My son was born four years ago, just a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration. My life turned both inside-out and upside-down. Inside-out, as I struggled once again with bringing the life inside me into the outer world. Upside-down, as events that would once grab headlines for days, if not weeks, were now coming every few hours. The It’s-Not-a-Muslim-Ban Travel Ban. Michael Flynn. Betsy DeVos. I would put my son down for a nap, fall into a half-sleep for an hour, and then wake up to a new horrible reality of Things that Were Now Possible in the U.S..
I knew there was a reason that when I entered my classroom on the day after the 2016 election that I could barely keep from crying in front of my international students. My heart knew what was coming, even if they didn’t know it yet. I felt somewhere deep in my heart that the life that I had built teaching English and fostering intercultural understanding was now dangerously at risk of disappearing altogether.
It turns out my worry was completely founded and warranted. Because two years later, international student enrollment plummeted where I was teaching, just as it was everywhere else in the United States. I grieved the fact that I needed to seriously reconsider my career choice. It was a path that I pursued tirelessly just to be employed full-time.
Now here we are, four years later. I have left teaching, but I have managed to stay in the field of education. There are things that I miss about teaching (advising students, talking with families, joking before class, sharing snippets of American culture) and things I’m wholeheartedly grateful that I never have to do again (grade essays, sit in a faculty meeting that could have been an email, eat like a wolf at my desk while answering emails, just to name a few).
And miracle of miracles, we are saying good-bye to legitimately the Worst President in American History. I don’t feel that those words are too strong to use. And because I believe in supporting my opinions with reasons, here are just a few:
“They’re rapists. They’re murders. And some, I assume, are good people.” On the campaign trail, 2015
“There were fine people on both sides.” About the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, 2017
Separating children from their parents at the border. 2018.
“I would like you to do us a favor.” Asking the Ukrainian president for non-existent incriminating information about Biden, 2019
“No one saw this coming.” About the COVID-19 pandemic, March 2020.
Suggesting that “disinfecting” the lungs by injection may help with treating coronavirus, 2020
There is so, so, so much more.
Before the pandemic, at some point in 2019, I remember talking with friends about how concerned I was about the end of this presidency. I believed that if Trump lost in 2020 and we were following his playbook, he would say the elected was rigged, that voting fraud was rampant, and he would refuse to concede. I really wondered if he would have to be dragged from the White House. We talked about at length about the limitations of what Trump could do to hold onto power. My friends reassured me that the military swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the President.
Some of those words were comforting.
And then January 6th came.
Just. What. The. Fuck.
(Photo credit: Kent Nishimura, Los Angeles Times)
***
I’m not exuberant about Biden being sworn into office. I’m hopeful. But honestly, at this point, I’m drained. Not only by the division between Americans that is visible at the national level, but also by the division between Americans in my own community.
One of our neighbors STILL has a yard full of Trump-related campaign signs decorating her lawn. All Lives Matter. Back the Blue. Lock Her Up (a fav from 2016). God Bless America. And then to string the whole mess together in a frightening display of cognitive dissonance, a “patriotic” Christian cross, lit with red, white, and blue lights.
In January, the Trump flags are still flying.
This is deeply unsettling to me.
I drove through a middle-class neighborhood a few weeks ago and everything about it felt familiar and cozy. American flags hung from the porch or next to the mailbox or from the awning of the house.
Then I saw something new.
Blue Lives Matter flag
How can I explain to you how this made me feel? To see this bizarre twist on an American flag, flying as high and next to American flags?
I had a stone in my stomach just looking at it.
I felt disbelief, anger, and frustration.
I felt cold.
What are we? What is the United States when we cannot even agree about which flag deserves to represent what we hold most dear? Are we really so divided that we’re putting aside the flag that brings us together and pledging allegiance to something else?
It’s not just a flag. People fly flags to identify themselves. And if you choose to fly a Blue Lives Matter flag in your front yard–especially when it’s the ONLY flag in your yard–you are making a bold statement about what principles you follow and what values you hold.
That thin blue line on that flag is a clear divider.
The question stands: Who does it divide?
Who is on either side of that line? Is it police on one side? Community on the other? If it is, then I really don’t understand. Because I thought that the jobs of police officers were facilitated by working with the community, not fighting against it.
Or perhaps the flag is finally saying what we’ve all known to be true for a long time. I grew up on Cops. The theme of the show is very hard to miss. Poor people–almost always black–are criminals. Police keep us safe from them. I don’t recall a single episode where a tax evader or embezzler was dragged from his corporate office for defrauding a company for millions. But a coked-out dude running from the police? Every episode.
But we now live in a world where militarizing police departments is common in the U.S., so perhaps I shouldn’t be so shocked that this is where we are, debating on the meaning of flying the Blue Lives Matter flag in your front yard. My reflective self wonders if we are just on a slow slide into a police state. My gloom-and-doom self cries out that we’re already there. But my hopeful self remembers that we are not there. Yet.
After this last month of news that American women have had, I think I can safely say…
Take me away in your spaceship to the stars.
I haven’t always been interested in space travel.
Truth be told, I’ve only recently found the idea very appealing.
I’m pretty sure the strong desire to leave this planet is emanating from a deep sense of doubt in humanity’s ability to overturn–or at the very least disrupt–rampant systems of oppression.
Women continue to not be believed when they are sexually assaulted. Or if they are believed, their pain isn’t important enough to actually change political will.
Wall Street continues to do its ludicrous work even though it robbed American taxpayers out of trillions of dollars.
Gerrymandering continues to silence and marginalize the most vulnerable.
Refugees and immigrants continue to be the scapegoats for every imaginable social ill.
Trump. Trump. And Trump.
I could go on. I won’t. I’m sure you’re familiar with the issues.
And so. Here we are. Women are told to vote (assuming our vote makes a difference–it doesn’t always). We are told to run for office (assuming we have the means and support to do so).
Sure, I’ll vote. I always do.
But in the meantime, if I’m really being serious, I have more faith that you can get us off this planet than I do in the American electorate’s ability to consistently move our country forward. Climate change is happening fast and if we’re still having arguments about whether or not it exists…
Is that sad or cynical? Maybe.
Or it could just be a logical estimation of the possibility that enoughpeople who disagreewith the direction of the country will actually be motivatedenough to travel to a polling place and cast a ballot.
Societies are slow to change.
