Raising Kids in a World on Fire
Lately, my stomach has been in knots. You don’t need a list of world events to know what I mean. If you’re anything like me, you already have your own running tally. The news cycles through one injustice after another, and it’s easy to feel like everything is unraveling. Some days I wake up already exhausted, as if I spent the night holding it together in my sleep.
And yet… I still have to spread peanut butter and jelly on fluffy bread. I still have to put sunscreen on wriggling arms and chase laughter through the spray of the sprinkler. I still have to show up, heart aching, smile forced at times, PB&J in hand.
There’s a strange kind of guilt that comes with this. This split between witnessing suffering and continuing to live an ordinary life. It feels wrong to feel joy when so many are in pain. It feels frivolous to write stories when so many voices are crying out. But I think maybe the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
We need to bear witness. We need to stay informed, speak up, care deeply. But we also need to hold space for the small, good things. The daily acts of love and stability and kindness we offer—especially to our kids—are not just distractions. They’re declarations. That even when the world shakes, we believe in building something better. That our homes can still be safe havens, and that we still believe in hope.
That’s part of why I started writing again. Not to ignore what’s hard, but to hold space for what’s still good. I wanted to tell stories that feel like a cool breeze on a stifling day—stories about messy people who keep showing up, who find each other, who try. Writing became a way to make sense of things, or at least to sit with them. A way to say: There’s beauty here, too. Don’t forget to look for it.
If you’re also carrying the weight of the world in your gut, I see you. And if you’re also jumping through sprinklers with your kids this week, I see you too. Maybe that’s one way we keep going: hand in hand, heavy-hearted, hopeful anyway.
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
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