issue #1: living in the space between grief & rage

What happens when you are so far beyond a broken heart?

As a mother, I sometimes imagine all the ways my children can die.

There’s a thousand ways it could happen, I know. Images flash in my mind, glimpses of what could be when danger looms near. A car gets too close to the curb when we’re walking on the sidewalk. Another rolls through a stop sign just as we cross the intersection. I imagine scooters flipping and bikes ramming into walls. Trucks driving in the wrong lane. I see baseball bats swung too close to heads and escalator rides gone awry. Every fever brings on the reality that illness can hit anyone at anytime, that many don’t recover. That that could be one of mine. I tell myself to breathe deeply and heavily when they go onto the roof with their dad to string the Christmas lights. But I don’t actually breathe until their feet are back on the ground. I grip their hands tight on the Ferris wheel, remind them to sit and not lean over too far. Remind them not to dive into the shallow end. To not walk too far out into the ocean.

My kids think it’s funny. So does my husband. “Mama, you worry too much!” the little ones tell me. “Oj, breathe, it’s okay,” my husband says.

But I’m a mother. Worry is what flows in my veins. It sits in the bottom of my stomach and stands without warning when threat arrives. It grimly whispers all the ways that my hearts, the three that live outside of my body, could be taken away.

Some of this is my anxiety, I know. But the rest is my motherhood. The part of my brain that changes when babies are born, the part that is conditioned to sense danger in every corner.

It’s the part that screams in silence when nightmares are near.

And here, in America, nightmares are always near.

#

I was pregnant with my oldest child and a preschool teacher when Newtown happened. I distinctly remember sobbing on the couch, unable to peel myself away from the photos of those beautiful babies slain mercilessly in their own goddamn classrooms. I grappled with how the hell I could’ve decided that it would be a good idea to bring a child into this world.

The next day, I hugged my own 3- and 4-year-old students tightly and kissed their sweet foreheads over and over. I smiled extra wide to shelter them emotionally while mentally analyzing the logistics of how I could shelter them physically if we were under attack. How many kids would I be able to shield with my own tiny body if I threw myself in front of them, I remember thinking. How quickly could I clear out cabinets to hide them if I had to? I rifled through the materials in the cabinets, piling things high onto the counter. My students asked if I was looking for something.

I was. I was looking for space.

There has to be enough space for them all, I kept thinking. I’ll make sure there’s enough space for them all.

When parents dropped their kids off to me that morning, our eyes were rimmed the same swollen red. I looked into their eyes and we told stories without talking. “Keep them safe, keep them safe,” they pleaded silently. I wondered if they knew how quickly I’d give my life to protect their kids.

I couldn’t imagine what they were thinking that day, but I can now. They wondered when would be the last day, the last day they dropped their kids off and wouldn’t pick them up.

This is America. Nightmares are always near.

#

That day was the first that I felt a hypervigilance so intense that it consumed me. It came so quickly that I hardly noticed as it seeped slowly through my skin and took residence in my bones. It hasn’t left since. And after three kids of my own, I recognize it living within me, sitting quietly behind grief and just ahead of fear. It’s found its place in me and I don’t think it’ll leave. I’m not sure I want it to.

It walks with me as I walk with my kids, awareness heightened at every turn. It’s what makes me check for exits and quiet hallways when we enter malls and movie theaters. It notes which shelves are empty and primed for hiding as we stroll through grocery stores. It keeps tabs on who is using which restroom at the library and which one is open. And which one has a lock. It’s the thing that, before noticing anything else, makes mental notes of how many cabinets and bathrooms and closets are in my kids’ classrooms.

Hypervigilance, as we know, is a trauma response. And trauma is what we live each day.

This is America. Nightmares are always near.

#

What happened in Uvalde is not senseless. We’re lying to ourselves if we don’t recognize that it makes perfect sense. Lawmakers that intentionally protect a right to bear arms over a living child’s right to life is one with definite clarity and purpose. This is not about life. This is about control and power.

I am broken and full of rage and I want that power. For all the mothers in Uvalde who are left in shattered pieces on the ground. For all the ways they have to gasp for breaths as they try to live in this grief for the rest of their own lives. For the siblings who will be shells of people from this day onwards. For the classmates who will undoubtedly be consumed with fear and nightmares. For those parents who will struggle to support their kids through unbearable trauma. For the teachers who mourn their own. For all the ways they sacrificed and dedicated their lives to children and for all the ways it still wasn’t enough.

For all the ways everything we do is still never enough.

In a matter of weeks we went from “Will our children grow up with access to their own bodies?” to “Will our children grow up?”

This is America. Nightmares are always near.

#

My toddler daughter’s room is decorated with framed illustrations of people for her to look up to—illustrations of females who stood in their power and made change. “These are the women who came before you. You can be who you will be because of the ones who came before you,” I tell her softly as she chants their names in her tiny toddler voice. Jane. Malala. Ruth. Frida. Rosa. Ida.

“They came before you, and you’re next,” I say.

But that’s not the whole truth. There is one more. One who stands in-between the women on the wall and the little girl who will follow. The one who is the first face she sees in the morning and the last face she sees at night. The one who holds her gently, guides her strongly, protects her fiercely. The one from whose blood that little girl was born.

It’s me.

What I do will change her world more than anyone else. What I pour into the world, I will leave for her and her brothers. What I do now matters. It’s easy to think that it doesn’t, but that’s a lie. We’ve been fed too many lies to add more to the pile. Hopelessness isn’t an option we can afford. Not for the little ones we’ve lost, not for the little ones still running at our feet.

I am one person. I don’t have much.

I have my grief and my voice.

I have my words and my rage.

I will use them for something.

If you need help talking to your kids about Uvalde:

A Kids Co. is offering free e-book downloads of their book A Kids Book About School Shootings by school shooting survivor Crystal Woodman Miller.

This post by Melinda Winner Moyer offers some practical tips, including a really good drawing exercise that helps kids visualize the layers of protection they have.

If you want independent, nonpartisan coverage on gun violence in America:

Check out The Trace’s investigative reporting.

If you need to do something:

This is a list of all Senators’ phone numbers, alphabetized by state. Call them and ask them to support The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, H.R. 8 and the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, H.R. 1446. Call them even if your senators already support these acts, they need to know the public is behind them.