For most of human existence, patriarchy has been systemically and structurally embedded in society after society. (Precious few have managed to organize society differently.) Now that many of the factors that originally led to the necessity of patriarchal societies have been altered (division of labor, access to education, etc.), those same underlying assumptions that supported patriarchy are being either called into question or actively fought against.
Yes, societies are so, so slow to change.
Unless, that is, the people in those societies are taken out of their cultural context–and planted somewhere else.
This is one of the reasons why New Zealand and Australia were the first nations in which women gained the right to vote (1893 and 1902, respectively). European settlers (or invaders, from the indigenous people’s perspective), removed from their previous cultural context and banding together to build a life in a new land, were suddenly very flexible on the issue of women’s rights.
Women were, in fact, key to building these societies.
The same happened in the United States.
Women in the U.S. first gained the right to vote in…Wyoming.
And so, Elon, it’s not so crazy to believe that hitching my wagon to your star is, ultimately, quite feminist.
Might I suggest that our new civilization have some political structure where 50% of positions of power are necessarily occupied by women?
Just a thought.
***
I know people have called you erratic for smoking pot on Joe Rogan’s show…
Really? That was the main takeaway?
You talked about so many more interesting topics than that, like your vision that AI could be used as a tertiary level of cognition. And the fact that everything we put on the Internet is “a projection of our limbic system.” (Mind. Blown.)
I watched the whole thing (in 10-20 minute snippets over the period of a whole week while I folded laundry, graded papers, and ate lunch at my desk while simultaneously answering emails…).
I think you’re magical.
PayPal wasn’t your passion. It was just a $100 million thing you did so you could sink money into what really interested you: developing real plans for getting humanity off this planet (since we haven’t mustered enough political will to seriously try to figure out how to stop completely trashing it.)
Let’s leave behind a world that makes fun of science and learning and instead, embraces curiosity, courage, and the path less traveled (or never traveled, as the case may be).
Let’s try once more to make a different world where systems of oppression don’t emerge because of our lack of resources, tribalism, and ingrained patriarchy.
Let’s colonize, Elon. (#commassavelives)
***
Maybe you can’t tell, but I have a celebrity-crush on you. One of those crushes that you have for famous people that you’ll never meet in real life, but somehow you still think that maybe there’s the very minuscule possibility that our paths could cross… And if they did…
Nah.
You probably have a girlfriend. That’s cool.
I’m married. To a very great man, at that. He is extremely smart, too. He had me at his tattoo of the Golden Ratio.
(Can he come, too? Oh, and maybe my two kids? I swear I’m raising them to be decent human beings.)
Your achievements have come up in conversations among our friends, many of whom are engineers. I’m pretty sure my husband’s words were, That dude doesn’t care about money and he’s just crazy enough that he might actually succeed.
Admittedly, I am not a scientist or engineer. I did well in high school biology, physics, and chemistry (I excelled at balancing formulas.) I struggled in algebra, but I loved geometry (Proofs were fun.) But science and math were really not my thing although I have tons of respect for those who live and breathe those fields.
But your new world is going to need more than scientists and engineers who can help take us into the future.
It’s also going to need people who can make sense of our past.
We need stories to help us understand who we are and where we’re going. I am quite certain that without stories, humanity is lost. Human beings need storytellers.
I have other qualities that make me a good addition to your “space-bearing civilization.”
I am curious and I love to learn. I changed my major in college to linguistics because concepts like a universal grammar and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis fascinated me. (Arrival was an amazing movie on several different levels.) Also, I loved the rule-governed nature of phonology, morphology, and syntax.
I’m down-to-earth (merely a figure of speech, I assure you), persistent, and hard-working.
I balance life between being driven by outcomes and diving into creativity for creativity’s sake.
gestating life well past 40 weeks (for a few more years)
giving birth with no drugs
Thanks for giving me hope that as a species, we may not be doomed to a future in which misogynistic, narcissistic, entitled men are necessarily destined to rule this planet indefinitely, to the detriment of the vulnerable and voiceless.
People like you make me remember that there are many people in the world who are trying to improve the planet and preserve the longevity of our kind.
I think I was pushed over the edge with this latest hullabaloo when Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders cited the Bible in their rationale for the policy change.
On Mondays, I “stay up” until 9:00 so I can have dinner with my friends for our weekly Monday Night Dinner.
I don’t have much of a social life anymore, beyond MND and the soul-cleansing Saturday breakfasts that happen at my house when our friends come over and help me remember a time in my life before children.
Lately, my “downtime” takes place during the commute and between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. when the baby is finally asleep and I can get ready for bed **by myself.** Bonus if I’m able to read five or six pages of a book before I’m nodding off.
I’m not complaining that we have children. It’s a decision that we made with eyes wide open–and we took plenty of time to ourselves before we made that decision.
But it’s still hard.
We fight hard every day to discipline with purpose and meaning instead of flying off the handle. We fight hard to “balance” work and home life. I hate that word: balance. It always makes me think of that slowly moving two-sided scale that takes forever to equalize.
Ha.
There’s no time to wait around for that kind of balance when you have two kids under the age of five. Somehow, their needs manage to vacuum all the bits of your time that you didn’t realize were squirreled away in your day.
You’re carving out 2.5 hours of your day to drive from work to daycare to pediatrician to daycare to work for a well-child visit, only to find out, actually he tested positive for RSV, so here’s a prescription for steroids and nebulizer treatments. Administer twice daily and four times daily, respectively. And he can’t go to daycare tomorrow, so figure that out. And come back next week for the 12-month shots. And also take him to a lab to have a blood screening done for lead exposure and iron deficiencies.
And then you’re behind at work because you took off half a day and when you return, you realize 10 minutes before class starts that, oh no, I have absolutely nothing planned for the second hour of class. But you’re a pro. You can wing it. As long as your boss doesn’t decide to drop in unannounced to review your teaching performance (true story several times over, but not recently). And no big deal, you can finalize those three final exams before their deadline in two days and create three more original tests because you really can’t reuse the same tests from the last two terms, while you’re grading the most recent writing assignment that you’ve collected and planning lessons for tomorrow and the day after that…
And then it’s Ash Wednesday, a day when you remember that dust we are and dust we shall return.
And 17 more kids die in a mass shooting at school.
And instead of feeling sorrow, which is a far, far more appropriate reaction, I feel exasperation.
Because HERE WE GO AGAIN.
