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The powerful prayer the pope offered at the border that left thousands speechless.

This is the sight that reduced 200,000 people to awed silence yesterday.

Photo by Yuri Cortez/Getty Images.


It was Pope Francis, laying a bouquet of flowers at a memorial near the Rio Grande, where thousands of migrants have died trying to cross into the United States — nearly 6,000 from 2000 to 2014.

Photo by Mark Ralston/Getty Images.

"No more death! No more exploitation!" the pope said, as hundreds of thousands looked on — on both sides of the border.

Photo by Yuri Cortez/Getty Images.

Of course, not everyone was happy. Earlier in the week, Donald Trump accused the pope of politicizing his visit to Mexico.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

He also suggested that Mexico was using the pope to try to maintain the status quo at the border because they ... make a lot of money off it? Somehow?

The Vatican (obviously) denied this.

Thing is, Trump was right — at least about one thing.

Praying at the border in Mexico was political, and Pope Francis knew exactly what he was doing.

Photo by Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images.

But not political in the way we typically mean "political" in the U.S.

Much as it makes us feel weirdly good about ourselves to presume everything is all about us all the time, this time, it's not. Most likely, Pope Francis couldn't care less about Republican versus Democrat.

The pope cares about people not being exploited and not dying.

Photo by Yuri Cortez/Getty Images.

"Each step, a journey laden with grave injustices: the enslaved, the imprisoned and extorted; so many of these brothers and sisters of ours are the consequence of trafficking in human beings," he said at the border.

At a separate mass on Wednesday, the pope declared, "The flow of capital cannot decide the flow of people." He decried "the exploitation of employees as if they were objects to be used and discarded."

It's a pretty simple message.

Photo by Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images.

The pope wants us to prioritize people over profit. He wants companies to stop taking advantage of immigrant workers with low wages. He wants gangs to stop killing and maiming, forcing thousands to flee their homes. He wants the drug trade to cease in its current, violent form, so that the gangs don't need to kill and maim in the first place.

And if all else fails, and greed and violence continue to uproot communities around the world, he wants people on all sides of every border to treat migrants with compassion and dignity.

Whether you're pro- or anti-immigration, we can all agree that treating people compassionately is important.

And we can all agree that, in a more just, more humane world, there'd be fewer bodies and lost lives to mourn. If that's because we learn to welcome them with open arms, great. If that's because we commit to lifting them out of poverty so that they don't need to flee their homes in the first place?

Even better.

Photo by Yuri Cortez/Getty Images.

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

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Klein Kwagga understood the assignment at his sister's concert.

Some kids are too shy to ever want to get on a stage, some will spend most of a performance staring awkwardly at their shoes, and some kids love the opportunity to show off what they've practiced in front of an audience.

And then there are the kids were simply born for the spotlight. You know them when you see them.

When Dirkco Jansen van Nieuwenhuizen hopped on stage with all of the other brothers and sisters of the dance students at René’s Art of Dance in South Africa, no one expected a viral sensation. According to Capetown Etc, it was the school's year-end concert, and siblings were invited to come up and dance to Bernice West’s Lyfie—a popular song in Afrikaans. And Dirkco, who goes by Klein Kwagga, took the assignment and ran with it.

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Prepare to get Thatcherized.

It seems that Adele is going viral once again.

Perhaps you’ve seen the image in question previously (it seems to make the rounds every couple of years). But in case you missed it—it’s Adele’s face. Normal, just upside down.

Only it’s not normal. In fact, when you turn Adele’s face right side up, what you notice is that her eyes and mouth were actually right-side up THE ENTIRE TIME, even though the entire head was upside down. So when you turn the head right side up, the eyes and mouth are now UPSIDE-DOWN—and you can’t unsee it. Do you feel like you're Alice in Wonderland yet?

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

People share the most practical ways to support new parents

There's a lot of preparation that goes into having a child well before they're even born. First there are the physical changes your body makes to clear up some space for a tiny human roughly the size of a watermelon. Then there's preparing the nursery, buying lots of extremely small clothes, diapers and an expected understanding that while sleep may be your friend, you won't be getting any of it for about a year.

Lots of people give plenty of advice to help you cope in the early days but after the baby arrives, the focus shifts to solely the baby. It's obviously not a deliberate shift. Babies are just more shiny and new that the parents. But not everyone forgets about the parents once baby makes their grand entrance–some go out of their way to make sure the parents feel supported.

Upworthy asked its audience, "what was the best non-baby related gift you received as a new parent," and the answers were a masterclass on how to care for new parents.

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Family

A mom seeks doctor's help for postpartum depression and instead gets a visit from the cops

Too many women lose out on much needed support because of unwarranted stigma.

Canva

Postpartum depression is very common, and treatable.

Jessica Porten recently visited her doctor four months after giving birth to her daughter, Kira. She wasn't feeling quite like herself.

She had been dealing with overwhelming sadness and fits of anger, which she knew was likely stemming from a case of postpartum depression.

In a Facebook post, Porten recounts the story of that appointment.

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Identity

Formerly enslaved man's response to his 'master' wanting him back is a literary masterpiece

"I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

A photo of Jordan Anderson.

In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled "Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On Aug. 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance, and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in theNew York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's "The Freedman's Book."

The letter mentions a "Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), "Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son), and George Carter (a local carpenter).

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

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