Mine are teens. One’s supposed to go to college in the fall. I feel like we’re simultaneously living two very different lives. One where we’re filling out the fafsa and figuring out which college is best and the other in abject terror about was is happening right before our eyes
I'm starting from a place of knowing I can't shield my kids from what's happening or what's coming. I have to prepare them instead. So I'm telling them about what's going on, sharing what I'm doing to try to protect them, and teaching them everything I can to help them stay safe and fight back.
as a young trans person, please keep them safeguarded if possible. It’s been so hard for me mentally to go on, please be the best parent you can for them
They're both doing SO well; 15 is CHOOSING a healthy social media diet and doing revolutionary self-care all on his own, and 13 got braces so his teeth are even more sharp, for the biting he'll do if anyone violates his very healthy Don't Tell Me Scary Shit I Don't Need to Hear boundary
They don't need to know all the fresh details, don't need to panic in advance, it's just a real tough situation to be in, balancing knowing what to tell our kids when, and how, and what to do about it in the short term, and how to prepare them to be the adults they'll have to be in a few short years
In 2020 they were only 8 & 10, young enough to know there was no chance they'd sneak out the window at night to join mom in the streets
But they're big now, damn near bigger than me, and I just don't know how to raise kids who very well may need to fight for their lives in the fucking streets
I feel so many big feelings that I don't have words for, that I and so many Americans, like so many parents across the planet, like so many Palestinian parents, HAVE to raise fighters we HAVE to figure out how to let our kids be kids while also ensuring they're prepared to withstand their oppressors
In 2020 my ex and I were magnets for the young protesters, some of them very young, and I remember feeling relief that my own little kids were safe with their dad while I could help these kids big enough to dodge flaming cans of CS gas & hop fences but now, my kids are almost that old & big
I hated having responsibility over so many incredibly vulnerable young people I hated having to constantly hear DO NOT DO A CHILDREN'S CRUSADE screaming at me from inside my own head
This was the product of state terror
The responsibility should have been the cops', the blue mayor's, not mine
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But they're big now, damn near bigger than me, and I just don't know how to raise kids who very well may need to fight for their lives in the fucking streets
And mad
This was the product of state terror
The responsibility should have been the cops', the blue mayor's, not mine