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A few more articles from yours truly this week:
“A Guide to Buying Holiday Presents for your Nieces, Nephews, and Grandkids that won’t get you Disowned.” Sammiches and Psych Meds
“What I tell My Kids about Working Moms” Parent.co
“Pumping at Work: Rights, Tips and Tricks” Parent.Co
As always, thanks for reading!
Pacifists should not sit still in solemn protest.
They should instead be marching, walking always towards freedom. The journey is long and staying in place will not get us there.
Pacifists should not be afraid to raise arms.
They should raise their arms high, and in doing so, hold those who are hurting. They should wrap their arms tightly around those in need of protection, and those who are alone.
Pacifists should not be silent.
Instead, they must lift their voices, for when words are your only weapon, you must use them loudly and frequently until you are heard. If the voices are still and soft they must join together, because a chorus is the only way to be heard above the din.
Pacifists should not boycott those who disagree with them.
Rather, they should sit at the table beside one another and join in conversations. It is too rare that minds change on their own, and even more unlikely that they change whilst being yelled at from afar.
Pacifists should not chain themselves to trees, gates, or barricades.
It is better to chain ourselves to each other, and to realize that our liberations and our lives are bound together.
Pacifists should not go on hunger strikes.
The hunger for justice has already burned through their bodies, unquenched by anything but liberty.
Pacifists should not run away from conflict.
Instead, they should run toward it, and quickly. It is easy to remain on the sideline of fights that do not involve ourselves, but in doing so, we often find ourselves standing on the side of the oppressor. Work dilligently, instead, for another’s right to life, water, religion, and love.
Pacifists should not be still.
Action after action is the only thing that can topple the tyrant of complacency.
Too often it is easy to confuse pacifism with isolationism, or to pretend that being unaffected by violence is the same thing as being at peace. We cannot remain still, silent, and passive in the fact of injustice, but rather lift our voices in a cry for solidarity, march towards a better future, and one by one move the mountains that lay before us. Our support must not be in spirit, but in body, and our beliefs manifested as actions.
We – the pacifists – must act.
In case you want some extra reading between Cyber Monday shopping, check out some of the articles I have published this fall!
My grandparent’s story on The Mighty: Alzheimer’s and the Long Goodbye
A debate on who works harder, stay at home moms or work out of the home moms on Parent.Co: Debate Club: A Different Take on the SAHM vs. WOHM “Battle”
Also on Parent.Co: Why I Cringe When People Tell Me I’m “lucky” to be a Stay at Home Mom.
Dispelling Equal Pay Myths on Parent.Co: After November 6th, Women are Essentially Working for Free.
An article on why teenagers can’t just fall asleep earlier on Parent.Co: AAP Study Says Teen Fatigue Is a Public Health Issue – Could Later School Start Times Help?
The reason I didn’t want my son to buy a purple coat on Mamalode: He Really Wants the Purple Coat.
My story of being discriminated against for being pregnant on Parent.Co: Know Your Rights: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Illegal
Why I wish my husband could have taken a longer paternity leave on Parent.Co: Paternity Leave is Essential to Building Healthy Families
And finally, the age old question on Parent.Co: How Much is a Stay-at-Home Mom Really “worth”?
Thanks for checking them out!
A small child walked up to his teacher’s desk to receive his school book for the year. He was given one that rewrote history, glossing over our past wrongs of slavery and racism, telling him the seas would not rise, that we were all equal and he need not question otherwise.
A man with holes in his shoes walked up to the counter of a soup kitchen. The ladle was raised, poised to fill his bowl, but its contents were empty. Times are tough, the volunteer explained. He nodded in reply.
A woman walked up to the reception desk at the hospital, her round belly a soft buffer between her and the forms she needed to fill out. How do you plan on paying, the receptionist asked and she slowly hung her head.
Two men walked up to the clerk’s desk, hand in hand, wearing suits and smiles. No, I can’t do that, she replied.
A young woman walked into a police station, to speak to an officer at the front desk. She told him what had happened through her tears. I didn’t want to, she said. He made me. Are you sure, the officer asked. Can you tell me what you were wearing?
An older couple walked to the teller’s desk and asked to make a small withdrawal. There’s nothing there, the teller replied apologetically. I’m so sorry.
A family, shivering in a cold camp across the world, walked up to the make shift office – a card desk in a weather worn tent. You were denied, the aid worker said, choking on her own words.
The small child, the homeless man, the woman round with hope, the couple in love, the woman in need, the family far from home, the man and woman who only wanted to buy groceries for dinner tonight turned and walked away.
