Parenting between compassion and fear.

We moved somewhere safer, and still…

There are unhoused people sleeping near the places my children walk. Desperation shows up in public spaces. Violence leaks into ordinary afternoons. People still grasping for life in a world that doesn’t support us all.

I don’t blame people for acting out in a system that grinds them down. I also watch my daughter cross an intersection on her way to the library and feel my chest tighten, every single time. I let her take the bus because she needs to grow confidence and have autonomy, and still…

Parenting right now means holding compassion and fear in the same breath and knowing that they often contradict each other.

“Safer” is a relative term. It doesn’t mean safe. It means fewer headlines, better lighting, maybe faster emergency response. It means the danger is quieter, more polite, easier to look away from.

I know this. Intellectually. And still, my body reacts before my values do.

I don’t want to raise children who fear poor people, or unhoused people, or anyone living at the sharp edge of a broken system. I don’t want them to confuse survival with villainy. I don’t want them to presume who people are based on appearance or circumstance.

I also don’t want to pretend that harm doesn’t exist just because its roots are traceable.

I have a metaphor I return to when I think about my children and the world they’re growing into. I imagine a highland cliff; steep, real, dangerous. Also; majestic, beautiful, vibrant.

I’m standing between them and the edge of that cliff right now. Not pretending it isn’t there. Not pushing them toward it either. Just standing, as they slowly become aware I am pointing, explaining the drop, showing them where the rock face is solid and where it crumbles.

For the last three years, I’ve been taking real strides to opening my oldest’s eyes. Calling things what they are. Naming misogyny when it shows up. Pointing out racism, classism, privilege. Not as abstractions, but as forces that shape daily life.

I can’t make the cliff disappear. But as my children grow I want it to feel scalable. I want them to know where to place their hands. I want them to know they can maneuver that cliff if they need to. That they even should sometimes.

My oldest just turned 13.

That number has felt so heavy to me lately. As my child has grown to the point where I see the glimmer of an adult showing. In her words, in her logic, in her passion, in her body… the realization that my body can no longer stand between my child and the world in the same way it has.

There is also the reality that I have children in the 2SLGBTQIA+ sphere. A layer of fear I didn’t understand before motherhood, a fear that has slowly materialized. I don’t want to presume to understand the fear of a black mother, a fear shaped by histories and realities far beyond my own. But raising queer children has given me a visceral understanding of what it means to love someone the world has already marked. I don’t want to go back to not seeing, even when carrying this awareness feels unbearably heavy.

Will my child be harmed? Will they find their people in a world that feels increasingly isolated, increasingly afraid of difference? Will their joy be met with curiosity… or cruelty?

What I don’t want, what I refuse, is to raise children who become apathetic or cynical. Who believe that because the world is broken, nothing they do matters.

I want them to know they don’t have to fix everything. They don’t have to save the world. Sometimes it’s enough to do something because it helps one person. Sometimes all you can do is put on your own oxygen mask. Sometimes that’s how you keep your footing.

Parenting, I’m learning, is a long practice of trying to stay tethered while slowly letting go. Of loving fiercely without controlling. Of trusting who your children are becoming, and what they’ve learned, even when it terrifies you.

No one tells you how much this will break your heart.

And still, you show up.

You stand at the cliff.

You hope.