Happy birthday eve

This one is hard to write.

It’s the eve of her birthday. A day that seemed impossibly far away just a few months ago. A day that we had at one time hoped would include a face-to-face celebration at home.

Our family loves birthdays….we often create a multi-phased celebration that can take days or even weeks. One year, I gave myself a birthday month. Yep – a full four weeks of celebrating me. We love birthdays as a communal event. Even when it is “just family”, it’s a crowd. Favorite foods. Lots of presents. Lots of laughter.

One year she had a My Little Pony cake, where the cake was a sheet cake decorated with all the new my little pony sets, that were also part of the gifts. One year it was a French toast buffet – all the different types of French toast and a wide variety of toppings. There was the cupcake cake (a very yummy trend for that year). There was the donut cake – stacks on stacks of donuts. Actually, one of my biggest challenges in putting on my kids birthday parties is figuring out where candles can go, because the cakes are non-traditional or outlandish.

It’s a great joy of a mom – to celebrate your child’s birthday. It’s a day you share with them – the day they joined society. After months of being only yours – now they enter the world. And for all those amazing mom’s who adopt, I’ve heard many similar stories about the “gottcha days” – a shared moment that changes your identity forever – and theirs. Your stories are forever entwined – even when they are hard.

There isn’t a day of her confinement that hasn’t also distinctly marked my life. Her story will always include these months away. So will mine. We are forever interwoven – she is always my daughter and I am always her mother. And so while she mourns tomorrow for so many reasons – I have a myriad of my own.

It has been said “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” – meaning, we can choose how to meet each circumstance. We can choose how we experience pain. We can choose how much we suffer.

I have been seeing God’s blessings and faithfulness through this all. I have been seeing Bunny used to bring Jesus to dark places. I’ve seen Bunny grow as a young woman – in empathy, in wisdom, in character. I’ve seen Bunny receive opportunities that actually help her to excel in academic, despite the multiple transitions that interrupted her progress.

But tonight…tonight I suffer. Tonight I choose to suffer with her. To join in her tears. To mourn from a distance. To imagine what tomorrow could have been. To feel the depth of loneliness.

Tomorrow we celebrate her from afar. She will have a face time call with her whole family. I will bake her a cake (at her request!) and we will eat it while having her favorite foods for dinner. It will be a party in honor of her – despite her absence.

But tonight…..tonight I will give myself over to the impossibleness of this situation….cause tomorrow is my baby’s birthday…..

Lessons of white privilege in IDOC

Over the last few months, Bunny has been learning the very real nature of her privilege and how it impacts teens. While the news of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor certainly have an impact at LePorte Juvenile Correctional Facility, Bunny began her education into white privilege the day she arrived.

First, while many of the kids in Johnson County were white, here, she is the minority. The youth of color are the first to learn the disparity of the justice system. Many girls there live in northern Indiana, close to the facility - places like Gary, La Porte, and other areas of the state that have a much higher concentration of people of color. 

Bunny stands out with her blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin. But she also stands out for a lot of other reasons. She came to LaPorte already working ahead of her grade level, while the other girls are doing "credit recovery" work for deficiencies in her education. Bunny loves to read. So much so that she is reading to girls (The Hunger Games series) who never read and never enjoyed books because they are functionally illiterate. I ask her how much money she needs in her account for telephone calls, snack items and toiletries. Many other girls go without or are limited by what their families can afford. Bunny isn't a fan of the food. Other girls enjoy actually being guaranteed 3 meals a day. Her roommates are shocked by how much mail she gets and how supported she is - while many of them rarely hear from their families and almost never receive letters.

The very assumptions of their futures show the great divide in realities for teenager of color in Indiana....

Bunny knows the address she will return to and that she will have her own room and all her old stuff. The other girls have little confidence about their living arrangements and status of their stuff when they leave the system.

Bunny knows she will go back to school, finish early (thank to all the credits she is earning while in DOC) and then go to college. The other girls assume they will never go back to a normal school, maybe get a GED and laugh at the thought of college.

Bunny still dreams about all the possibilities for her future career and what interests she has. The other girls assume they will need to scrape by on low wage jobs, like their families and other friends do.

Bunny can't wait to put this behind her. The other girls assume that they (or someone close to them) will be in adult DOC before long. This connection to the system is part of the reality of their lives and social circles. 

Attitudes. Expectations. Hopes. Dreams. 

For the teenage girls of color in LaPorte with Buuny, her greatest demonstration of white privilege is hope for her future. 

Like many, I am trying to listen and learn how I can be an antiracist...how I can be an ally for all people...how I can bring about change in my spheres of influence. But a lot of this is learning through books and social media - my current circles are very white - very secure - very insulated. 

More and more, I believe that to really change that, it's the girls with Bunny right now who need a vision of hope. They need to be able to see themselves doing better than their parents before them. They need to see education and better careers as a possibility to help break generational poverty cycles. They need connections with positive influences that give them opportunities beyond gangs, drugs and violence. This isn't me adopting a posture as a white savior - it's recognizing that while the day-in and day-out systems that my kids live in set them up for success, Bunny's roommates are set up to fail. Their everyday systems (education, judicial, economic, etc) are unequal, generationally disadvantaged and limited. 

Bunny's reality is what we usually paint as the american dream....live in a wealthy country and make use of every resource and opportunity to become anything you want to be. There's no limit to what you can achieve if you are willing to work hard. 

What she is learning, through casual conversation on a near daily basis, is that this is not the American Dream. This is white middle class dream. If you are born into enough privilege, you can springboard yourself anywhere else you want to go. 

The unjust deaths reported in the news should break our hearts. They should cause us to be outraged. But so should the difference in the schools in Gary and the schools in West Lafayette. We should be just as outraged by the inequality of healthcare for people of color. We should be just as broken by the lack of hope young people face, as their grief when another black life is lost. If black lives truly matter, then we should be advocating for their youth, for their education, for their support systems - not just that they shouldn't be murdered. 

George Floyd couldn't breathe. 

These girls with Bunny cannot hope.

Both are a tragedy.....