Before You Look Away

Hey Small Biters,

It’s Saturday again.
A soft morning. A slowness in the air. Maybe you're holding a cup of coffee or watching light creep across the wall. Maybe—like me—you’re somewhere between calm and concern, trying to hold both without dropping either.

This week, a story caught me off guard.

A four-year-old girl named Sofia Vargas is facing deportation from the United States. She’s not accused of anything. She hasn’t crossed a border alone. She isn’t hiding. She’s here legally—brought in by her parents under a humanitarian parole so she could receive life-saving treatment for a rare and brutal illness called short bowel syndrome.

Doctors say if she’s removed from care, she’ll die. Not figuratively. Literally. Within days.

And yet the federal government—under a policy recently revived—is asking her to leave.

Her parents have done everything by the book. They came when allowed. They've attended all their appointments. Sofia receives 14 hours of intravenous feeding each day. And still, someone in an office somewhere decided that a line on a map mattered more than a child’s survival.

It’s a quiet story, tucked below the fold, already vanishing from headlines.

But not from conscience.

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✍️

Where mercy bends, a law stands tall.
What does it mean to care at all?
A child waits where judgment flies—
And no one dares to meet her eyes.

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🍽 A Small Bite to Carry

• A child named Sofia Vargas is being asked to leave the only care keeping her alive.

• Policies can turn invisible until they collide with someone’s life.

• Mercy is not partisan—it’s human.

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I don’t offer this to start your weekend with sorrow.
I offer it to start your weekend with awareness. With texture. With something real to carry.

This newsletter isn't here to shout. It's here to pause with you, shoulder something, and consider what a quieter kind of attention can do in a noisy, fast-skimming world.

There’s more to say—and I’ll say it.

But not all at once.

Until then, rest when you can. Stay awake when it matters. And if this moved you, I hope you’ll stay with me—not just as a reader, but as a supporter. Your backing makes deeper dives, broader stories, and slower truths possible.

Warm regards,
Small Bites

Have a great weekend!!

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