Dear Alison, The paradigm shift that began the beginning of November and culminated January 20 th knocked our country on our ass. We leaned on each other to stand up and prepare for battle. Over the weeks that followed, we wrote letters. We sent tweets. We made phone calls. We marched. We fought for our friends, our families, our children. We fought for our land, our arts, our very souls. We will continue to fight every injustice, every threat to the rights of both present and future generations. We will do this. We are compelled to do this, but it is not without cost. We pretend our skin is thick. For many of us, especially those in the Arts—it is a fiction, a layer of ink and paint to protect our hearts from bleeding out onto the floor. As Tahereh Mafi said during her Saturday afternoon keynote at the New York SCBWI conference, “My thin skin helps me to be emotional.” SCBWI gave us a gift this past weekend, a gift of spirit, of hope, of possibility, a gift of h...