I feel things differently than I did before I was a parent.
Before I was a parent, when I saw a tragedy on the news, my primary feeling was discomfort. I felt bad for the people involved. Sad about the situation. But all of my feelings were somehow… muted. Like I was removed from the situation. Which, technically I was.
But after having children, that separation between me and the hard, scary parts of life diminished. Everything felt so much more real, more raw. Like I was driving down the interstate just like I had been my whole life but suddenly I didn’t have a windshield. It takes my breath away and hurts but I have to keep my eyes open because it’s almost scarier not to see where we’re going.
I feel like this a lot lately. This morning in my scroll through the Internet I see news of child fatalities in a school bus crash. I see a video of nurses pulling premature babies from incubators in a smoke-filled room as the last hospital in Aleppo was bombed. I see humans who are standing up for what they believe in being injured by freezing cold water sprayed from high pressure hoses by other humans. I see a group of white nationalists saying things that I literally cannot even wrap my mind around as they celebrated the election of our next president, believing that he will help bring attention to their movement. Meanwhile, said president elect is too busy criticizing members of the Hamilton theater production, staff of the TV show Saturday Night Live, and the media for exercising their freedom of speech to notice all the hate crimes being carried out in his name.
I see people being terrible to each other in the name of their beliefs. People disowning friends and family members over their votes. People being disowned from their friends and family members because of their vote. People dreading Thanksgiving celebrations with their families because we are so torn up about all of it.
I see all of this happening and, even though most of it is not happening directly to me, it sometimes feels like it is.
Perhaps that’s an ignorant thing to say. I mean, obviously there are people who are significantly more affected by all of this than I am, so it feels almost presumptuous to feel anything.
But then I think, maybe that’s how it should be. As hard as it all is, I would rather live in a world where we connect with each other in such a way that when one of us hurts, we all bleed. (Maybe our disconnect, our ignorance, our separation is part of the problem.)
Something about creating a life, witnessing its first moments, nursing it through the tender first years… it changed me. It changed the way I saw humans. Suddenly the kids on that bus were my six year old and her friends. Suddenly one of those preemies in incubators being evacuated was my newborn. Those people being sprayed with gas and freezing water were my friends. My tribe.
It sucks that all these things and more are happening all around us. It sucks that it hurts and it’s hard on so many levels. I don’t even know how to begin to go about raising a child who is prepared to feel all of this. Because honestly, I don’t know how to begin to go about feeling all of this.
And what’s more, I don’t know what to do about any of it. What could I possibly do that would matter? And yet how can I stand by and do nothing?
I don’t know the answer. I speak up and then I overthink what I said and I worry, but then I convince myself that it’s better than saying nothing. I read books and I read other perspectives and I read things that make me uncomfortable and I try to be just a little less ignorant. I research government and I work up the nerve to call my state representatives even though it’s completely outside of my comfort zone.
And I snuggle my babies and I plan ways for us to give to those in need as a family this year because the world needs it more than ever. And I read them books about people of different races and different cultures and we talk about loving each other and we keep a gratitude journal.
And it still feels like so little in the face of so much. But I don’t know what else to do.
So for now I just do the little things I can. And I scroll through the news full of so much fear and heartbreak and the best I can do is to let it hurt. To let it scare me enough, let it break my heart enough to make me want to do more.
