I’ve had a hard time writing for the past couple weeks.
First, a six-year-old in my city was tragically murdered by three alleged teens. After writing about and grappling with that atrocity, everything else I wanted to say felt so trivial.
Oh, sexuality and emotional health…must be nice to have the luxury to consider those things from your point of privilege as you stay home all day with your baby in your climate-regulated house that’s fully stocked with food.
Oh, you’re grappling with your identify as a mother, worrying that your love is not enough? It must be nice to have a baby who is ALIVE. And it must be nice to have a child who is not charged with capital murder and likely to face the death penalty.
I know life needs to go on. I know that without our emotional health that allows us to function, nothing changes. Nothing gets fixed. Nothing gets healed. But my words have just felt so fluffy, and when I try to put them on the page, they dissipate like cotton candy in my mouth. The saccharine, grainy residue that lingers…I just want to wash it down.
Around the time that I started processing Kingston’s death, I went through some really difficult days of PMS with a lot of doubts and mild depression. I never used to experience PMS very dramatically, but it has flared up after having a baby. First it was physical discomfort that approached labor pains, and in recent months it has morphed into anxiety and depression. It has been exacerbated by hormone changes from the early stages of baby-led weaning and less sleep due to a new part-time job that starts at 6 a.m.
In the past couple days I had just emerged on the other side of the wall of depression and was starting to feel more balanced and joyful than I have in recent memory.
Then today I heard the news of Trump backing out of the Paris climate accord, and I find myself in fresh pain. I look at my son and am terrified about what his generation will inherit. I feel the myopic, selfish, piggish decision in my belly like a sickness. It feels like a part of me. There it is again. The feeling after the rape.
Our kids have no choice in this. People and countries without power have no choice in this. The vulnerable have no say. Destroy homes, drown whole cities and villages, spur drought and food shortages, create violent battles over diminishing land. Instability and warfare and disease all so some men who want to make a point can have their way.
This is irreversible damage to our environment, our planet, our global home. It is so disgustingly irresponsible. The conversation about curbing the devastation of climate change is where we should step back and say, “This is something that is bigger than us. Let’s work together. This Earth is home to us all.”
But no. We’re the kid on the playground who shows up halfway into the game, makes his own rules, and forces them on everyone else. We’re the kid who doesn’t listen when others protest and try to reason with us. We’re the kid saying, “I win, I win, I win” over all the voices that challenge us. And we’re the kid who actually thinks we won.
America first. America first. America first, even before the Earth. America, do you know that without the Earth you would be nothing? Do you know that in the Earth’s history you are a forgettable moment, a one-night stand?
Except you’re proving to be more like the abusive partner whose hurt never ends. Take more and more of her. Take her until her beauty is lost, her breath is shallow, and her spirit is gone. Take her until she has nothing left to give you. Take it all. All to validate your own existence, to make you feel bigger and more powerful. See how much you like her once you’re done with her.
What you do to this Mother Earth, you do to me. You do to your brothers and sisters, to your children.
We are fools to think we are separate from the land. We have gotten so distant from her that we think we have mastered and domesticated her fully.
Earth, she has her waters, she has her wind, she has her fire. Me, I have my words. Don’t mess with a woman who’s been abused one too many times. They become bigger than the ones who abused them, more powerful than you can imagine. Don’t. Mess. With. Us. And you sure as hell better not mess with our children. And by “our children”, I mean everybody’s children, the children of the world. We belong to each other.
Photo by Christopher Guider
You continue to amaze me. Thank you for sharing so deeply and powefully.