Welcome to Let Kids Be Kids, Inc., advocacy blog "We All Deserve Better." Our goal is to post relevant information that will spark action,discussion and interaction, creating a catalyst for solutions and ideas to impact the challenges we face in our society. We welcome comments, suggestions and submissions in support of those seeking a voice. "...Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear..."
"I haven't been able to write about cancer for quite some time. Maybe you can relate? I am coming up on 19 years from my diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer. In those 19 years, I have educated and advocated. I have started programs, testified before legislators and lobbied on Capitol Hill. I finished raising our daughters, who were 10, 12 and 17 when cancer came into our lives. Now I hold their daughters and play with them, reading books and building towers with Magna-Tiles.
Words have not come easily over the past few years, not because I am aging and losing my capacity, but because my heart is full of contradictions. So many things feel complicated when it comes to my thoughts on being a cancer survivor.
First of all, I am thankful. I mean thankful to the core of my being for the ability to live these past 19 years. Also today, a friend of mine is losing someone they love to breast cancer. She has young children and many more years she wants to live. Soon, people will say she lost her battle with cancer. Those words trouble me. They trouble me because there shouldn't be language that implies you either win or lose. But when it comes to cancer, that is what we say. Why?
Today, a wildfire started in an area where people we know live. They have horses, livestock and pets. Part of their family lives close by. There was an evacuation order and a social media post asking people to pray. As I prayed, I felt terrified — were they going to come out of this alive, would they lose their home, their animals? Would the family all get out? It moved me to my core. All I could think was that one moment their life was normal, then the next it was anything but.
Then I saw a post from Nebraska where hundreds of thousands of acres have burned, and it is a wasteland. The post stated that until they get moisture and the grass can recover, every strong wind will carry the aftermath with it. Fire had ravaged the area so badly that there were mounds of ashes everywhere for miles. It wasn't lost on me that in the ashes there could still be embers to reignite a fire.
Then it hit me. Nineteen years ago, my life changed in a moment. The aftermath has left me with an ever-changing landscape. Much like the wind is doing in the aftermath of the Nebraska fire.
I've spent years working on survivorship programs, and the more I listen, the more I feel the confusion — who helps, when, how. It's all so complicated. And I understand why. But it shouldn't be.
We shouldn't have to win or lose. We didn't sign up for this. It happened to us. It's not a competition, and no one wants a participation prize. Every person's path is different, and we don't get to decide the outcome. We do get to use our words, and we should use them carefully.
Let's stop saying "lost their battle." We could say they left a legacy of love. We could say they will be deeply missed.
Instead, those dreaded words — lost their battle — just haunt me. So many friends I have met along the way wanted so badly to live, and they weren't able to. They didn't lose, and I didn't win. We all walked through something really hard and got different outcomes.
Many times over the years, when I have tried to talk about this, people say, "Oh, don't let survivor's guilt get you down." I don't have guilt. I have an awareness that the desire to live or your ability to "fight" this disease doesn't determine who wins or loses.
I know I can't change the world. And I may be the only person who feels this way. But this is a disease that affects millions of people, and we need language that better reflects that.
This piece reflects the author’s personal experience and perspective. For medical advice, please consult your health care provider."
6 July 2026
Friends,
"Make no mistake. I’m rooting for the U.S. as we take on Belgium today in Seattle for a place in the World Cup quarterfinals.
But the game isn’t what it was — before Trump got FIFA president Gianni Infantino to lift the suspension of America’s top scorer, striker Folarin Balogun, who got a red card in a match against Bosnia and Herzegovina and would otherwise have been suspended from tonight’s match.
“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” Trump clucked on social media Sunday afternoon.
When my two boys were young and just learning to play games, they were very competitive — as children often are. When one of them was losing, he often asked me to intervene. “Dad! Adam cheated!” “Dad! Sam cheated!”
Unless the so-called “cheating” was obvious, I gently explained that I wouldn’t weigh in. I wanted them to understand that one of the purposes of learning to play games is accept losses, even if the result may seem unfair.
Later, when they became teenagers and played soccer or Little League baseball, there were times when they didn’t agree with a referee’s call. On a few of these occasions, they came to me in tears of outrage and self-righteousness, wanting me to say something to the referee.