Today, we hold on to each other. Today, we watch the system swirl behind the desks and feel powerless to overcome it. Today, we mourn with those who mourn.
Tomorrow, we start throwing over tables.
John 2:13-22
My children were the ones who finally taught me gratitude.
There is a way this is essay is supposed to go. I’m supposed to say that the moment I held them in my arms, I was overcome with the miracle of life and realized all of the blessings that have made their way into my home. I should say that whenever I see their darling, preciously precocious smiles I am filled with nothing but love and thanksgiving for the joy of motherhood. I was supposed to realize what happy and healthy children they are and subsequently realized how lucky I am.
That’s what should have happened. But that’s not exactly what did.
Gratitude has never been a virtue that comes especially easy to me. I don’t think it is because I am inherently un-grateful, but rather I have a tendency towards pessimistic realism. When I am told I should be thankful for my health, I remember I do struggle with a chronic illness. When I think about how we are fortunate for our financial well-being, I find myself annoyed at the size of the monthly checks we write to pay off our student debt. For every blessing, I always seem to find an equal and opposite burden. It isn’t all bad, I think, to own and recognize our troubles. But often I have felt my tendency to balance fortunes with struggles has kept me from focusing more fully on the good in my world.
But not anymore. My kids have fixed that.
How, you wonder? If not by simply being shiny lights of joy in my life? (They certainly are, that’s just not what did it.)
No. It was the whining.
The incessant, unrelenting whining. The high pitched, guttural noise that toddlers have so perfected that it may as well be the anthem of their age group. “I want juice, not milk! I want to go to the park! Not that park! The other park! I don’t want to go to bed. My brother is touching me!”
Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t inherently bratty or probably any worse that any other person. They are just at peak whining stage. Babies have even more frequent complaints, they are just non-verbal and because they’ve got nothing but screams, we tend to take them seriously. I’m assuming as they become teenagers there will still be lots of whining, but at least it will be silent eye rolling and not about the color of the cup I just handed them. And really, adults whine just as much. It’s just about the weather or the election so we feel it’s justified.
The toddler whining though seems to be tuned to a pitch that dogs can hear and that makes mothers wish they had the ability to teleport themselves to beaches far, far away. I hand my kids a cracker, a slice of apple, the crayon they asked for, and they instantly dissolve into a puddle of tears that I have to mop up and resist the urge to wring into a bucket and leave it there until their dad comes home.
And then I feel it bubbling up. The words handed down from annoyed parent to dismissive child,
“There are children who would give anything to eat this dinner!”
They stare at me like I’m crazy, because obviously I am. “Some kid really wants to eat this Pinterest fail casserole? Okay, sure mom. It ain’t me though.”
And while my admonishment falls on ears that can’t hear me over their own whining, I hear myself. Yes, this dinner that I ruined and honestly doesn’t taste that great is something to be grateful for. At least I can put food, or something resembling that, on their plates.
Or having to wear something I don’t like. This very situation has rendered many a toddler apoplectic, and in doing so causes many a parent to clench their teeth and utter, “This is a perfectly fine shirt you are lucky to own!” Which I then have to say to myself when I look into my own closet and think, “Ugh! I have nothing to wear!”
They don’t want to walk to the park, and I am reminded we live in a safe neighborhood. They want Papa to read them bedtime stories instead of me, making sure to point out “We like him better!” and I am happy they have close relationships with their family. They want to watch cartoons again and I am amazed by the technology available to us today. They scream about getting flu shots, and I am thrilled to live in a place where vaccines are readily available. They want to go outside to play and I am thankful for their adventurous spirits, even if I can’t indulge them right at that moment.
The whining, which I am sure they will grow out of eventually, has grated on my nerves until I am more frazzled than Ms. Frizzle by the end of the day. But it also serves as reminder to me to be grateful. My kids don’t see all of the blessings they have yet – it takes a little time and perspective for that to develop. All of those mild inconveniences we complain so frequently about tend to be blessings well disguised.
They might not have learned hoe to be grateful yet, but they are still pretty good teachers.
Slipping into bed at the end of the night is the glorious absolution at the end of the day. All is finished, all is forgiven. My back aches and my feet are heavy from carrying the weight of motherhood with me throughout the day. There is the satisfaction of a job well done, and the knowledge that tomorrow is another chance to try again.
Every night there are toys scattered on and around my bed. Small cars driven into my room to see if I was finished getting ready yet. Books they had wanted me to read before the sun had even awoken. Figurines that had been launched at brothers during an already forgotten battle.
