By Shelley Stephenson
Growing up, I believed I would have more opportunities than my parents. Most of us thought that, and most of us did. I believed it for my kids, now 22 and 17, from the time they were babies. But over the last ten years, and especially the last ten months, I can’t believe it anymore.
As a mom of young adults, I worry. The worries are generalized: Will our planet be habitable for my kids’ lifetimes? Where will wealth disparities and social division lead us? The worries are also specific to the specific needs and futures of each of my kids.
My 22-year-old is my biological daughter. She joined my husband and me after years of IVF, including one particularly memorable failed cycle that landed me in medical distress and excruciating pain, and in need of an emergency D&C. Fortunately, Roe v Wade guaranteed me access, and so I survived and went on to grow my family. Now I can no longer assume that would be the case for my daughter in a similar situation. She (and others of her generation) might not only experience the heartache of losing one’s long-hoped for pregnancy, but also face the fear, pain and danger of being denied access to life-saving reproductive care. The idea that this is where the U.S. is heading is something that makes me so angry it keeps me up nights.
My 17-year-old is my adopted son. With his brown skin and black hair and eyes, he looks nothing like our white family, and very much like the folks who, the data tells us, are far more likely to get pulled over by law enforcement. When he started driving in Arizona (where racial profiling thrives after 2010’s infamous SB1070 and last year’s passage of Proposition 314), I experienced the dread that white parents don’t usually have cause to recognize. And now to this I add all the new talk about deportation from Trump’s America, even among those (naturalized citizens, international adoptees) we might otherwise have thought of as “safe.”
The question is: what to do with all these worries? How to cultivate concern such that it’s productive and can be tackled, without letting it overwhelm and incapacitate? I’m still working on this but my answer, I think, lies in communities. The groups I’ve joined in recent years – Democrats in my AZ legislative district and in Democrats Abroad, Indivisible, Third Act, and Unitarian Universalist groups on the local and national levels – help me face my fears through organizing and action. They introduce me to others who share my values and offer different perspectives, and from whom I can learn. And they demonstrate to my kids that it’s not an option to stand by and watch our country and its core values being destroyed without fighting back.
But I also know that it’s a balancing act. I want to resist, and I want to involve my kids in that work. But at the same time, I know I need to take care to live a well-rounded life. Dinnertime conversation about Trump, day after day, will not endear the work to your kids – I have learned this the hard way. Kids appreciate knowing you care about them and their futures, but they don’t want to spend all their time in a state of high alert. They want to live their lives which can feature anger and despair, yes, but more especially hope and joy. My kids teach me this on a daily basis. In the meantime, my chosen communities allow me to put my fears into some perspective while I go about the quiet (and occasionally loud) work of organizing, justice, and resistance