Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
I’ve been so sick this week. Down with an awful stomach virus. Projectile vomiting so much that I’ve been bedridden. But I’ve seen the news. Three 9-year-olds and 3 faculty members dead in Nashville, Tennessee. Did I ever tell you guys that I was briefly an elementary school teacher in Tennessee? I was. I gave it up to take care of my own girls. Right before the pandemic, I was back in the classroom again. I’ll never go back. You couldn’t pay me enough money to risk a school shooting in a country where guns outweigh children’s life.
Do you know how much teachers love their students, especially those little ones? People don’t become teachers because they don’t care. It’s a calling. Teaching is a job you do out of love. It’s hard and thankless but we are rewarded in 1000 tiny ways by those precious children and that’s why teachers do so much for so little. But now, they’re supposed to be expected to risk their own lives just to educate someone else’s child?
Just another day in America
I’m not even shocked anymore. I’m angry and disgusted at our country’s constant failure of our children, our teachers and parents. No mother or father should ever have to drop their children off at school, at their own risk which is exactly what we’re expected to do. No teacher should be expected to use her body as a shield from the gunfire. No child should have to know the protocol to survive an active shooter situation.
Every morning since my daughters started school, I drop them off at the front door of school and say a prayer that they are still alive when I pick them up. Every morning, I feel sick to my stomach. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard sirens and called the school to check on my kids or driven there just to be sure. I live in constant fear. I’ve lost a pregnancy and I don’t think I could survive losing another child.
I don’t know about you but I didn’t create, a house and push my precious girls out into this world through excruciating pain just so someone else could so callously disregard their lives. I mean FUCK YOU those are mine. I did the work. No one else has the right to destroy what I created. They exist. They matter. This is human life. Not fucking collateral damage. One life is too many but in the United States, we’re being sent the message by our politicians that our dead children are a small price to pay for the right to bear arms. Maybe we need new politicians who care about all of the “we the people” and not just the gun enthusiast.
Just Another Day in America
The thing that pisses me off the most is that politicians place a higher value on guns than on human life. Because guns are a more lucrative business. Guns make money. The NRA has money to burn and throw around Washington. Only our children’s lives are worth more than any money. They are priceless. The saddest part is that we are all becoming desensitized to it. We hear that there’s been a shooting and we get sad and then we move on to the next day and the next group of unsuspecting children who get slaughtered while learning their ABCs.
What about the excruciating pain of a mother and father’s broken heart? Have you ever had the misfortune of hearing or expelling your own primal scream into the world? There is a howling that comes only when you lose a child. It’s unmistakable and un-recreatable. It comes from deep within and it is the breaking of a human being. It sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before. When that happens, both the child and the parent are destroyed. Parents and their children are invisibly tethered for life and when our children are ripped from this world, a part of us dies too.
Incredibly, there is more to be gained in gun sales and by appeasing gun aficionados for politicians to even care or consider any kind of common sense gun control. What is boils down to is that the politicians believe our children’s lives are expendable. Well, I believe I speak for all parents when I say, no child’s life is expendable.
How many children need to die to make them care? Whose child needs to die for them to care? Because from where I sit, it looks like money is more important than our children’s safety and lives.
Just Another Day in America
No wonder so many of our children are suffering from anxiety and depression. The law mandates that we send them into a fucking war zone every morning with no protection. A child should not have to practice active shooter drills. A 9-year-old shouldn’t have to fear for her life every morning when she goes to school. How can our children even breathe? They know they’re at risk. RISK? They are risking their lives to get an education.
How do we even make it make sense to our children when it doesn’t even make sense to us? What are we supposed to say when our child is looking at us to be their savior and we can’t protect them? How are we supposed to live with the guilt of sending them to the slaughter? We have to fight harder.
Just Another Day in America
How many mothers need to drop their sweet children off at school and never get to pick them up before we care enough to stop the government from putting guns before babies? When will the government fight as hard for our school-aged children as they do the unborn ones?
I’m pissed off and you should be too. If you want things to change, you have to be willing to fight for change. Wishing won’t work. You’re going to have to put your money where your mouth is. You have to fight like your child’s life depends on it, because it does. We have to be relentless so that our children are safe. Our politicians are failing our children, we don’t have that luxury.
Lift your voices to protect our children. School shootings are unacceptable. We need to draw a line in the sand for our children’s sake. Children being slaughtered can never be just another day in America. Every time it happens… it’s the worst day in America.
Imagine for a moment the unthinkable. Imagine that the child never comes home again, the smile you’ll never see again, and the tiny arms around your neck are those of your child. Be brave. Take a stand. Scream at the top of your lungs. Tell Congress to stop glorifying guns and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines now! You can start by signing this petition at MomsRising.Org