During the day I look at these toys with annoyance. I pick them up time and again, until I eventually just ignore them and instead grumble about the incessant mess whenever I walk by it. When people tell you of the exhaustion of parenthood, you expect the sleepless nights and the emotional drain. No one tells you how many times a day you will bend over to pick something up.
At night, however, these toys remind me of little offerings. Tiny bits of tribute at the end of a long and hard day.
I think I was a good mom today. There were hugs, and snacks and homemade dinner and stories. That’s not true every day. Other days there is yelling and frustration and a desire to crawl into a bed that is very far from my own.
On those nights, there are still toys scattered around the foot of my bed. Most likely they are accidental gifts of forgetfulness, but I tell myself they are small gifts of forgiveness.
When I was 8, I wanted to be the first woman president of the United States.
It was a sweet response, the one that would make parents beam and teachers pat you on the head. But now it strikes me as a bit sad that I had assumed no other woman would be elected president in the next thirty years, and indeed, it took nearly that long before one would.
Now I will decidedly not be the first woman president, not only because I did not pursue a career in politics, but also because someone will beat me to it before I turn 35.
The instances of sexism in my life have been rare, and thankfully mostly minor, or perhaps I’ve grown too accustomed to them to notice. My high school had no girls’ soccer team. A professor preferred male students. A few weeks into working at a day shelter for homeless people under the influence of alcohol and drugs, my boss told me, “I wasn’t sure about hiring you – I didn’t know if you could handle it as a woman.” A little down the road I was turned down for a job doing the work I had taught others to do during grad school because I was pregnant. The Human Resources representative that I talked to later assured me it was “all a misunderstanding” and encouraged me to reapply. I declined.
In my school days, when I dreamed of becoming president, women were mere footnotes in history, side bars on the page. They were never central characters or part of the actual story, just side notes as clearly the contributions of cooking, cleaning, raising children (as if that was all women had ever done) were not as important as whatever the men were doing. And now that my days center around cooking, cleaning and raising children, there are dark moments where I wonder if what I do is worthless and if I will be forgotten once my sons have accomplishments of their own.
When I was 16, I worked in the Senate and once held the door open for then Senator Hilary Clinton. She said thank you, and walked through heading towards her next important meeting. I burned the image into my brain – my own glimpse at history.
I hope today there are no eight year old girls planning on becoming the first female president, or even the second. I hope my children will offer me confused looks when I try to explain to my kids that when I grew up there were no presidents of color, and never women either, just as I did when I heard there were days of separate drinking fountains and when women marched in the street so there voices could become part of history.
I pray for a world where my children will be able to meet the demands of work and family without financial difficulties or fear they are letting one or the other down. I look forward to the day all children can actually become anything they want without being held back by their sex, skin or zip code.
In two weeks, I am voting for a woman for president. In two weeks I will have to explain to my children why, for the first time, wearing that sticker has made me cry.
Two people went to the church to pray. Both were me.
I took my position and spoke this prayer to myself, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of the people on my Facebook feed – selfish, uncaring, ignorant. I eat organic twice a week, and donate money to major disasters when they hit mainstream media. I support the right causes, tsk tsk at the right injustices, and vote for the right candidates.”
But the other part of me stood off to the side, and prayed, “I offer concern for my neighbors across the world that is rarely coupled with action. I mean to donate money to causes and often forget. I buy what I want when I want, often without regard to the impact it has on creation. I donate tin cans filled with slop I would never eat. I drive my car without thinking about whose sacred homeland the gas has been pumped across, and whose lungs are left to breathe the air. I grow angry at injustice, yet I do not know my neighbors’ names.
O God, have mercy on me, a human.”
I’ve had a few published articles around the interwebs lately. Check them out! Or follow me on Facebook and Twitter so you never miss a beat.
On Scary Mommy: “How Donald Trump Affects Us as Parents”
On Parent.Co: “Debate Club: Should Schools be Nut Free?”
On Mamalode: “You Can’t Quit, You’re a Parent.”
Also on Mamalode: “Why We Keep Saying We Can’t Believe How Much They’ve Grown”
Thanks for following along!
October has its hold on me
It takes me by the hand,
Leads me through forgotten paths
Of strange and foreign lands.
The setting sun lets out a howl
On the whispered rising of the night.
Stars sing their sweet farewells
To its fading firelight.
The unclad trees stretch overhead
Swaying, surrounding me.
Wind whips through empty branch
Signaling for solemnities.
The forest knows what I do not
It hears of magic in the dark
And witnesses the silent odyssey
On which our souls embark.
But in this place I cannot stay
Lingering in its dusk.
We steal away to anointed lands
Footsteps fall in trust.
Jackie Semmens 