Listening to the snippets of the unfolding story on NPR is all I can take. I stay the hell away from Facebook this time around. I simply cannot stand to read a feed filled with posts about pro-gun and anti-gun again.
As much as I am pro-common-sense-gun-control, I cannot stomach another round of posts and comments and threads with people so blatantly and carelessly disrespecting each other on a topic that we so desperately need to figure out.
Unh-uh. Not this time.
Because at the end of the day, what are we all working so hard for if we can’t even keep them safe when we send them to school?
“Man, that was tragic. Some people are just crazy. But look how people are responding. The victims were so brave. First responders are our heroes. So tragic. Some people are just crazy. Guess there’s nothing you can do about it. Hope it doesn’t happen here.”
This same ol’ shit will happen again.
And again.
And again.
And we’ll keep reacting the same way again.
And again.
And again.
Sandy Hook happened. And we still couldn’t get out shit together.
I’m so tired of trying to explain to my international students why we have mass shootings in the United States.
They think it’s crazy.
(It IS crazy).
Why do Americans need guns? They want to know. Do they just love guns? Why do they love guns? Why don’t you change your laws? I read that most Americans want to change gun laws. Is that true? It’s illegal to own a gun in my country. Do you think there will be a shooting here?
I wish I could say no.
But schools and universities are favorite places to open fire.
Sorry, but I don’t want to be part of a tragic story. I don’t want to be a hero teacher who throws herself in front of her students to protect them (unsuccessfully, of course) from an assailant, armed to the teeth with guns that can mow down hundreds.
I have two kids. I want to go home to them at the end of the day.
So no.
If you’re a politician who says, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims…”
That is not fucking enough.
Do your job and pass legislation to stop this shit from happening anymore.
Unkind comments on this post will be immediately deleted.
One of the major talking points of Republicans about their plans for replacing the Affordable Care Act is that…
“It will encourage Americans to shop around for their health care.”
To which I say…
Bullshit.
“Shopping around” for health care isn’t a thing in the United States.
You cannot shop around when you don’t know the prices ahead of time.
I mean… Duh.
(You also cannot shop around if there is only one hospital in your area, as is true for all Americans who live far from larger cities.)
If we’re “consumers” of health care, shouldn’t we have the same amount of information that we have when we are consumers of cars or computers, or even breakfast cereal?
But we don’t.
We often don’t know how much our health care costs until we tear open the bill that finally comes to our mailbox weeks later.
Surprise!
***
Before we had this baby, I tried to figure out about how much it was going to cost us out-of-pocket.
You know. For budgeting.
For planning our Flexible Spending Accounts.
You know. Because we want to be responsible. Because we want to make sure we’ve saved enough money to cover our health care costs.
We’re not in poor health. We don’t have pre-existing conditions. We’re fairly young. We’re gainfully employed.
Republicans should love us. Any plan put forth by them should definitely benefit us right? We’re kind of what they had in mind for good American health care “consumers.”
But the truth is you can’t blame “consumers” for the complicated mess that is the health insurance industry, nor can you blame them for the high costs of health care. You can’t tell Americans to just save their money and choose wisely.
I tried that approach and it didn’t work. Not because I didn’t try hard enough, but because the system is not designed to be transparent to patients.
The patients are an afterthought.
***
Our health insurance provider had some estimates for the costs of giving birth in the two main hospitals where I live. These costs were based on their negotiated rates for medical procedures with those hospitals.
But they were just estimates.
So I called the hospital’s pricing line, staffed by the billing department, for a more precise answer.
Ha. Ha.
First, no one picked up the line. It went straight to voicemail. Over and over again.
So I left a message.
Someone called me back the next day.
When I asked the billing department’s representative about specific prices for having a baby at their hospital, he said that he couldn’t give me any prices.
The pricing line. Couldn’t give me any prices.
So I got specific. I told him that I would be giving birth in the birthing center that is attached to the hospital, where I would be rooming in with my baby 24/7. So we wouldn’t be using the nursery. Would we be charged a fee for the nursery? I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s available to you.”
“So how much will the nursery cost us?”
“I can’t quote you a price on that. It all depends on your insurance and how long you stay.”
“But don’t you have average prices for average stays? Anything?”
“We have a price sheet you can look at, but it’s not going to be inclusive of all of your expenses.”
“I’ll take whatever you have,” I said.
So he referred me to this pricing list, published on the hospital’s website. Why he didn’t give this to me at the beginning of the phone call, I’ll never know.
Indeed, these charges showed up on my insurance claim for the birth.
But so did this mysterious $3500 charge. And a boatload of other charges that are all labeled “Ancillaries” and have no identifying characteristics other than a medical code that only medical transcribers can interpret.
I mean, really. Don’t I deserve a little more information than this? If we’re going to pay $1800, I’d kind of like to know what it pays for.
So I wait for the hospital bill to show up. Maybe they have more information than my health insurance company.
Not really.
From this bill, I can see that the ambiguous $1850 charge on my insurance claim is actually for the “Recovery Room.” But the other charges?
Who can tell?
The underlying message here is,
Please just accept this price. Your insurance company and the hospital have already decided on a negotiated rate and it’s really just best that you accept this price, pay it, and move on. See how expensive this birth was? You’re lucky that your insurance company is paying so much. So just suck it up and pay. There’s no free lunch, Friend.
***
I’m not the only one who has a problem with this.
“Childbirth is the number one reason why people go to the hospital,” reports Vox’s Johnny Harris in this well-researched video on this very topic. He finds that prices for uncomplicated deliveries in the United States vary from $1189 to $11,986.
I have to admit, I am slightly jealous that their out-of-pocket expenses were only $841.
But who am I kidding? Many, many Americans now have deductibles as high as $6000 now, making my $1000 deductible seem enviable.
The truth is that knowing the costs of this birth would have been helpful for me and my husband, but it didn’t break our bank. We earn enough money jointly that we can absorb a financial blow like this.
But what about the millions of Americans who can’t save $5000 to have a baby in a hospital?
What about those Americans who are “too rich” to qualify for Medicaid, but not rich enough to afford any kind of useful health insurance plan? One that doesn’t deter people from seeing the doctor simply because of the cost?
So politicians, quit telling people that they should learn how to make wise choices so they can save for their health care costs.
And quit telling people that they should “shop around” for their health care costs.
Not only is it demeaning, but often it is completely impossible.
Betsy DeVos. The refugee travel ban. The Syrian War. Trump/Bannon. Alternative facts. The war with the press.
