To my children,

You spent this past Saturday without me.

I know. Weird, right?

Weekends are sacred in this house. I’ve made them so. After weekdays spent mostly apart, I spin our Saturdays and Sundays around family.

But on Saturday I woke before you. Before you had been awake for an hour, I kissed your sleepy heads and squeezed you goodbye. And then, with pockets full of water bottles and granola bars, I left for the day.

You knew I was going to a ‘march.’ You even watched parts of it on Daddy’s computer, trying to find me in the crowd (though I wish you could have seen me, I have to say I’m really glad you didn’t stand a chance!). But I didn’t tell you a lot about why I went. What a march is. Why it’s important.

Some of that is intentional. At seven and four, there is only so much I want to put in your sphere of awareness. While I want you to grow up as an active participant in the world outside our small family life, I also want to protect your childhoods. While I want to begin strengthening your activist muscles, I don’t want to do so at the expense of your innocence and imagination. While I want you to be aware that the world is not always sunshine and rainbows and that, sometimes, you must work really hard to uncover even the smallest glimmers of light, I also want to preserve the hope and happiness that radiates from your eyes for as long as possible. I want that for me as much as for you. Because over these past few months, it has been your unfiltered goodness and magic that has lighted my path. When the events of the world rock me to my core, you remind me that there is still so much good in the world. So much good right in my arms.

I’ve been lucky to feel secure in my freedom and safety for all of my life so far. I felt so safe, secure, and free, in fact, that I took it for granted. I assumed all that freedom and security would only grow. I assumed the freedom and security of those who enjoyed far less than I did would, also, only grow. That the world was moving towards a kinder, more understanding, more tolerant, better place and there was nothing I needed to do to keep it going. I didn’t think much of how hard people battled to get me these freedoms. That I was never as free or safe as I’d thought. Or how easily it could all be taken away.

Last year, I learned that I was wrong. And I began to fear that safety and freedom would not be yours to experience.

So, on Saturday, I marched for you. And for me. And for your Daddy. I marched for our friends and our family. And their friends and families. And families like ours in every corner of our country.

I went because this moment is critical. This is the moment when we need to be involved. It’s a moment for me to show you that when we’re wrong, we admit it. When we see that we’ve been taking things for granted, we right it. It’s a moment to wear our beliefs on our shirts, our hearts on our sleeves, and everything we care about in the look in our eyes. It’s a moment to add our voices. When I look back months, years, decades from now, I will know that I stood up, spoke up. I woke up. And when you look back months, years, decades from now, you will know that this is what we do when our rights, freedoms, and the basic structures of goodness, decency and kindness are under attack. We don’t sit back quietly. We don’t leave it to someone else to battle. We wake up and take a stand. We pack our pockets full of whatever it is we need, and we march.

Someday you’ll read this and understand, better than you do today, the details of what Saturday was all about.  But they won’t change the overall message that, even at four and seven, I want you to know deep in your bones. That the world, indeed, has goodness, kindness, freedom, understanding, and tolerance. But only when we make it so. And we must stay awake, stand up, speak up, and make it so.

To changing the world.

Love,

your Mommy

I was thinking, this morning, about 2016. I’d rather not, anymore, but given it’s largeness and also, still, its recentness, I’m not sure any of us can escape it quite yet.

A comment on my last post got me thinking about how a year cannot be all good or all bad. Before the holidays, a friend and I talked about how coloring the year with one big horrible brush is a little unfair. She talked of good memories made with family and deepened relationships as a result. I had the same last year – good family memories and deepened relationships too. It wouldn’t be fair to look back on the year and not hold onto those moments and experiences that made it particularly sweet.

I began to think, then, that what really left us so despondent is that 2016 extinguished hope.

Some of the world’s greatest geniuses left us last year, taking with them the hope they gave us in life with the songs they sang, the stories they told, the way they made us feel.

Horrific wars, terrorism, and all-out attacks on humanity decimated the hope we’ve always tried to keep that there is good in the world, that there are good people, that the world is a safe and welcoming and beautiful place to explore.

Hatred and anger erupted in ways that shattered our hearts and I, for one, lost hope that we will ever be able to slow the boil to a more even-tempored, measured place.

And, of course, we replaced a man who spoke as a symbol of hope with one who inspires everything that is hope’s antithesis. Every time I see an image of the Obamas or hear their words, I still feel the glow of good people working hard for good things. Every time I see our current president-elect or hear his words (aka read his tweets?) I feel despair.

