment, with each new piece of news.

The Hamster Wheel

Just for funsies, here’s a peak inside my (very neurotic) mind at any given moment (the run-on sentences intentional to simulate my actual thought stream—feel free to skip or scan, read at your own risk):

“Am I a terrible mother for moving abroad and leaving my daughter in a country that’s just been hijacked by a dictator? Why can’t she just come with me she’s so stubborn she would love Lisbon how can I get her here…when is the point where I can play the mom card and insist she get on a plane, I wish she was still under 18…what if I don’t do it in time and they close the borders or something terrible happens what if civil war breaks out what if we invade Canada what if the economy collapses what if they impose martial law what if there’s a shooting what if I come back to visit her and I’m detained at customs what if I just shouldn’t go what if I’m selfish for going what if she has an accident and I’m not there what if I get sick…

No no I absolutely should go to get myself settled there so I can bring her over when she’s ready if she’s ever ready so she has an escape plan too, but maybe I shouldn’t leave she’s my only family what kind of mother am I? But I have to go get us a safe place outside the U.S. but what if it’s safer for me to stay but what if I’m overreacting what if I’m making it up some people aren’t worried at all, life goes on I should probably start watching videos about knitting and cats instead of politics but it’s not going to get better any time soon I’m pretty sure about that and what if my plane crashes because the FAA is gutted and what if there’s another pandemic because the CDC and HHS are gutted and what if…”

I like to think I don’t typically ruminate quite this much, but again, these are not normal times. And that’s only the rumination about my daughter! I didn’t include the one about leaving the beautiful man asleep next to me.

Anyway, I want to be strong for my daughter. I don’t want her to see how terrified I am, how much grief I feel for our country, though I know she knows. I want to be the kind of mother who just stays in one house forever to give her some sense of stability, even if it’s ultimately an illusion. But I’m not that mom.

I want with all my heart to assure her everything will be okay. But will it? I mean, let’s be real. Will it?

The Night Before

Lake Kivu, Rwanda

I keep thinking about this heartbreaking book I read back in 2011 about the 1994 Rawandan Genocide: Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculée Ilibagiza.

In the book, she recounts how the night before the genocide began, her father urged her and her brothers to flee across Lake Kivu—a large lake on the border of Rwanda and what was then Zaire.

He sensed the danger and wanted them to go, believing they would be safe on the other side.

But they didn’t leave—in part because they didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of what was about to unfold and also because her father was a prominent member of the community. He believed that the relationships he’d forged with their Hutu neighbors would protect them.

His hope in humanity was tragically misplaced.

Look, it’s not that I think we’re on the edge of a genocide here. But we’re on the edge of something very dark. It is a paradigm shift so massive that many just don’t believe it can happen here, even though it is already happening.

Ever since I read Left to Tell fourteen years ago, that scene she describes from the night before has stayed with me. Lake Kivu was right there. They were a boat ride away from safety. But they missed their window for escape, and by morning it was too late.