We Were Meant to Be Villages
Not because I don’t have ideas, parenting tips, or unfinished drafts staring at me from every folder, but because my heart is heavy. Heavy with the images coming out of Gaza. Heavy with the news from our own borders. Heavy with the stories of children ripped from their mothers, whether in Palestine or Texas or a foster care office down the street.
How do you write about sibling cooperation or bedtime routines when children are starving? When families are being displaced, detained, erased?
Sometimes I feel paralyzed. Sometimes I feel helpless. And sometimes, I feel guilty for having the luxury of a quiet moment at all.
But what I keep coming back to is this: this isn’t new. What’s happening across the world follows the exact blueprint that colonization has used for centuries—invade, extract, destroy, and then blame the survivors for trying to escape.
Indigenous peoples have always been the target. And when they are displaced, those displaced become the next target. It’s like colonizers burn your house down, then hate you for being homeless.
And no, I don’t think I’m imagining it. There’s a pattern. There’s a poison. Call it empire, call it whiteness, call it supremacy. It morphs, it spreads, and it never stays in one place. What started as British imperialism didn’t die—it just changed outfits.
We were not meant to live like this.
- We were not meant to scroll through suffering like headlines.
- We were not meant to live in systems where a few control the many.
- We were not meant to be this disconnected from one another, from the land, from meaning.
We were meant to be villages.
To live in small communities that care for their children, that care for the land, and that protect each other.
And I know Indigenous communities aren’t perfect. We’ve been hurt too, we’ve hurt each other too. But the root of most of that harm traces back to what was taken from us. The land. The languages. The freedom to raise our children in peace.
I don’t know how to fix the world. I really don’t.
However, I know that the path forward isn’t in deploying more drones, fences, or policies. It’s in the old ways. The ways that teach relationship and responsibility. The ways that teach community care, not control.
Currently, I don’t have a significant call to action. I just have this:
If you’re feeling heavy, it means your heart is still working.
If you’re still crying, it means you haven’t gone numb.
And if you’re trying to parent with love in a world full of violence, you’re part of the resistance.
P.S. This poem has been on my mind lately.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKsREauI2NF/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
