The Last Minute

Maybe I'm just over-tired and wrecked from this completely insane semester, or I'm fizzling out, or perhaps it's something about being an over-emotional woman, or perhaps even something about being a sappy parent changed me but I just can't engage in rational or unemotional discussion about privilege or status or anything remotely social justice when it comes to kids lately. I just (as the white girls say) can't even. This most recently reared it's head surrounding the Spring Valley incident, but it has come up before in the unaccompanied minor immigration crisis, in Tamir Rice, in Jordan Miles, and truly when any child who is caught in the violence of adults (and their language). I am seeing a line as thick as the one in the dirt marking a game of tug-of-war. And I know, rationally, there is nuance. Culture, climate, bias...all of these things are at play. I know because I've studied it. I know because the thing that I am called to is the educated dis

While I was sitting in class today simultaneously taking notes on the lecture, answering e-mails for my internship, and organizing my notes for an event on Friday, panic blew up like a fifth grader huffing into a wad of double bubble in my stomach. It was accompanied by the ever familiar feeling of a pulled plug in my mouth, drying it out like the mojave desert. I've been having a lot of these physical manifestations of nerves and panic lately. It never really happened to me until I was well into adult-hood, and then it was rarely. Recently it's been worse. Maybe because I'm nearing the end of a lot of years of schooling and finally feeling at peace with my calling. Maybe it's because I've matured enough (unlikely) to see the consequences of my failings. Maybe I am developing a panic disorder. Maybe it's a new symptom of my ADHD. Maybe it's a parent thing (oy vey the world we live in!) I am also really really terrible at self-care. So today, when I