Uvalde. How did we get here? And where are we going?

May 30, 2022

This is not a post about guns or death. 

This is a post about life. About what it means to bring people into the world and raise them, and the contract of safety that we are forced to rely upon when we put them out into society.

Too many things now threaten the assumed safety of that social contract:

πŸ‘‰ The literal air we all breathe still feels unsafe, even two years into this pandemic. 

πŸ‘‰ There are too many of us who have never felt safe, due to our race, gender, or any other differences. 

πŸ‘‰ The lack of resources that we devote to true mental health, well beyond getting a diagnosis. 

πŸ‘‰ The fact that we have all "bubbled up" (now even more so with the pandemic) and we aren't always aware of those in even our own small communities that are suffering.

πŸ‘‰ The partisanship on all sides that is strangling us into inaction. 

WE MUST COME TO TERMS WITH THIS FACT:

People without hope have very little to lose. 

The more people we allow to slip into hopelessness, the more pain and suffering there will be for all of us. 

So how do we fix this mess? 

We give our disaffected youth something to hope for:

πŸ‘‰ A planet that is not burning. 

πŸ‘‰ A world that allows for change and opportunity. 

πŸ‘‰ A focus on what humans CAN do, and how each of us is valuable in our own way.

πŸ‘‰ RELATIONSHIPS that matter and families that don't get broken - even if they part ways.

πŸ‘‰ We must model for them what it looks like to work together to solve problems big and small - at school, in our jobs, and in our governments.

We can't promise our kids a better day tomorrow, if we aren't each working to make a better day today. 

For my part, I will keep fighting for families to learn how to raise challenging kids and get them turned around. I will keep fighting for parents to be heard and respected and find what makes our individual families thrive.

And if you too are using your personal genius to make our world more full of hope each day in whatever way you can, then together we can create hope, and pass it on like our lives depend on it. Because they do. 

And don't ever think that because you are a parent you are sidelined from this conversation because you are knee-deep in toys and snacks. How we raise our children might be the most political act many of us will ever do.  And it is a damn good powerful one at that.

 

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