notes to my 14-year-old daughter in this latest iteration of america.
brief meditations on raising a teenager in a destabilizing country.
1.
May it radicalize you.
May you spend these last four years of childhood and adolescence sharpening your politics and familiarizing yourself with the finer points of your anatomy’s inner workings.
May you master the wielding of words. May they turn under your tongue and remain undetected upon inspection.
May you grasp the purpose of money and promptly divorce it from your values.
May you value the education you will need to earn outside the classroom, as well as the educators who will spend the last gasps of their union-protected, Department of Education-fortified careers equipping and empowering you for (involuntarily) independent study.
May you never run afoul of a young man who sneers as he utters, “Your body, my choice.”
May you never encounter an old man who is undeterred by your age.
May men who believe that they no longer need to honor your “No.” never find you.
May you find your road in the underbrush. It will not be the obvious one. It will (neuro)diverge in the wood. It will be illumined in fire. You will find it forged in scorched earth.
As you walk it, resist redirection from anyone who endeavors to convince you that the climate remains the same.
It has changed.
Everything has.
2.
In recent weeks, I have tried to halfheartedly remind you that we have both lived through something akin to this one before. You have answered wholeheartedly: I’m older now.
I should have known that I could anticipate this response from the girl who has nearly become my mirror: the realist I’ve raised, the cynic society sired.
I am older now. We have not lived through this before.
I should have known that I cannot be the mother who reassures you that all will be well. I would rather be the mother who ensures that you survive.
We have no recent precedent for surviving this. But I can already be certain that platitudes won’t make it possible.
3.
“… not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;” — Philippians 2:12b
Darling, you must understand faith as practice performed between you and your God, rather than a notion imposed by your country.
You have a mother for whom prayer is as quiet and constant as thought; otherwise, it is impossible to know who else might be listening. You will know when and if you need different expressions.
May there be instructive art. May you be among the instructors.
In the event that no faction of technology resists purchase by or the platforming of fascists, may you lean on existing libraries. May you aid in the creation of new ones.
Draw maps that mark only those territories that are least hostile to women and children. Hide them away in your hippocampus. Hasten toward any home you might be able to find there.
4.
Home will always be hard to find in a country that begrudges every patch of ground you gain. Ours is a niggardly nation, all the more tight-fisted toward those whose movement it could once limit and whose labor it could demand, in blood, for free.
Home will continue to be hard to find in a country that no longer just pines for those bygone days but open and aggressively sets its intentions toward returning to them.
So you must remember that your body is the longest home you’ll have. Situate it in the safest spaces possible, Open it only to those who will not harm it. Above all else, secure its borders.