Dear Kids,
I’m so sorry.
I’m so beyond heartbroken that you are growing up in a culture of hate, prejudice, intolerance, and violence.
As much as I wish I could say there once was a time when these realities didn’t exist, the raw and devastating reality is that from the beginning of this country becoming colonized, far too many children and adults alike have had to live in a state of fear for the entirety of their existence. As you are well aware, America has a ghastly history of treatment toward certain groups of people—and more ugliness adds to this narrative every day.
An atrocious number of human beings representing all ages have lost their lives at the hands of greed, power, righteousness, and evil because of the color of their skin, their nationality, heritage, religion, gender, sexual orientation, beliefs, physical condition, and political affiliation. If it wasn’t physical death because of being cast off their land and left to die, lynching’s, terrorism, or murder, unfathomable numbers have endured a spiritual death as a result of being dehumanized by their fellow man to the point of worthlessness. These lethal wounds continue day in and day out.
All three of you, my children, experienced this horror first hand as your high school came under fire in a merciless school shooting that took the physical lives of three of your classmates and an incomprehensible number of emotional lives in its wake. We, as a community, relive this gut-wrenching trauma over and over again as we watch in dread as similar incidents unfold at an alarming rate. This is a nightmare that haunts me daily on so many levels for so many people, the deepest being my primal ache for what you had to endure at such a young age.
I’m so sorry.
I’m so beyond heartbroken that we, as a collective, haven’t done better to right these wrongs.
