After reading Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper last week, I always believed my job as a parent was to protect my children. What might look fun, thrilling and courageous might actually be careless, scary and dangerous. It was my job to see through to the truth and do my best to pass that truth onto my children.
While I could do a great job protecting them as babies, as they grew the challenge was to teach them to protect themselves. I taught them to trust their gut instinct, to see past the pressure to be cool and, instead, be true and believe in themselves.
Believing isn’t easy.
There are many shiny things and slick promises that seem so wonderful. We want to believe. And conversely, there are the shocking, scary, awful events that seem truly unbelievable. It’s hard to reconcile it all and much easier to refuse to see it.
But we can’t shield ourselves or our children from many of these hard realities. Because that’s the opposite of protecting them and ultimately ourselves from tyranny, corruption and violence. I didn’t want to believe in evil, but I have to face that it exists. Admitting it exists doesn’t mean accepting or allowing it and that’s where protection comes in for all of us.
Believe. Now more than ever.
It’s way to easy right now to get caught up in the bad and go beyond mad to being overwhelmed. That’s the road to denial, escapism and cynicism. I fight those feelings everyday because I know that road leads nowhere. I have to believe.
In the face of the bad that surrounds us everyday, we are the good. We are the force that can see the truth through the lies, the good beyond the bad, and work to make the changes we need all around us to protect us all.
Mother to mother. Grandmother to grandmother. Mother to Father. Mother to daughter and son. It’s even more important that we all pull together for you, for me, for US all.
I believe in you and me. I believe that together we can protect our children, ourselves and our country.
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