The horrors I saw working in an abortion clinic: a thread.

We weren't allowed to keep all of the stray cats and dogs we found on the way to work.

The look on my mom's face when someone asked me about work at Thanksgiving.

Finally hearing the voices in my head again when I drove away from the clinic after a long day of listening to grown adults scream their heads off at me.

My favorite pizza place wouldn't deliver there.

When patients come in with their dad. The protesters are extra, extra horrible to the dads. I just wanted to hug them and promise it would be okay but that was weird.

When the police pull up just to be assholes.

Contractors and vendors randomly drop clinics because of harassment from antis.

Hearing my husband say "be careful" when I left for work.

Sitting at Thanksgiving dinner with my NRA, conservative, anti-choice extended family members watching a group text w/colleagues who were trapped in a clinic in Colorado while an active shooter was in the building murdering them.

Going to work the following Monday.

Knowing the RNC was coming. The police sat me down and listed all the possible ways Republican extremists might try to kill me.

Seeing a regular protester frantically wave his arms to warn us - in the clinic - that someone threw a suitcase at the building.

Seeing patients get out of their cars, see the protesters, then get in their cars and leave.

Seeing Democrats use images of my work in fundraisers and on social media, knowing they'd never go to the mat for us.

The silence in the waiting room. People should talk to each other.

The handwritten mail I still get at my house. Where my kid lives.