Fear and Tenderness

“Comfort to every human being who feels afraid right now. I feel afraid too. It is okay to feel afraid and tender now. Soon, the anger returns and we fight like hell. First the pain, then the mother fucking rising.”

-Glennon Doyle

Soon comes the mother fucking rising. Without the belief and trust that we can make this change, none of us would be able to get out of bed today. So we can and we will but for today- the fear and the tenderness are here. 

I am at my mom’s for a visit. Yesterday, as I talked to the girls from afar, I just wanted to give them huge squeeze hugs. Because of our enormous privilege, I told them they were safe. We would always be able to take care of their reproductive needs. This, of course, is a piece for another day but stick with me for now. And I told them, as I have been for the past five years, that they are living through an enormously difficult time in history. It is not right. It is not fair. It just is. 

As I talked with my mom, we searched the internet to compare the scary things that happened during my teen years with what has happened during Caroline’s and Katherine’s. There is simply no way to compare. 

I was born in 1973. So as I searched for historical events in the 1980s, I found stories about the Iran Contra affair, the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, protests in Burma and Iraqi poison gas attacks. Of course, there were more and these are all horrible events. My eyes were drawn to the articles on the Pan Am Flight as we now personally know a family impacted by this event. I did not know this family then and I think that is the point of what I am trying to say. That event sticks with me now because of a personal connection. The rest of the news that happened during my teen years was not news that impacted me personally. It was all very far away and very easy to ignore. That is no longer the case. 

The news has become real. It has become impossible to ignore. It has become personal. For all these reasons and more, this is a crazy hard time to be a teenager, to be a mom and frankly to be a human. I do truly believe that our teenagers are going to be stronger people for the things they have experienced during these years. But that does not make the living through them any easier. 

So for today, fear, tenderness and lots of hugs. And tomorrow? The mother fucking rising.