It’s just so much that it nearly paralyzes you.
Then part of you thinks, Hey, it will be okay. Things will work out. They always do. Let’s just see what happens.
To that voice in your mind, I say this:
Fight.
Fight like hell.
Fight for your life.
Fight for the future of this country.
Don’t listen to that voice. Don’t be lulled into thinking that things will take care of themselves.
This country is bleeding. We are bleeding.
It’s true that if we’re healthy, the bleeding will stop on its own. But does it seem like we’re healthy? And if you feel like things are okay, are you blind to the signs that you see from everyone else?
Do you see the pain of others or do you blame them for their pain? Or worse, do you belittle their pain?
Do you realize that you are bleeding? Or will you allow yourself to bleed until you’re too weak to fight anymore?
***
I’ve been thinking a lot about blood loss in the past few days.
Just a week ago, I suffered from a postpartum hemorrhage.
I was afraid something like this would happen. I even wrote about it in my book, Becoming Mother. Dissatisfied with the difficulty of having an unmedicated labor in a traditional hospital setting, I decided to give birth in a natural birthing center attached to a hospital for my second birth.
Sometimes, people would ask me if I would ever be interested in a home birth.
Here’s what I wrote:
Eerie.
To lose that much blood moves your mind into a place of limbo, caught somewhere between reality and dreams. Awareness and unawareness. The physical and the spiritual. You become light. Hazy. Detached. Almost as if you’re drifting off into sleep.
But it doesn’t feel quite right.
It feels like you’re leaving something behind.
Let me take you into those moments just after it happened to me.
At first, it’s uncontrollable shaking. I’m so, so cold. Nurses cover me with heated blankets upon heated blankets, but still I shake and shake. Then, the weakness. I can barely lift my head from the pillow. The nurses won’t let me walk to the bathroom, so it’s the bedpan for me. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times. With all my strength I push my hips up so the bedpan can slide underneath me.
When they finally let me stand, each of them takes an arm and helps me to my feet. They tell me to look up, not down. They ask me if I’m ready and I say yes.
“Actually, let’s wait on that,” one of them says. “Your lips are blue.”
Then, the fogginess. I can see my husband talking to the nurse, but I don’t immediately understand their words. My understanding is on a several-second delay. The nurse tells me to drink the entire contents of a giant plastic cup of water. I don’t know what to do with it until she puts it in my hands. Using both sight and touch, my thoughts finally click into place. I should drink this.
My husband asks me if I want to eat. I say yes and he hands me the menu. I hold it for a moment, my eyes seeing words that I know are food, but that I don’t understand. Turkey hot shot? What is that? Salmon… is a fish. Salad… Vegetables. Side items are… oh, like fries. Dressings… are for salad.
The menu falls against my face and I doze off.
But when the food arrives, I eat like a mo-fo.
My husband feeds me bits of burgers, fries, carrot cake, cheesecake, salad, juice, more juice, water, soda, salmon, broccoli, pizza, waffles, sausage, fruit cups, and more. I eat it all and with each bite, a breath of life comes back to me. My mind opens and clears. Voices make more sense.
I feel myself coming back.
The next day is deceptively good. The happiness of new life and the excitement of going home overshadow how hard it is to walk and move from one place to another. I tell myself that I’m already doing better than after my first birth. Look at you move! I praise myself. I didn’t tear this time, so I can sit (mostly) comfortably.
I continue to eat and eat and eat. Chicken, kale smoothies, lamb, mushrooms, baked potatoes covered in butter and salt, granola bars, bananas, apples, thick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spoons of peanut butter straight from the jar.
It makes sense later on, this hunger. For fun, I check my Fitbit stats during labor. Look at this.
I know what you’re thinking. The peak must have been during the pushing phase.
You. Are. Wrong.
That period of peak heart rate happened when I started to hemorrhage. As blood poured out of me, my heart pumped more and more blood to keep delivering oxygen to the tissues and cells that were under attack.
It began after I delivered the placenta. My midwife noticed the bleeding wasn’t slowing. She massaged my uterus. A nurse gave me a shot of Pitocin in my right thigh. Another nurse was prodding my left arm, trying to get an IV started as my tiny veins rolled and rolled. I apologized to her as she stuck me and dug and dug and dug for the vein. Stick after stick.
When the Pitocin didn’t work, the midwife gave me Cytotec.
But I kept bleeding.
The nurse finally got my IV threaded. Pitocin and fluids entered my veins.
But warm blood kept flowing out of me.
If you’re cringing in pain, don’t. All that bleeding was completely painless. My body sent me no signals that I should fear it.
What my body did feel were all the people trying to save me. The nurses, poking and prodding me with needles and IVs. The midwife grinding and massaging my uterus to help it contract. It was those who were working to keep me here that I protested against. My body didn’t understand that those pains were signals of my salvation.
I asked my midwife how much I had lost so far.
“500 ccs is what we usually want to see… You’re probably at 1,000 right now.”
And I kept bleeding.
More uterine massage. I groaned. I moaned. I looked for my baby, but I couldn’t see him. I heard my husband talking and figured that he was the one holding the baby.
I must assure you that I wasn’t afraid when any of this was happening.
You forget.
I just had a baby.
I had climbed the highest mountain I had ever attempted in my life and I had pulled both of us up by fingernails of sheer will and grit. This birth was nothing like my first, which had been a thirty-six hour humbling of body and soul that felt more like spiritual possession.
No, this birth was a struggle. From beginning to end. This birth was a seemingly impossible task that required me to engage and confront over and over again. (Don’t worry: I will write more about this later.)
So as I lay there on the bed, painlessly bleeding life out of me, I was not afraid.
What I was feeling was relief. Peace. Profound gratitude. Love. All covered with the surprise that I had just given birth to a boy.
Then, finally, the drug that works: methergine.
***
The seriousness of what had happened to me did not fully set in until the next day. My husband told me that he could tell from the expressions on the nurses’ faces that the situation was getting tense. That we were probably only minutes from a true emergency.
But hey, I had come through and I was fine. Right?
All’s well that ends well. Time to move on and forget about the whole thing.
After all, I had another hurdle to overcome: establishing breastfeeding.
But just like the last time, inverted nipples and poor milk production have their way with me. Every few hours, I try something new. In the beginning, I use a nipple shield while my husband drops formula from a syringe onto the shield to encourage our baby to not get frustrated and continue to feed. Sometimes, my husband feeds him with a bottle while I pump. Sometimes, I just pump between feedings. Then, I try to get him to latch without the shield.
