Hard Things

I am having a particularly difficult time digesting what happened over the weekend in Charlottesville.

Imagery of white men with their torches and their helmets and their weapons.
The epithets they hurled.
The symbols they carried.
The anger they harbored.

And their faces--exposed, clear, proud.

Hate is not hooded in 2017.

I am having a hard time with this--but I should not be surprised by this.

In the wee hours of the morning post-Election Day, I very vividly remember being ridiculed for posing the following question on social media:

"How am I going to explain to my daughter what it means that we elected a man like Donald Trump to the American presidency?"

People told me that Peyton is too young to be wrapped up in such things. This is beyond her. This will all be a blip in history by the time she's old enough to care. To suck it up and move on.

And now, more than six months into a presidency that broke my heart and made me afraid for the future, disgusting and hateful campaign rhetoric has manifested itself into action.

Hate is not hooded in 2017.
These people are no longer afraid.
So why am I afraid?

By not having conversations about hard things with my daughter--about things like hate and bigotry and racism--I am failing in the work of equality.

By choosing to wait until I think Peyton is old enough to talk about hard things, I am complicit in allowing subtle social cues in our world to covertly shape the way she sees other people. I am failing in the fight for justice.

By hoping my daughter isn't paying attention when the news is on, I am failing in teaching her about how we can find opportunities to love harder.

I saw things that made my heart ache this weekend. And I need to do more. We can all do more.

Educate yourselves. Talk about the hard, terrible things. Acknowledge they exist. Name them. And then work to dismantle them.

For me, it looks like talking about hard things with my daughter--and going from there.

To all my parent friends teaching their wide-eyed children about fairness, equality, justice, compassion, dignity, and human decency: I see you. I salute you. Let's keep fighting the good fight in raising up an army of world changers.

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself." - Dietrick Bonhoeffer