I had a different post for today.

It was all set and ready to go.

And then the Uvalde, Texas, shooting happened.

Innocent children, innocent adults who were living their lives, learning and teaching in school.

They’re just gone.

And I thought, how can I post something that doesn’t speak to what happened on May 24, 2022?

How can I gloss over it as if nothing happened?

How?

Since that day, I’ve researched, sent letters, watched videos of impassioned senators (and other senators who just make me cringe) and basketball coaches begging for change.

Everyone wants to do the right thing.

We all want our children to go to school in the morning and know they’re safe.

If we can’t do that on a national level, if our government can’t put laws in place that impede a mentally ill person from walking into a school with an automatic rifle and taking the lives of our children, what can we do?

I know that evil will always walk among us.

It always has.

But as times change, as society changes, so must our laws.

We’re at a confluence now (again! still!)—we’ve been here for a while—where things can’t go on as they have in the past or even as some people would like them to go on.

Something needs to change.

It starts at home.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here.

All babies are born good.

But it’s not enough to have good babies.

Then we have to raise them!

It starts in how we speak to our kids.

It starts in how we frame the news to our children.

It starts with the language that we use.

Maybe we should start being oversensitive to phrases like “I’m so mad, I could just kill him.”

Stop saying that.

This is where we find ourselves.

Stop using that language inside our homes.

Could we open a path for our kids to talk to us about what they hear at school and in the books they read?

Don’t ban the books.

Open the dialogue.

It starts at home.

It is every parent’s duty to feed their children nutritiously.

I’m not just talking about fruits and vegetables.

I’m talking about what goes into their minds.

What are they being fed on TV, at the movies, on the playground, in the mall that seeps into their brains?

What are their questions?

Talk to your kids.

Be mindful of what they’re being fed.

It may start at home, but it doesn’t need to stay there.

Seek professional help for your children if you can’t help them yourself.

If your child had a broken arm, you would take them to a professional to be healed.

Mental health breaks require the same attention.

But it starts at home.

We have to see the break.

We can only do that by putting down our phones, putting aside our computers, our dinner preparations, our party preparations, our vacation preparations.

Look at these precious children of ours.

The government is going to stutter its way through this horror, make lots of missteps, not go far enough for some and go too far for others.

We have little control over that.

But we absolutely have control over what happens in our homes.

That’s where it needs to start.

Thanks for reading my rant.

If you have helpful comments, please leave them, below.

Let me know what you’re doing to help our children.

~gail

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