I don’t realize it at first, but I’ve started to lag behind in my eating and resting.
It’s not something I do on purpose. It happens naturally as my mind focuses on what we can try next to continue breastfeeding.
Then comes the Dreadful Day Four Postpartum. The day when my body starts to register the absence of my placenta, which just days ago was flooding my body with estrogen and progesterone. But now, like a baby rooting for nourishment, my body cries out for that hormonal lifeline that is no longer there and will never return.
This is when the shit hits the fan for me.
At first, I’m doing okay. Marveling that I’m not the sobbing, crying mess that I was with my daughter. After my first birth, I would be tearful and weepy all day long. But it’s different this time. I tear up every now and then, but I’m mostly composed and collected. Is it because of some different hormonal cocktail that I’m experiencing because I had a boy instead of a girl?
But at the end of the Day Four Postpartum, I’ve decided to stop breastfeeding. I climb the stairs to where my baby boy is sleeping in the bouncer, and I have to stop to catch my breath. My Fitbit reads 116, 115, 117, 114, a fat-burning heartrate. I hold onto the walls and allow my breathing to slow.
Then I see his face and it’s over.
The crying starts. The choking sobs build and I don’t make an effort to push them down. I close the door and let it out. All of it. I let all of the thoughts surface. All of the memories of when I stopped breastfeeding my daughter come forth, as clear as the day they happened three years ago. I let them come and talk to me. I let every doubt and fear and reassurance express its voice.
I don’t deny myself the right to feel any of it.
These are my emotions and I’ve learned that I need to let them out.
One voice says:
You shouldn’t give up yet. We have so much breastfeeding stuff! Pillows and the pump, nursing pads and bottles, lanolin lotion and nipple shields. Your milk is coming in this time. Give it a chance!
Another voice says:
You did all you could. It’s okay. You know he’s going to be fine. You know it. And fuck anyone who even subtly holds this over your head. They don’t understand.
But the loudest voice of all says:
Sharon, seriously. You cannot do this again. Your body cannot go through that hell again. This is the last baby you will give birth to and hold and care for. Don’t you dare rob yourself of the joy of enjoying your child.
That final voice is right. I know it.
But, God, it still hurts.
I call for Doug and he holds me while I cry. But now the afterbirth pains have skyrocketed because of the weeping and I’m moaning in pain. Doug leaves for a moment and I’m in the bathroom, feeling a tiny stream of blood falling from me. And when I stand, a golf ball sized clot falls into my hand.
That blob of jet black jelly now stains my skin blood red.
I shudder.
I call for Doug.
***
But it gets better.
The next day, I’m relieved that the weaning has begun.
But then the tiredness has returned. At the baby’s first doctor’s appointment, the pediatrician comments that I look really pale.
In the car on the way home, I review my hospital bloodwork that was drawn on the day after the birth by accessing my on-line records. My hemoglobin and hemocrit are way down. I read a brochure about life after a postpartum hemorrhage and I understand that I need to take this more seriously.
I need iron. I need to eat and eat and eat. And rest and rest and rest.
So I do. Eating and resting is what I do.
After I make breakfast, I’m completely spent. So I eat and sleep. Then I rise and I shower. I sleep again. I get up and eat lunch. I rest on the couch and talk with my mother. I sleep some more. I eat a huge snack and I sleep again. I let my friends bring food and I eat and eat more. I sleep.
I do not do the dishes.
I do not do laundry or even pick up my clothes.
I don’t take out the garbage or get the mail.
I forget about any plans to go on a walk anytime soon.
Instead, I conserve and gather my strength.
Every time I eat, I feel life coming back into me. I feel my body swallowing life whole and absorbing it.
I feel reconnected. I feel my mind hook into awareness and reality.
I start to crawl back to the living.
***
This is what I want you to understand about blood loss: it doesn’t just get better on its own.
You have to know that you are not okay. But to know that you’re not okay, you have to rely on more than just your instinct to respond to pain.
Bleeding is painless. It’s the wound that hurts. It’s the attempts to stop the bleeding that hurt. And once the bleeding is over, you can still be slaughtered by it if you don’t equip yourself with enough armor for the battle. If you spend too much of your energy preoccupied with things that don’t ultimately matter, you have halfway lost that battle. And once you realize that you are too weak to fight, it will be too late.
Right now, I am tired. I am weak. I am worn.
Right now, I’m fighting to bring myself back to independence. Part of it is because I didn’t appreciate my own condition. Part of it is because I neglected to understand my own limitations. That instead of pouring energy into nursing, I should have been strictly eating and resting.
Right now, I fight for myself and for my son and we are slowly winning. I look down at his face.
And I think, we are going to be okay.
But not because things naturally become okay.
Far from it.
We will be okay because I’m recognizing and engaging this weakness and tiredness. I’m conquering it with food, food, more food, and rest.
I am not sitting back and assuming that my body will naturally take care of itself.
This is a struggle.
The same is true of our country. If we sit back and assume that our county will be okay because God blesses the USA and screw everyone else in the world, we are in for destruction.
Things don’t naturally become okay. We need to work for it.
But when I read the news, do you know what I see?
Hope.
That’s right. Hope.
I see so many of you fighting. Protesting. Calling our senators and representatives. Even my husband now has Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown on his speed dial and is planning a group meeting to sit down to talk with our U.S. House representative.
Many of you are responding to the pain of watching your rights and freedoms threatened. The right for every child to access good public education. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. The right for every American to have health care.
These battles are good and just.
But we need to vigilantly search for the ways that we are painlessly bleeding.
Where is our attention and what are we missing?
Men, do you fight for women’s equal pay?
White Americans, do you speak out against racial profiling?
Cis-gender Americans, do you squash the laughter when someone points at a transgender person?
U.S. citizens, do you fight to create a welcoming environment for those who are fleeing war and systematic killings on par with the Holocaust?
Christians, do you seek to understand your Muslim brothers and sisters? Or do you paint them all with the same broad brush of suspicion?
Which wounds do we not feel or see yet?
When you can’t see your own wounds, you need to be willing to hear when others tell you that you need help.
Because we need you. We cannot afford to blind ourselves from the truth of what is happening.
Because we are fighting for this future.
We are fighting for this planet because, in the end, this is what we truly leave behind for our children and grandchildren.
