💔 how can you breathe

How can you breathe? How are you literally able to wake up and breathe right now?

A 37 year old American was shot and killed yesterday for doing what I hope any good neighbour would have. It turns out I don't actually care how old he was or what passport he held or if he had a criminal record or if he was a man or a woman.

Because yesterday, a life was snuffed out. ANOTHER life was snuffed out because what? Because he showed up to defend and help a fellow human?

How can you breathe?

I try really hard not to open the news pages. But what is my responsibility to know that this is happening to understand and dig deeper because I can't just trust headlines.

I descend into the pit of darkness so that I might educate myself. So that I might be a dutiful citizen.

But to what end? I am a Canadian who has ever been grateful to America for its excellence and boldness and achievement. I have had two American babies, not that that was ever supported or made easier.

I have worked nearly my whole career in the efforts to make American lives easier.

For what? These past two years have made a mockery of my optimism. My Canadian friends look at us as traitors living hypocritically. And yet I persist because I believe in fighting.

But in the face of my prime minister's address at Davos, I believe it's time to take the sign down.

I can't just protest anymore. I can't just donate anymore. I cant just read and inform myself anymore. To what end?

I feel a rage inferno inside. It's fuelled by the worst kind of fuel - helplessness. So it build as a bigger ball in the pit of my stomach. And it has nowhere to go.

I am sitting at a cafe writing these words and a man sits next to me with his kid who might be 4 or 5 years old. He's wearing a hat with an American flag on it.

And I feel an urge that I don't recognize rise out of me. I want to - no I need to ask him - how can you possibly wear an American flag right now?

How can you possibly be proud of what this country has slithered into?

But I do not. Because I have long ago learned that discourse is not welcome in this country. That a question can be rewarded with violence or worse.

No matter that his son is the same age as countless little brown kids curled up in terror and despair in who knows where. No matter that black and brown parents are huddling in fear everywhere, unable to rip their skin off to make it safe. And yet why would we? Why would I change an inch of my golden, glorious hide? Because it makes them feel uncomfortable and inadequate?

How can you breathe? The weight is crushing on my chest. I can't figure out where we go from here?

And I remember the American heroes. That America is made up of people and so many of its people are kind and courageous and fucking awe-worthy.

I watched a video of a Minnesotan sitting in his car, being yelled at and threatened by these fucking thugs. And he calmly just continued while guns were mere inches from windshield that protects nothing, from flesh that is too quick to yield its life. And yet all of these citizens are putting themselves in harm's way to BE A GOOD NEIGHBOUR.

Could I be that kind of neighbour? For the countless black and brown lives I hold dear. I feel shame and guilt that my answer isn't fast and clear now that it's clear the price could very well be a bullet through my flesh.

I have babies still at home. But what of their babies? Is my outrage simply performative? Would I shield another mother's babies with my body and my life?

This is not the country I expected to have to ask these questions about.

Something broke in me yesterday. There is a line for everyone and yesterday a line was crossed.

I don't know what to do or how to exist. I pour my rage into these pages because it has nowhere else to go. I am an action person and I have no action to take.

Where does it go now but these pages that threaten to burst into flames with the searing anger and despair?

I don’t buy this thing of “don’t make things political”. I think life is political if you do it right. Which is to say if you have principles and values and you fight like hell to use the resources you have to make the change you can.

One of the greatest reasons to be a founder, I think, is because you can literally be the change you want to see in the world. No one has to agree with you, but if you want to have that massive impact, then you gotta figure out how your vision of the future is appealing and important for others and how to turn it into reality.

So mainly, for the past ten years, that has been the form of my activism. To see the challenges of inequity and overwhelm and need and to build something better.
It’s why I persist. Because if I have even an ounce of ability to make a day better for even one other parent, I will happily do it.

It’s James Baldwin’s words that keep ringing in my mind:

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality. Or, I am saying, in other words, that we, the elders, are the only models children have. What we see in the children is what they have seen in us–or, more accurately perhaps, what they see in us.”

Yeah I’m worried about what’s happening to the world, but more? I’m worried about my kids looking to me and saying - what did you do when all of this was happening?

So no, this is not political. This is about being able to wake up and look ourselves in the face.

I can't breathe and yet I must. I have kids to tend to, and there is work to be done.

The work of a neighbour.