I did not. “We have to rely on referees,” I remember saying. “That’s part of the game.”
The purpose of the game wasn’t just to win. The purpose of any game is to have fun, to enjoy the sport. It’s also to appreciate the contestants on both sides — their skill and excellence. And to follow the rules.
Yet now Trump is showing the world once again that America doesn’t play by the rules. We don’t accept losses and we don’t accept referees’ calls.
I don’t know about you, but Trump’s intervention in the World Cup has ruined the game for me.
How can anyone ever again trust that the United States has won a game fair and square? How can the fine athletes representing us rejoice in a victory when the president of the United States has used his political power to change a referee’s call?
We try to teach our children morality. We explain to them the difference between winning and playing honorably and well. We try to inculcate in them a sense of fairness.
We want them to trust that in the game of life they may be rewarded for their skill and their tenacity, but they may not always be. We also want them to play the game of life with honesty and compassion.
We don’t want them to bully their way to success, as Trump has done his whole life.
Bullies who abuse their power by altering the rules of a game to favor themselves end up spoiling the game for everyone.
They destroy the trust on which any system — be it a World Cup competition, or a political race, or a market economy — ultimately depends.
Now we have a World Cup in which an American president has put his thumb on the scale. As a result, he has forever tarnished the integrity of the game.
Like his big lies about the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump has also tarnished the integrity of America."
"Deb Haaland has spent her career measuring America’s promises against what it has actually delivered to the people who were here first. As the country marks 250 years of independence, she’s doing that math again — this time from the campaign trail, where she’s running to become the first Native American woman governor in United States history.
Haaland, who made history in 2021 when she became the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, spoke with HuffPost about America’s 250th anniversary and how the Fourth of July feels different this year, though not necessarily celebratory.
Asked what she thinks of when she thinks about what her ancestors gave to America and what they received in return, one word came to mind.
“What comes to mind first is generosity,” she said, describing how generations of Pueblo Indians in the Southwest cultivated the desert long before modern irrigation, and passed that knowledge down rather than hoarding it.
“They kept their agricultural tradition alive, they passed it on to generations and generations. They were so, so generous with their knowledge about how to care for the land and the water, and it made New Mexico this beautiful, cultural agricultural state,” she added.
It’s a legacy she says is baked into New Mexico itself — the state’s signature red and green chile cuisine, she said, is a fusion found nowhere else, born from Indigenous and Spanish traditions layered over centuries.
But that generosity has often gone unreturned, she says.
As Interior Secretary under President Biden, Haaland launched a federal initiative documenting the U.S. government’s Indian boarding school era, giving survivors and descendants recognition and a platform to speak about the decades-long assimilation policy that separated thousands of Native children from their families. Her efforts to acknowledge a painful piece of history and find a path to healing for Indigenous communities is one she said is sharply at odds with President Donald Trump’s approach.
In the early months of Trump’s second term, federal websites temporarily scrubbed references to Native code talkers and Tuskegee Airmen, while many women and minorities have been pushed out of federal jobs as the administration has targeted DEI-related roles and agency initiatives.
“That is not in line with what our 250th anniversary of this country should be,” she said. “We should be celebrating all the people who sacrificed so that our country could be here today.”
The erasure she described under the current administration is not limited to Native history. Haaland, whose father was a third-generation Norwegian American, connected her own family’s immigrant roots to her concerns about the administration’s “equally as disturbing” immigration policy.
Asked what she would want Americans to consider — whether they’re grilling in the backyard or watching fireworks — as they mark the country’s 250th, Haaland circled back to a simple point: remember whose land you’re on.
She noted the land acknowledgment Valerie Jarrett, Obama Foundation CEO and former adviser to President Barack Obama, gave last month at the dedication ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center. Haaland pointed to the acknowledgement, which honored Chicago’s first inhabitants, as an example worth following, even as she recognized some Native people see such gestures as insufficient.
“I know that some Native folks feel like it’s too little, too late — I appreciate it.” she said. “I think we should always think about whose land we’re on. It wasn’t always the United States. There were thousands of thriving communities across the United States long before any ‘explorers’ ever came to this side of the hemisphere.”
