It aches for the families of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and so many that came before them.
It aches for people of color who have been held down for too long by systems designed to hold them down and beyond which they have no real power.
It aches for Black parents who live in a sort of fear I’ve never really known that their kids might be the next story on the news.
It aches for the Black community for their pain and anger and for feeling so unheard and unhelped for so long.
It aches for the almost 107,000 dead from Covid-19, which though it’s not gone, it is all but currently sort of, but not really, forgotten.
My heart aches tonight.
It aches for our country, which feels like it’s falling apart as we stand by wringing our hands in horror because no one in Washington has the courage (or maybe desire) to throw water on the Wicked Witch of the West by standing up to the man who could have chosen to lead our country with compassion and strength and worked to unite us, but instead chose the exact opposite, using loaded, incendiary language designed to hurt and divide.
It aches for the US Constitution, particularly the First Amendment, which protects people’s right to protest peacefully, while some were fired on by tear gas as the President called himself the “ally of peaceful protestors.”
I don’t know how a parent explains 400 years of systemic racism that ends in terrifying images on a TV screen to young children. I don’t know how to reassure my own adult children that we will see better days. Honestly? Right now, I don’t know how to reassure myself the same thing.
What I do know is this: We have so much work to do. We have to do more than post memes and platitudes and hashtags. We have to read and learn and figure out what it means to be anti-racist. We have to speak up and help out when we see injustice happen. We have to have compassion. We have to be kind.
