What I will tell my children
Doing my bit for democracy. October 2024. "[Name], life is hectic. Make a plan to vote, and vote early if you can. Scan the QR code below to check out your options ..." I wrote this short message 100 times this past week on colorful postcards for MomsRising . I wrote the notes in snatched moments after dinner, during bedtime, in the still hours before my own sleep. I wrote them amid kid tantrums raging and my spouse's fever spiking. I wrote them as a small, desperate addition to the swirling maelstrom of history, in recognition that one single event rarely changes everything the way that many small actions, accumulated and reverberating, can. This perspective has been a long time coming for me. The 2016 election forced me to question everything I knew about my own values and everything I believed about my own capacity for compassion , fear , hope , and radical reorientation . Then in 2018, on the brink of first-time motherhood and midterm elections, I wrote a reflectio