Haaland continued, “I am here because they persevered, and I think Native folks across the country recognize that they’re where they are because they persevered. And not without a lot of sacrifice, violence, you know, all of the things that they survived through. They tried to eradicate every single Native American person in this country, and they failed at it.”
That history of persistence is inseparable from her own political origin story. Haaland got her start in politics registering Native American voters in Indian Country. Native Americans weren’t granted U.S. citizenship until 1924, and in New Mexico, they couldn’t vote in state elections until 1948.
As for her own Fourth of July plans, Haaland won’t be watching fireworks from the National Mall, as she did during her time in the Biden administration.
She’ll be at a parade in New Mexico, she says, handing out campaign buttons and stickers from a float.
It’s a typical campaign trail day for a candidate, but an extraordinary chapter within the historical arc — 250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence described Native Americans as “merciless Indian Savages.”
Today, one of their descendants could become the first Native governor in New Mexico’s history, and first Native American woman governor in the history of the U.S.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, right, and Bryan Newland, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, left, present President Joe Biden with an Eighth Generation blanket from a tribally-owned business, embroidered with "Joe Biden Champion for Indian Country," at the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior in Washington, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024
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But beneath this idyllic scenery lies something known as the “paradise paradox”. As in many US resort areas, the suicide rates in the Tahoe region, including the city of Truckee, are far higher than the state average – and these communities don’t have enough resources to deal with the issue.
Since 2022, there have been nearly 40 confirmed suicide deaths in Truckee, South Lake Tahoe and four lakeside counties, an area with a combined population of about 73,000, according to an analysis by the Tahoe Daily Tribune. Nearly one-quarter of these involved firearms. This puts the suicide rate at nearly double that of California’s 10.1 per 100,000 people.
“Tahoe is a place that presents itself as somewhere you want to be,” said Nathan Wheeler, a certified trainer at Soul Shop, a faith-based suicide-prevention program. “But beautiful places sometimes shadow these problems – a transient community, an economy that exists outside its residents, affordability issues. These kinds of things breed desperation and a lack of hope.”
In response, a growing network of residents, advocates and local health professionals have come together in recent years to try to bring more resources to the area. “Someone has to notice and start to care,” said Amy Machin-Ward, a South Lake Tahoe resident who helped form a local suicide-prevention group.
Experts say there are many factors behind the paradise paradox, including a lack of healthcare access in rural areas, and geographic isolation, which can lead to social isolation.
On the south shore of the lake, which is considered more urban and has a larger population, there are far fewer mental health providers than in the rest of the state: 153 per 100,000 people, according to a 2024 community health report from Barton Health, the only hospital in South Lake Tahoe. That’s 170 fewer than California’s 323.7 per 100,000.
Meanwhile, Tahoe’s north shore, which is more affluent and less densely populated, has a similar suicide rate as the rest of the state, according to a 2025 Tahoe Forest Health System report. But even across these disparities, both the north and south shore reported that up to 10% of adults, most of them low-income, were unable to access mental health services in the past year.
In addition to a lack of mental health care, the area has been without an official suicide-prevention network for more than three years, after funding for the existing one ended.
Debbie Posnien, executive director of the Suicide Prevention Network in Minden, Nevada, says that area residents often make a 40-minute drive to attend her organization’s support groups. This shows that there’s a clear need for local services, she says.
“Those clients tell me they don’t have anyone at the lake to talk to,” she said. “They have issues with their insurance, places are booked up. And the community is so small there, they worry about being able to talk without being judged.”
Jody Wright, executive director of Nevada-based organization Tahoe Family Solutions, which offers low- to no-cost mental health programs, has had a similar experience. “Sixty-five per cent of our patients are from California,” she said. “The mental health crisis doesn’t stop at a border.”
The nature of work in resort towns can also play a role in high suicide rates. Residents rely on the tourism and ski industries, which means seasonal employment, higher safety risks and a high cost of living – all of which contribute to a less stable and more stressful way of life.
