Children of the red, white, and blue
Every year, my husband Safiy and I send out an annual holiday card that features a theme illustrated by my husband [1]. When we started sending these out in 2011, the themes were grounded in the holiday season. In 2016, we shifted course to highlight societal issues.
Last year, we focused specifically on the society we have set up for our children. When we started to conceptualize the card, Safiy and I went back and forth on which issue we wanted to highlight. As we thought about the message we wanted to send and reflected on the society we have set up, we decided to lay bare a few different conditions that we have forced upon our children.
Although each condition we highlighted requires action, I want to specifically dive into the leading killer of children in the United States – guns. After decades of inaction, guns surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for children in 2020. In 2022, our inaction resulted in 6,170 children being shot, 1,682 of whom died. These numbers don’t reflect all the children who carry the trauma of losing friends and family members, as well as those who have lost faith in our ability to protect them. All to a condition that is fully of our own design.
When I think about how we got here, I can’t help but think about the Sandy Hook shooting and the actions that we could have taken a decade ago that would have prevented 10 years of injury, death, and trauma. I recall being part of conversations at that time and how I felt when those conversations were shutdown.
We absolutely do not need to continue to live this way. What actions can we take now to demonstrate to our children that we mean it when we say I love you? What healing work do we – the adults – need to do to create a society that embodies love for our children – all our children?
The quotes that we selected for our card feel especially relevant in this moment:
So much of America’s tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people’s children – as if justice were divisible.
Marian Wright Edelman
There can be no keener revelation of society’s soul than the way it treats its children.
Nelson Mandela
Let’s step into our courage and do the healing work we need to do so we can build a better society than the one we currently inhabit; a society that centers love – for ourselves and for our children.
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