But how long can we keep going without hope? And, if the answer is, ‘not too long,’ what can we do to build it back up?

In my New Year’s post I called hope in this moment misleading and passive. Simply feeling hopeful is not enough. Just hoping that everything will work out isn’t working for me. I think, this year, we need to build hope back up through action. We need to show up for what we’ve always hoped will be and show hope that we’re ready to commit.

How exactly do we do that? I’ll be honest and say I don’t really know for sure. But I think it’s likely scattered across a million small ways and a few big leaps. It’s probably found, in part, by pursing meaning over happiness. By not only staying true to who you are and what you believe but fighting for those things too. It’s in putting your time and your money where your heart is by supporting the good fight. On New Years day, the four of us here in my little family each chose a cause we cared about. Then we started the year by making donations to the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the ACLU, and UNICEF. They weren’t large sums but they were commitments on day one that we’re in this to make a difference. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I’ll take my kids to volunteer and follow Dr. King’s example through service. We won’t change the world, but our action will put a little good into it. There’s nothing wrong with starting small. It’s far better than not starting at all.

And maybe as the year goes on and the million little actions and few larger leaps build up, we’ll start to feel the difference.

“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.'”

~Alfred Lord Tenneyson

Good morning, 2017. Please, grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and get comfortable. We have a lot of work to do but today, let’s get to know one another.

In the bustle of holiday life last week, I read an email about starting the new year. It suggested that whatever it is you want to do with your brand new set of blank pages, that you do that thing on New Year’s Day. If you want to exercise more, get out there and walk today. If you want to read more, crack a spine on a new book. If you want to strengthen relationships, you probably have some phone calls to make and some coffee to drink. (sounds perfect to me)

It’s all about intention. Showing 2017 that you mean business by showing up on day 1.

So this morning, I woke before my children and came here to write. Later, I plan to do some yoga, drag my family out on a walk, read a little, play with my kids a little, and reach out to friends and family.

I’m starting this year with energy and a little excitement. I love a blank page and a fresh start. I love how today feels newer and clearer, like fertile ground for doing something big. I love that we’re free from thinking about 2016 as our ‘now.’ Not because I believe the year was the worst. I’ve read enough articles proving otherwise and can remember enough sweet spots to know it was not all bad. But because, along the way, those numbers began to feel like a curse that could only be lifted when one of them turned. And, finally, here we are.

But I’m not starting this year with hope. That’s new for me. Every other year, I’ve felt hope smiling in the threshold and I’ve held onto those whispers of happiness. But this year, I don’t feel much hope. Yesterday, as I undecorated our tree, tucking each ornament shaped memory into it’s box, I entertained some pretty dark thoughts about what life might be like, for me personally and for the world, when the time comes to bring them out again. In some of the final hours of 2016, my mind traveled to the worst places, where hope struggles. This year, hope feels misleading. It feels passive. It’s just not enough.

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”

~Rainer Maria Rike

This year, instead, I’m feeling like there’s more I need to do actively. Less quiet intention, less thinking my way through things. More action, more engagement. Time to show up with more things that I have never done to meet a year full of things that have never been.

I didn’t choose a word last year and I didn’t take resolution making as seriously as I normally do. So, superstitiously, I’m taking it all very seriously this year. I’ve resolved specific things – more yoga, more reading, more exercise, more time with family. I’ve got some very serious writing goals too.

And I’ve chosen two words. Truth – because lack of truth characterized all of the worst parts of 2016, for me personally and the world. Because throughout the year, I saw people altering and obfuscating the truth and creating ‘new ones’ that weren’t true at all. Because truth is something that we (those of us who can see it) need to hold onto this year more than ever. In 2017, I will pursue, hold, and fight for truth.

And Open. Because last year, I closed off. I retreated and burrowed. I said a lot of ‘no.’ It served a purpose and was right for its time, but I’ve decided that time is over. This year, I intend to be open to as much as possible. I intend to say more ‘yes.’ I kind of picture myself walking around with arms open wide and every part of me open and receptive to life. Cheesy? Yes. But turns out you don’t need hope to make New Year’s cheesy.

Happy 2017 to you and the ones you love. May it be full of truth, openness, love, life, and everything you wish for it.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”

~T.S. Elliot