A piece of me broke a little this week. I’m not referring to the “segmental, comminuted, displaced fracture of the mid left clavicle” that my x-ray showed after yet another unfortunate accident involving me, my dog, a hill, and a bicyclist on Monday night. (And yes, I had to look up what that diagnosis meant because, as I told the doctor, “I’m not a doctor, I’m a social worker.”) That fracture means my collarbone is broken, but it will heal with time.

I’m not so optimistic about the other break, because the attack is ongoing.

A piece of my heart has been cracking a little bit every day since January 25. That’s when Americans who aren’t straight, able-bodied, white males saw the lights dimming on all of the progress they’ve made over the past decades. Now, I feel as though the lights are completely off and the circuit breaker is being guarded by a group of wealthy, self centered, and power hungry politicians who care more about their bank accounts than about other people or the health of our planet.

The crack turned into a break when I received a news alert from the New York Times. Ironically, I received it while attending a conference on abuse and trauma. It was ironic because the article was about words that are being taken out of federal policy and off of federal websites (Disappearing Words), and trauma and traumatic are on the list.

So are breast feed, advocacy, advocate, black, disabilities, socioeconomic, female, mental health, victim, women, systemic, health disparity, pollution, and pregnant people. You know what words aren’t on the list? Male, men, and white. As a woman, I felt as though my power was being erased. Talk about a punch to the gut.

I shared the list with the social worker who was sitting next to me. We were able to joke about some of the words, and when she asked “What are we supposed to say instead of sex (yes it is on the list), I joked, “Well the “f” word isn’t on the list, so I guess that’s just fine.” (For the record I didn’t say the “f” word I actually said THE “f” word, if you know what I mean.)

Then, the woman I was speaking with got serious. Her husband has worked for the federal government for decades, and like most federal employees, he’s scared. He is also a policy writer who has spent the last four weeks re-writing policy to ensure that the “forbidden” words are eliminated. I repeat. We, the taxpayers, are paying a federal employee to rewrite policies to eliminate words, many of which refer to ensuring all people are safe, instead of working on policies that will actually be beneficial. For an administration that has made eliminating government waste one of its top priorities, that seems, well, wasteful.

But it goes deeper than that. This is about ensuring that the balance of power is squarely in the hands of people who haven’t faced discrimination, who haven’t given birth, who haven’t lived in communities with unsafe water and air, who haven’t been assaulted, who haven’t been stopped by a police officer because of the way they look, and who haven’t been told that their identity isn’t valid.

A piece of me broke this week, and I’m not sure if it will simply heal with time like my collar bone. However, I do know it will leave a scar, and scars aren’t necessarily bad. They don’t just remind us of old wounds. They remind us of everything that we have survived and overcome. They show us how tough we can be.

Friends often joke that, based on the number of scars I’ve incurred over the years, I should probably be wrapped in bubble wrap. I laugh with them, but I know that bubble wrap is for things that are fragile, and that is one thing I will never be. I’m fierce, and the more you try to break me, the tougher I get.

Just watch.