My heart is in a very dark place right now. I've been spending hours and hours reading the stories of mothers around the world and suffering that they endure. Chowder wants me to stop. I'm not sleeping. I'm awake until 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning...thinking of them. seeing their faces. and Chowder thinks this isn't good for me. He wants me to stop.
What an extravagant luxury that is. What an extravagant luxury that I am not an Israeli mother who's baby was shot in the head by a sniper, not a Palestinian mother who's 3 yr old son was killed in a military action, not a Darfurian mother who's husband and sons were killed in front of her while she and her daughters were raped, not an inner city mother whose 2 year old daughter was killed in a drive-by shooting, not a Rawadan mother, an Iraqi mother, a Bosnian mother, a Chechen mother, a Northern Irish mother, a Sierra Leone mother. What an extravagant luxury that I could just stop looking at it. I could just turn and point myself inward to my beautiful happy middle-class white American family. How extravagant. How luxurious.
But, I'm looking at these mother's faces. They are looking back at me. Their eyes are pleading, or worse they are blank, dead. And then as they look at me my computer screen goes blank. I'm gone. Her face falls. Her moment of fleeting hope, has passed. I've turned away because it was just too much. too horrible. Their tragedy was effecting
me too much. And then what? What happens to the mothers when I avert my eyes? What happens when I turn myself away? It all goes on the same. the atrocities continue. And in turn, what happens to me?
My heart is in a very dark place right now. I've been spending hours and hours reading the stories of mothers around the world and suffering that they endure. Chowder wants me to stop. I'm not sleeping. I'm awake until 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning...thinking of them. seeing their faces. and Chowder thinks this isn't good for me. He wants me to stop.
What an extravagant luxury that is. What an extravagant luxury that I am not an Israeli mother who's baby was shot in the head by a sniper, not a Palestinian mother who's 3 yr old son was killed in a military action, not a Darfurian mother who's husband and sons were killed in front of her while she and her daughters were raped, not an inner city mother whose 2 year old daughter was killed in a drive-by shooting, not a Rawadan mother, an Iraqi mother, a Bosnian mother, a Chechen mother, a Northern Irish mother, a Sierra Leone mother. What an extravagant luxury that I could just stop looking at it. I could just turn and point myself inward to my beautiful happy middle-class white American family. How extravagant. How luxurious.
But, I'm looking at these mother's faces. They are looking back at me. Their eyes are pleading, or worse they are blank, dead. And then as they look at me my computer screen goes blank. I'm gone. Her face falls. Her moment of fleeting hope, has passed. I've turned away because it was just too much. too horrible. Their tragedy was effecting me too much. And then what? What happens to the mothers when I avert my eyes? What happens when I turn myself away? It all goes on the same. the atrocities continue. And in turn, what happens to me?