We are fighting against insatiable greed for power and the deceit that feeds it.
We are fighting because we see ourselves in those who are fleeing war and displacement and fear.
We are fighting because we understand that it’s not such a crazy reality to imagine that we could be the ones who are fleeing next.
We are fighting for the future.
For life.
For love.
This world still smells like everything I hate
But I’m learning to love, ’til that’s just not the case
And all my friends, they feel the same way too
We look inside the mirror, and all we see is you.
The water’s still rushing and the blood is still gushing
I wish I were talking about the physical discomfort of pregnancy. The concrete discomfort that grows heavier and heavier as these third trimester days pass one after another.
I was struggling with the idea of going to church on this first Sunday after the election. I knew that I would be worshipping God alongside people who had voted for this man. I knew the anger and frustration that I would feel. I knew someone would say something that would send my blood pressure soaring.
But I went.
Because I needed healing. I needed to hear, Help, save, comfort, and defend us, Gracious Lord.
I sat in an adult Sunday School classroom in which, at nearly 35 years old, I was the youngest person in the room.
We listened to an episode of a DVD series by Max Lucado called You Will Get Through This. Before the election, those words had comforted me through the difficult moments of pregnancy. Now, those words address a completely new range of emotions.
I told myself, No. You will not bring up the pain of the election. You will not be the one to instigate a conversation. You are not here to argue. You are here for healing.
But it didn’t matter. It was on everyone’s mind.
I mean, look at this last election, an older man said. And now people are protesting like this? What has happened in the last twenty years? How did we get here?
I think it’s an erosion of values. Look at the young people of today. They have 1,000 “friends” on Facebook, and they think that’s connection. When I was a kid, we talked to each other. Young people today aren’t really connected to each other.
Yes, I’ve noticed that too. When I was a kid, there was more expectation of looking out for your neighbor. We’ve lost that neighborliness. And we need to bring that back.
It’s Christian values specifically that are being eroded. I mean, I can’t speak to what Muslims are teaching, I don’t have an understanding of it, but we’re starting to see a real decline in Christian values among our young people.
Right! Young people aren’t going to church the way they used to. And why? Where did they go? Why aren’t they coming?
Well, there’s a lot of reasons for that, ones that I don’t know that we can get into now, but it’s having an effect for sure. We see those values falling away more and more.
It was at this point that I thought about leaving. My heart was racing. I was fuming.
Geez, I have no idea why Millenials are leaving the church, I sarcastically mused. Could it be because they don’t think there’s a place for their opinions? Could it be because they are being labeled and dismissed as whiny and disconnected? Erosion of values? What about the values that more Millenials have than Baby Boomers? Values like respect for sexual orientation and differing religious views?
I am a regular contributor to this class. I don’t just sit there and say nothing. I open up. I offer personal stories from my life. I allow myself to be vulnerable in this classroom because, usually, I feel surrounded by supportive fellow Christians. But the next words out of my mouth were going to be full of hurtful, angry words.
So I shut up that morning. Because my words would have only fueled the fire already ablaze in that room. Because there was only enough time to really get pissed off at each other. Not enough time to actually talk through an issue.
Not that morning. That morning, I needed to calm down and think.
I needed to sit in the discomfort of being generalized and labeled and dismissed. I needed to feel the way that millions of working class Americans have been feeling for years. I needed to shut up and listen.
I haven’t been doing enough of that lately.
I let this room full of Baby Boomers talk and I listened to their concerns. I listened with the intention of understanding how they were drawing conclusions.
***
My epiphany didn’t happen in that moment. It didn’t even come to me on that day.
The next day, as I listened to NPR’s Morning Edition, I heard a segment on interviews with working class voters in New Hampshire. Then, a light bulb.
The way that I felt in that Sunday School classroom was the same way that many of the rural, working class of America has felt for years. They have felt that their ideas and concerns have been too often generalized, labeled, and dismissed. They have felt forgotten and unimportant. And in Donald Trump, they saw a person who has pledged to not forget them.
The racism, the sexism, the xenophobia, the lying, the bad business practices… All of that just comes along with Trump’s package. But for many of these voters, all of those vices are not horrible enough to deny Trump their vote. And as disturbing as I find that dismissive attitude, I have to acknowledge that their decision is coming from a need for self-preservation.
He’s going to make America great again.
He’s going to bring back our jobs.
He’s going to bring life back into our dying towns.
Even if he doesn’t accomplish all that he says, at least we’ll get something.
And what about racism and xenophobia? When everyone in your immediate social circles is white and native-born Americans, these vices tend to not rank high on the list of disqualifying characteristics in a candidate.
After all, it doesn’t affect you.
It doesn’t affect your family.
Sure, it will probably affect someone. But that someone is probably a “bad person.” They probably deserve it. And it won’t affect your life.
Perhaps it’s quite telling that the people who have been downright mourning this election for the past week are people who have family, friends, and coworkers who belong to the targeted groups that Trump has scapegoated for the past year and a half.
For them, this election has hurt those they love. They have real fear and anxiety over the future and those fears aren’t completely groundless. Overt racism and hate crimes have jumped since this election. At my own university, faculty and students of color have reported racial bullying on our campus.
***
It used to be that tensions were higher between different cultural groups. Now, tensions are high even between generations of the same cultural group. Our realities are wildly different.
In talking with my own mom, I saw it.
Why are people just now acting racist like this? She wondered aloud. What makes them think they can act like this?
Mom, the racism was always there. It was just under the surface. Now, it’s coming out.
I just can’t believe that.
Of course she has trouble believing that.
Because she grew up in white Christian America. She doesn’t have a non-white friend who was flipped off by white men in a pick-up truck sporting proud Confederate flags. She doesn’t have students who were denied entrance onto a public bus, “unless they took their burqas off” (they were wearing hijabs, but I’m sure the driver didn’t know the difference).
For my mother, it is incredibly difficult to see this racism–because she doesn’t have much interaction with people who aren’t white and aren’t Christian.
But I have to admit that I am also blind.
Because I have benefited from globalization, I don’t have to live in a world where I can’t find a job. A world in which I have been outskilled by a younger, more educated workforce. I don’t have to face that everyday.
Believe it or not, I have empathy for this situation. Because it happened to my father.
He was a working class man with a high school education who was left further and further behind by the increasing technological demands of his job. The burden became so great, he had to retire early. For a man who relied on his work to define his identity, the blow of leaving his job was so crushing that he never truly recovered from it.