In addition, many resort towns have a reputation for a party culture and heavy drinking and substance use, which “can oftentimes mask or worsen underlying mental health conditions”, said Shannon Decker, founder of the program Zero Proof, For You, which aims to open conversations about drinking culture in the Tahoe region.
One factor sets Tahoe apart from other California resort areas: its proximity to Nevada, where gun laws are much less restrictive. Compared with California, gun purchases in Nevada are cheaper and don’t require state permits, licenses for open carry or firearm registration, though they do require background checks. Unlike California, there is no wait time after purchasing firearms to bring them home.
Douglas county, one of the five counties that extend into the Lake Tahoe basin, was one of four rural counties in Nevada that voted for second amendment sanctuaries in response to background checks for private sales. Sheriffs in at least seven Nevada counties said they wouldn’t enforce stricter background screening laws.
As long as the firearms are still legal in California, it’s an easy choice to purchase them across the border.
Research has shown that access to firearms increases the risk of suicide, not because the firearm increases thoughts of suicide, but because it provides access to a more lethal method. According to a landmark study, handgun owners had a rate of suicide much higher than people who did not own guns – three times as high among male handgun owners and seven times as high for female gun owners.
Things are starting to change. In 2013, the Truckee community rallied to form a suicide-prevention coalition after five young men died by suicide.
The Tahoe Truckee Suicide Prevention Coalition, which serves the north shore and brings together the county government, local non-profits, school districts, the police department and hospitals, now provides resources for prevention, and support for those who have lost people to suicide. It also occasionally provides services to the south shore, which does not have such an organization.
“There’s so much fear and stigma. In most ski communities, they do not have that level of mental health literacy to be able to talk about suicide,” said Decker, who helped create the coalition with Machin-Ward. “And the antidote is communication and support.”
Other efforts are happening on the slopes. Kari Brandt, president of the Sierra Nevada Resiliency Team, which provides support and resources to ski employees, said that about eight years ago, the ski industry finally started addressing stress and mental health. One way they’re doing this is through resiliency teams made up of ski workers trained in peer support, stress injury frameworks and trauma identification. They can listen to and understand the challenges people in ski areas face, then connect them to the right resources or offer coping strategies for dealing with high-stress incidents.
“Suicidal ideation can happen as a result of overwhelming stress,” said Brandt. “We don’t have to shame that, but we can put these tools of prevention in place if it does happen.”
Brandt has helped to create these types of teams at several ski areas throughout the Sierra Nevada region, and by next year hopes to have every ski area be a part of the network.
Last year, the Sierra Nevada Resiliency Team held its first free, in-person regional training for people from 10 ski regions, and offered information about suicide prevention, incident support and peer support.
“It will always take grit to work in the ski industry, so being able to talk with someone who understands what you’re going through is pretty key,” said Brandt.
Other groups are tackling suicides by addressing firearm safety and access.
A suicide-prevention program in Washoe, Nevada, which borders Lake Tahoe, has put together firearm education and safety programs, which allow for temporary and voluntary surrender of firearms to trusted storage partners. “Whether you’re giving it to a retailer or to a trusted family member, we all become part of a secure storage network that helps prevent suicide,” said Joe Dibble, one of the co-founders of Washoe Suicide Prevention Alliance.
Cynthia Tate, another co-founder of Washoe Suicide Prevention Alliance, said this strategy is about putting time between suicidal thoughts and action. “Creating time and distance between a person in crisis and access to lethal means can save lives,” she said. “About 90% of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide later.”
For others, suicide prevention is deeply intertwined with other systemic injustices, such as racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia and homophobia – and the ways they affect mental health.
“It’s not the individual that’s the problem. There are barriers to accessing care, and life is much harder without privilege,” said Angie Reagan, founder of the community group Peace Love Tahoe, which advocates for mental health, connection and inclusivity. “Anybody can struggle, but it is a lot harder when you don’t have that privilege.”
“Tahoe is the most beautiful place in the world,” Reagan went on. “It was my dream to live here. But it’s also a beautiful little bubble, a place for escapism and people sometimes don’t want to talk about these hard issues.
“What we really need is consistent education, awareness and training.” Local government and healthcare systems, she added, “need to step up and offer something to the community. They need to try.”
