There are nights when we lie in your bed, fairy lights glowing above us, the city humming softly outside, and you tell me what has been sitting with you all day. Side by side under your pink quilt, you know I am all yours.

It was during one of those nights when you asked me a question I couldn’t answer right away.

You told me you had learned about Renee Macklin Good at school. Then you grew quiet, the way you do when something settles deep inside you. You wondered if something like that could ever happen to me, and asked me not to go to any more protests because you wanted me to be safe.

It has been a while since I stepped into the streets with a sign in my hands. In recent years, I’ve shown up in other ways—telling stories of people living closest to the harms shaping our world, creating spaces for conversation, helping others find ways to act, both quietly and together.

But I understood what you were really asking. You were asking if I would still be here.

That night, I didn’t want to let you go. I held you longer, a little tighter than usual. I don’t know if you felt it but my heart was pounding with love. I told you that I was safe, that we are held by people who love us and look out for one another. That was true—and it was also incomplete.

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As much as I want to believe that I am safe, the truth is that the world does not protect everyone in the same way. People of color, like us, live with more danger, and women and girls, and trans and queer people, are punished every day for wanting to live freely. I’m so sorry this is the world you’ve been given.

There is nothing that I have wanted more than to protect you and your sister. But I’ve come to believe that the deepest form of protection is honesty: helping you understand the world as it is, why we are here, and what is being asked of us. This letter is my way of explaining why—even in the face of so much harm—we must never back down.

Since I was a little girl, my parents told me that we are here on purpose—to use the gifts we’ve been given and leave the world better than we found it. I grew up hearing stories that helped me understand what that really meant. Our family has a beautiful history of doing exactly that.

Long before I was born, people in our family spoke up when it would have been easier to be quiet, took care of others when there wasn’t much to go around, and did what was right even when it cost something. People like your grandfather, who as a young activist saw people struggling for food and shelter and chose not to look away. He organized alongside others to push back against greed and cruelty, so that life could be better for the country he loved. That persistence has traveled across generations, showing up in how we move through the world, how we notice one another, and how we refuse to turn away.

You’ve seen this in your life. In the times when our table was full not because we had extra but because someone needed to be welcomed in. In the afternoons when we sorted through old jackets, choosing which ones could warm someone else. In the toys we passed along—worn, beloved, ready for new hands. In the meals we cooked, the doors we opened, the playdates with new friends who had come from far away and needed a place to belong.

You’ve come to know that feeling in those moments. How the room softens, how people exhale, how laughter drifts back in and the air feels lighter. I have wanted you to know that feeling so well that you can always find your way back to it. It reminds us of who we are as humans, who we are to one another, and that our lives are braided, never meant to be carried alone. I know these feel like small, ordinary moments—but they are almost always what carries us through the hardest times.

When the world is hurting and people have been harmed, hold on to this. Remember why we must take care of one another.

It matters, now more than ever.

The world has been hurting. People have been harmed. And this moment asks something of us. It asks us to begin where we are and with what we have, to imagine what could be better, and to step toward one another and protect what is tender and at risk.

I know the chaos around us can feel frightening. I have felt that fear myself. But that, too, is part of this. Staying engaged isn’t about pretending fear isn’t there. It’s about choosing what fear is allowed to shape.

We don’t have to have all the answers; there is no map showing us the way forward. But this moment is not fixed. We keep moving anyway—adjusting our steps, learning as we go, choosing again and again to stay engaged instead of disappearing. Each time we stay, we return to something we’ve known all our lives: that we can feel afraid and still continue. Fear does not loosen when we turn away. It loosens when we turn back toward one another.

That way of being—that refusal to turn away—is already alive in you. I see it in how you care about the world and everything in it, in how hard it is for you to accept what doesn’t make sense or what doesn’t feel fair, in how you notice details others miss, and feel things people move past. You carry so much care with you, and you don’t turn away from what you see. I couldn’t be more proud of you.

That instinct will sometimes make life harder. It may leave you feeling alone. When it does, trust the sound of your inner voice. Listen to the sound of your heartbeat. Listen to your dreams. Let it guide you toward what is good, especially for those hurting most. Love has shown us, again and again, in every corner of the world and even in the aftermath of great harm, that it endures, and always returns. You only have to believe in it.

You may one day wonder why loving the world could ask so much. Remember that the world is bigger than any one life. This truth has a lineage—from your great grandmother opening her home to people who needed a place to rest, to your grandfather’s courage, to the choices I make now. The world changes through what we choose to do with our lives.

When I close my eyes and imagine the future, I see a world that feels sweet and full. People gathered under open skies, laughter drifting in from somewhere nearby. Joy returning in simple, luminous ways. Love is all around. And I see you and your little sister free.

Thoughts of our ancestors steady my belief in the world you are growing into. I carry my small part of that long, unfinished story, and one day, you will carry yours.

Let your heart stay wide enough to hold others, and know I am with you. I always will be.

With all my love,
Mama