***
We have to start recognizing our blind spots.
We have to start trying to understand why many of us view this election as another example of how racism and sexism continue to go unchecked, overlooked, or downright condoned.
At the same time, we have to start trying to understand why many of us view the ability to consider racism and sexism in this election as an absolute privilege.
I can just hear the working class voices right now: Wow, must be nice to be able to be upset about racism and sexism. I’m furious that I can’t pay my rent every month. That I can afford even Obamacare. But, you know, sucks to be you.
When we say “let’s come together,” God, I hope we mean, let’s compromise.
God, I hope “let’s come together,” doesn’t mean, “Just accept that you’re wrong already and come over to the good side. The ‘American’ side.”
But we can only hope to recognize the importance of compromise if we find those spaces in our lives where we connect with people who are different from us. Different in education, race, religion, social class, and on and on. We need to hear different voices. Many different voices. And if we can’t hear them in our immediate communities, we need to seek them out.
***
The other day, I went to seek out how some of my more conservative family members–aunts, uncles, and cousins–were responding to the election. I looked up a few on Facebook and read through their recent posts.
When I got to my uncle, I did a double-take.
Do you know this person? Facebook asked me. Then it showed me a green button to Add Friend.
My uncle had unfriended me on Facebook.
I thought it was a mistake.
But no. He had definitely unfriended me.
Did I say anything to him to offend him? Did I like or react to something that he didn’t like? What did I do?
I still don’t know. Other than being a left-leaning family member.
My heart ached.
To be fair, I didn’t grow up with regular contact with this uncle. We lived in different states. We might have met a few times at family reunions. But just two years ago, he drew close to me and my siblings when my father, his brother, passed away.
He started sending me and my siblings weekly remembrances of my father, who had just then died. Every week or so, he would email some thoughts and memories that he had of my dad. He opened a window into who my father was as a young man. In time, he fell out of the practice of sending us those stories. I didn’t begrudge him of that. We’re all busy. Grief remains, but time marches on.
Our connection to each other became his occasional pictures in my Facebook feed. Fishing and flowers, lakes and his shadow on the ground. Picture of his wife, my aunt.
Now: Gone.
No more window into my father’s life.
What this election is doing to families is sad. Just plain sad. Politics shouldn’t override family relationships. Family should be sacred. We might disagree with each other, but families shouldn’t decide to cut each other off because of political disagreements. Just because what we say to each other makes us uncomfortable.
So I will sit in this discomfort.
I won’t walk away from the table.
I’ll keep going to church.
Even though we are a divided country, I will continue to show up. I will continue to represent the groups to which I belong.
Millenial. Mother. Liberal. Academic. Lutheran.
I’ll keep showing up. I’ll listen to you.
I hope you’ll keep showing up. And that you’ll listen to me.
I started this pregnancy in May 2016 to the devastating news of the measly 3-month sentence of Brock Turner, a “man” from my own hometown of Dayton, Ohio. A man who raped an unconscious woman.
Then, the Harambe the Gorilla madness.
Then, a crocodile eating a toddler at Disney World.
Then, the Orlando mass shooting.
All of this set against the backdrop of this shitty election, the Syrian refugee crisis, and constant shootings of unarmed black Americans.
Now imagine having a full month of nausea day in and day out while living through this.
But we pulled through.
Once a Bernie Sanders supporter, I swallowed my pride and embraced Hillary.
I believed that Donald Trump would certainly crash and burn.
I think we all thought that.
And when Pussy Gate happened, I breathed a sigh of disgusted resolve.
Certainly, now, there is no way enough people can stomach the reality of voting for this numb-nuts. Look! Every decent Republican is withdrawing their support! They are finally saying he has crossed the line. They are showing that they care about women.
And then Election Night 2016 happened.
***
We bought pizza and champagne to usher in the first female President. We invited our friends over and we were festive. It’s like Christmas morning! we cheered.
And then Ohio was called.
We shouted. We felt betrayed by our own neighbors. We looked at the electoral map by county. The only blue counties were the ones with the major cities. Clear as day, you could see Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo.
And then we understood.
***
I’ve cried a box of tissues since this news broke.
I’ve had to look my international students in the eyes and tell them, without totally losing my composure: “No matter what anyone else says, I welcome you. I am not afraid of you. I think you matter. This is not the message that I am sending to the world. Please do not think that the way that Donald Trump acts is the way that Americans are.”
I’ve sat in my colleague’s cubicle, spilling my fears about the future, so thankful that she was willing to listen to me and tell me that she still believes in the goodness of people. (I love you, Jeri.)
I’ve cried all the way home from work, listening to gleeful Trump supporters on All Things Considered share their excitement that Trump was going to bring their jobs back (yeah, right) and build the wall (you seriously believe that?) and stop abortions (whatever).
I’ve cried on and off for hours, while my husband listened.
I told him that what hurts the most is that multiple facets of my identity and my values have been insulted by this man who now wants to lead me.
The pain is not coming from a different political party having power.
The pain is coming from being told that who I am (woman, academic, teacher) and what I value (diversity, humility, inclusivity, compassion) are worthy of insult.
I told my husband that I could barely keep from breaking into tears in front of my international students because I realized that I could no longer pretend that our country is the chief beacon of shelter and protection for those who are persecuted. For those who are striving to attain the civil rights that so many of us take for granted.
Canada is stepping into the shoes that we’ve kicked off and tossed into the face of the world. They are becoming the new face of a country of immigrants–and they’re doing it with compassion and community.
It’s ironic to me that so many white Americans are proud of their immigrant ancestry–yet they cringe at the thought of extending a warm welcome to today’s immigrants. They create these untrue historical narratives about our own ancestors. They say they gave up their culture and their language to become Americans. They say they came here “legally.”
But the truth is, we didn’t even have the vocabulary to consider immigration legal or illegal during the great immigrant influx of the 19th and early 20th centuries. (See Episode 47, “Give Me Your Tired…”) People just came. And we just took them. Because we needed them. The Civil War decimated our population. So did World War I.
And those immigrants took a long time to “Americanize.” They kept their home cultures for one or two generations. They spoke their native language. And they were scapegoated for problems in America, just like so many of us are doing today.
So “Make America Great Again?”
That’s a knife to my heart.
How far back should America go?
Should we go back to before women’s suffrage? Or forcing Native Americans off their land? Or Japanese internment camps?
