Dear Sons and Daughters with the Guns and the Hate,
Stop.
Please stop, I beg you.
I may never understand what it’s like to be you and it breaks my heart that I can’t ever fully enter into your personal journey through whatever you face: racism, injustice, marginalization; even murder. My only right to beg for a ceasefire comes from living with a different kind of pervasive threat – in which my child has a less than 20% chance of survival and less than 4% chance of the government ever acknowledging his right to that narrow margin of life.
I’ve stood alongside bald, gun-less fighters and weeping parents treated both justly and unjustly as they did everything possible to preserve life. And I’ve stood over hauntingly tiny coffins too.
There is very little I can do against the pervasive awful of cancer to preserve life for my baby, but there is so, so much you can do against the pervasive awful of hate-cancer spreading to someone else’s baby.
Did you hear me? You have the amazing ability to give life, not take it!
I’m not suggesting you lay down the fight. In fact, never stop fighting for what’s right and just. Just stop with the guns and the hate. Please, find another way – for the sake of the mothers, wives, and even children with empty arms, for the sake of better, greater, and more: STOP HURTING EACH OTHER.
I truly believe with all my heart that you were made for far better things than this.
Lovingly,
A Mother