There aren’t enough words to describe the heartbreak that is surrounding our children. Never in their lifetime, did us parents think we would be facing such depth of despair for our children and their childhood. But here we are, wondering, questioning, fearing that what we do is the wrong answer, the wrong thing to do, worrying that whatever outcome we choose will sacrifice our children’s mental health and their understanding of what is safe and what is not.
It was hard parenting when facing regular worries—but now, we add in the fear of pandemic, we tie in the desperate attempt to create a new normal and hide our true fears from our kids, because if we show how deeply this is affecting us adults, that only sparks fear that they don’t quite understand. What we are facing is challenging, but what our kids are facing, it’s cruel.
What we face now, is rebellion. Revolution—tyranny—the fall of our great nation and the respect we once had for the will of our government. I don’t speak for everyone, only myself and in no way am I condemning the leader of the free world, but what I am pointing accusing fingers is at the government of our own backyard. Michigan—you call yourself a leader, but what are you leading? People are angry. People are scared, people want answers and what have you given them other than pretend smiles, lies of protecting our children and our state…when all you are protecting is yourself in hopes of re-election. Please don’t patronizing me. Please don’t pretend to care from your big office in our state capital. Please don’t stand at your podium and pretend for just one second that everything you promise is of true value, when we know, that in the eyes of our children, you aren’t protecting them. You don’t have their interest at heart. You care nothing for their wellbeing but for the numbers in the polls—but I wonder, how are your numbers now?
We are a country of freedom, but we are not a state of freedom. Michigan has become unrecognizable. We aren’t a state. We are quieted when we try to have a voice. We are told to stay our course and things will improve, you tell us we are stupid, you mock our young people, you curse those that are trying to live, yet you don’t truly see. You are blinded, mental health—is rising in depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and tendencies. For those that are already impacted by mental health are facing much harder times, but those for those that are just now experiencing it…how do you relate to us? Children are being introduced to new feelings, intensity and fear. Their mental health is in jeopardy more so now than it was before. This is serious and yet, there is the general feeling that our state leader cares nothing for that wellbeing.
What say you, Michigan?
For far too long I’ve remained silent. Plagued by fear and worry of what backlash this may have on me, on my family, but in truth, even with thousands of us all shouting the same message, it’s being shouted on deaf ears. So what can my thoughts matter? I’ll be overlooked just as the rest.
It’s greed that angers me most. In all honesty, I didn’t vote for you to run our state. I based my vote on facts and research and I knew that I couldn’t let me vote be tallied in your favor when I didn’t value your beliefs. But it’s not like you value mine either. I’m just another resident. A citizen that has no voice, is overlooked, cared little for. You pride yourself on keeping us safe. You pride yourself that this will be your legacy. The governor who led Michigan to victory in combating the 2019-2020 pandemic. What a fascinating biography that will be for you one day.
But in truth, you will be remembered as the governor who led Michigan to revolt, to beg, to plead, to barter. You will be remembered for your actions of not saving our economy, or lives, protecting our children and fighting by outside—you’ll be remembered for your lack of probity, compassion, understanding and mockery.
One might ask what brings me to write such harsh necessities, to speak out against our state leader and raise awareness to my republican views when republicans right now are hated and live in constant scrutiny—the answer is simple.
My daughter.
I fight for her. I fight for her passion, her love, her hope. I fight for her to have a voice when in this world, it seems as if children have none. I fight for her mental health and the despair that I see in her eyes every day when she learns that she can’t be amongst her teammates or her coach, when she can’t return to the life of training and her home away from home. I wish I could tell you that she doesn’t. But when you’ve been working for something hard enough to see it slipping away and your child sees it slipping away, you fight.
You fight to give her everything. You fight to give her hope. Even when you have none. You fight to keep their spirits alive and keep them safe. You fight to give them another day and better life. You fight, because they can’t. And sure to some this might seems petty or beyond the point of what truly matters, but I know mental illness first hand. I know the darkest thoughts and the voices that plague you and urge you. I know the quiet and the fear. I know the rapid heart rate, the irrational thinking, the mania that follows. I know the curve of the ups and downs of depression, the good days, the bad. I know loss, I know fear, I know hopelessness, I know darkness.
I never want my daughter to know those feelings first hand. I fight for that. I fight for her. I fight because who else will?
There is hope to be had, that she isn’t and won’t be like me. That she will never know the darkness as I do. Never call it a friend as I have. I have that hope because she has something that I never did. She has her sport. She has her passion and her dream of success in a sport that is beyond competitive—it’s a life style. You either dedicate yourself to it fully to get to the level of success you want, giving every piece of you to it, or you don’t. I didn’t have that, but she does. Taking away that these last six months has devastated her, it’s transformed her. I don’t see the passion in her eyes she once held because she’s lost her hope and belief in herself. She’s lost her spark and her drive and it has little to do with being “burned out” as some might say, it’s simple really. It’s because her home away from home, the one place that she comes alive and feels at peace, isn’t allowed to open. She isn’t permitted to having that joy. She isn’t given the choice to decide if her goal remains a college scholarship to her dream university or because she’s just lost interest in the sport she’s being involved in since the age of two.
What does it matter, they’re kids? Kids hardly know what they want out of life. As adults, we laugh it off and say things like “oh, you say that now, but just you wait.” We patronize—but when you see that drive, that understanding that nothing is going to stand in their way, that they are willing to give up birthday parties and slumber parties, school dances and after school activities, when they are begging you to take them to take them to practice or asking to have more practice times, when you see that drive…it inspires you.
As parent’s we want to give our kids the world. We want them to want for nothing. We want to give them the opportunities we never had or were too shy to attempt. We want to hand them the world and give them the understanding that it is theirs for the taking.
We pray they are safe, we hope for their best, we push and we pull and we give every ounce of ourselves to them to give them those dreams. But what can we do when the unthinkable happens. The unimaginable?
We hold them tight. We whisper promises we aren’t sure we can keep. We wipe away their tears and we give them every ounce of love we have.
And we fight.
It’s human nature, it’s mother’s intuition. It’s the mama bear protecting her cub. We get angry, we push back, we become the voice that they don’t have and we take to desperation. We do what we can, because we are parents, we are their advocates.
So, you see, when my daughter is hurt, or afraid, when she’s alone and broken and tittering on feelings she can’t quite understand, I put all shame aside. I care nothing of what rebound my thoughts might have, I don’t remain silent. I fight.
And I will continue to fight for her until the very last breath my lungs expel. She is my everything. Just as I’m sure your children are your everything. And as I sit here, surrounded by my thoughts, I had to take to writing them down. It’s what I do. I’m a writer, an author, a cheerleader, a coach, a physician, a teacher, a healer, a voice.
I am a mother and mother’s know no bounds.
Shame be damned.
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