Or how about those Leave it to Beaver days, which white Baby Boomers keep referencing with sweet, untainted nostalgia. You know. The days when black Americans were lynched for voting in the South and the Freedom Riders were attacked and killed.
“Make America Great Again” makes sense if you are a white Christian–and if you cannot imagine this country through the eyes of someone who isn’t like you.
It’s ignorant and myopic.
Donald Trump’s plans for “making America great again” creates a vision of America that looks like this:
20 million Americans stand to lose their health insurance if Obamacare is repealed.
11 million undocumented immigrants stand to be deported from their families and the lives they have built here.
3.3 million Muslim-Americans have been told that they are responsible for reporting “suspected terrorists” to the proper authorities. (Do we ask Christian-Americans to do the same? Did you just do a double-take of the word “Christian-Americans?” Did you stop to think about why?)
And this land of immigrants wants to completely shut its doors to 11 million Syrian refugees who are fleeing from ISIS. We’re completely content to turn our backs on our European allies who are struggling to figure out how to integrate millions of refugees.
***
I told my husband that I’m working through such immense grief about this election. That the last time that I can remember it being this hard to teach through my pain was on the day that my dad died.
And I still went in to teach.
I told my husband that our baby deserves better than this.
Better than sexism, racism, and xenophobia. And better than the rationales and excuses that his supporters make on behalf of this man who cannot control himself. (You’re the puppet! No, you’re the puppet!)
Better than fear-mongering and blaming and ignorance and hatred.
Childbirth is painful. Fucking painful. And I’m familiar with every bit of that physical pain because I did it without drugs.
But believe me when I say this: The physical pain of bringing this child into the world under this next American leader does not compare to the emotional pain that it brings.
Physical pain wanes. Emotional pain scars.
Emotional pain changes the landscape. It can make you callous and cynical. It can leave you hollow and numb. It can drive you to recklessness and disengagement. It can drain your expectations and your faith in others.
But there’s another side to emotional pain that survivors of trauma will unanimously tell you.
It can make you a fighter.
And every time I feel this baby pummel me in the ribs or the stomach, I know that I’m carrying a fighter.
***
My body, and thus this child, have been put through the wringer since the beginning of this pregnancy. At times, my anxiety has been high, but nothing like what I’ve experienced in the last two days. I can only imagine how much cortisol has been coursing through my system.
This morning, I strapped on the pregnancy belt and when for a third-trimester walk/jog. I was still hurt. Still pissed. Still angry.
Then, I started to notice something.
All the political signs were gone.
All the Trump signs that lined our street had been taken away.
And replaced with American flags.
I do not have words for the emotion that I felt in that moment.
But let me draw an analogy.
It was like being punched in the face. And then as my vision returned, seeing an outstretched hand for a handshake.
In the cold, morning light, I started sobbing.
Again.
I thought I was through the pain. But no. It’s still very much there.
Do you mean it? I wanted to ask my neighbors. Does your patriotism extend beyond self-preservation? Beyond white Christian America?
I wanted to kiss those American flags and set them on fire at the same time.
How could we all love this country so much and understand it so differently?
This is the complexity of living in a pluralistic democracy. This is the love and this is the pain. There are setbacks, but hope lives on.
I kid you not, as I walked this path of flags, crying into my hands, not caring if the neighbors saw, perhaps even hoping they would see, this song came up on my Pandora feed.
I’ve never heard it before. It’s called “After the Storm” by Mumford and Sons. Let me share the lyrics with you.
And after the storm, I run and run as the rains come And I look up, I look up, On my knees and out of luck, I look up.
Night has always pushed up day You must know life to see decay But I won’t rot, I won’t rot Not this mind and not this heart, I won’t rot.
And I took you by the hand And we stood tall, And remembered our own land, What we lived for.
But there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. Get over your hill and see what you find there, With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.
And now I cling to what I knew I saw exactly what was true But oh no more. That’s why I hold, That’s why I hold with all I have. That’s why I hold.
I won’t die alone and be left there. Well I guess I’ll just go home, Oh God knows where. Because death is just so full and man so small. Well I’m scared of what’s behind and what’s before.
And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. Get over your hill and see what you find there, With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.
***
Today, I have finally reached my enough point.
Enough crying. Enough sadness. Enough frustration and disillusionment.
Because my baby doesn’t deserve any of that either.
I remember what I once told myself on a desperate January morning in 2014.
When I woke up sick again.
For the third time in a month.
And my 6-month-old baby was sick.
And I still had to go to work.
And there was three inches of snow on the ground.
And I had an 8:00 a.m. class.
And my voice was gone.
Get up, I told myself. You are fucking fierce. You’ve been through worse. You’ve felt worse.
Get up.
And I did.
But honestly, this time, I cannot do it alone. I’m going to need help. From my family. From my friends. Even from readers of this blog whom I’ve never met in person.
I’m going to need to feel your hands, pulling me up from the thick mud of this grief. I need to feel reassurance that many, many of us are still standing after this massive blow to all the American values that I hold close to my heart.
I need to hear you out there.
I need to know that we’re in this together.
That we are still moving forward.
To all current Millenial Parents out there and all those Millenials who will be parents in the next ten years, I say to you this:
We. Are. Next.
We are responsible for raising this next generation of children. What we teach them matters. How we talk about people who are different from us matters. Whether we are serious or joking, our children hear everything. They see what is acceptable and what is completely unacceptable.
And if our kids’ history textbooks whitewash away the pain and oppression that the ancestors of so many non-white Americans have suffered, it is our responsibility to tell those stories. Those stories matter. Those stories are America, too. Even if these stories are painful, we must tell them so that this next generation is equipped with the empathy that this country needs to engage in effective communication in a globalized world.
Let’s raise these kids to once and for all value everyone’s voice, not just the voices of those who have always been the loudest and most heard.
Let’s teach our kids that the road to our own prosperity shouldn’t be paved with the suffering of others.
And to White Millenials specifically, I say to you this:
Let’s stop churning out entitled white children who never interact with anyone of a different religion or race or language. That shit matters. It matters that our kids have friends who are different from them. Because when you have friends who are different from you, you stand up for your friends.
You don’t let people tell your friends that they aren’t what makes America great.
In 20 years, when the Baby Boomers have lost their political power and the Millenials shift the political landscape, let’s make certain that our children will not have to face an election like this ever again.
Becoming Mother 