There are times to be healthy.

Halloween is not one of those fucking times.

This is not the time for banana “treats” or berries in cute formations or gluten-free oganic bread in the shape of bats.

Popcorn balls are questionable, people.

Yeah. I said it.

This is the time for high fructose corn syrup.

This is the time for every and all other forms of processed sugar.

This is the time for preservatives. And if you can handle it, this is even the time for Red Dye #40.

This is the time to let your kids swim in the shit you look down on others for feeding their poor kids, who will surely end up obese, depressed, generally weird and probably not that bright. (I mean what chance did they have with such a lack of nourishment?)

I get it. You care about your kid. You don’t want him exposed to the deadly chemicals and additives and non-food “food” substances we all know are killing people, ruining our environment and funneling money into corporations with the morality of that “pastor” who wants to punch kids for acting gay.

Yes. I know. Even though it’s only one day out of 365, you’re such a diligent parent you need 365 out of 365 of good eating and thoughtful consumption.

You know what? FUCK THOUGHTFUL CONSUMPTION.

It’s Halloween.

All people need to let loose sometimes. All people need to get all extreme and radical and shit, sometimes.

Do you really want to raise the person who’s all “Yeah, sorry. I can’t have a shot of tequila on my 21^st birthday because hard liquor is excessive.”

Do you really want the daughter who won’t eat the triple-cream brie with her friends, even though it’s a bi-annual red-wine-and-bread-and-cheese event with her girlfriends?

Do you REALLY want the son who asks 97 questions of the poor waitress about every ingredient in the tacos (checking for GMOs, duh) and you’re all DUDE WE’RE AT A FUCKING TACO TRUCK but he’s all “doesn’t matter. I need 365 days of good.”

Do you really want the kid who refuses to do the keg stand?

Okay maybe that was a poor example.

Do you want the kid who only orders salads with dressing on the side no matter WHAT event is on the fucking line, even if it’s an anniversary or holiday party or a damn baby shower and the pregnant woman’s all “But I weigh the same as a small house” and your kid’s all “Yes, but I’m unwavering in my need for health. I need 365. Somebody else can have my cake.”

Nah. You don’t want that kid. You want the kid that knows what’s up. You want the kid that’s all “Oh yeah, ladies, I’m gonna regret this tomorrow but it’s my birthday and we haven’t seen each other in 2 years, SO POUR ME ANOTHER ONE.”

You want the son who’s like “Honey, I’ll be home in the morning cause it’s so-and-so’s bachelor party and I’ll probably have like 2 cases of beer and regret all life tomorrow.”

You want the kid who can live it up, eat it up, party it up when the time arises. A little flexible. A little wild. A little “God damn you people and your Cambozola and baguette. Yeah, I’ll have more.”

You want the kid who isn’t the one always doing the right thing, don’t you? I mean those people make us all want to die.

The mom whose critical eye makes mothers like me squirm. “Why did I grab the plastic rattle on this playdate? Why didn’t I choose the Amish wood one? Oh god help me!”

The mom whose kid is ALWAYS clean and the dad who NEVER feeds questionable foods and looks at you like “I’m struggling to understand your excessive deficiencies as a parent and human.”

The parents who are like “Yeah, sorry. Johnny can’t have a cupcake because we don’t eat food like that.” And you’re like “It’s a birthday party and Johnny is 6 and literally every other kid is having one…”

And then you just hope Johnny doesn’t end up wounding kittens.

I’m kidding. But seriously, you don’t want to grow the human who is just SO DAMN CONTROLLED AND GOOD AND RIGHT she can’t LIVE. Get wild. Live on the fucking edge. Make some mistakes. Regret some decisions. Roll with the day, moment, even if it’s not that bright.

Eat a pillowcase full of Halloween candy, because it’s Halloween, and it’s fun.

Irresponsible. Irrational. Downright fucking stupid.

This is the time for that.

Yeah, I said it: Sometimes life requires stupid. It requires irrational. It requires letting go of our deep way of living and just existing with others in an indulgent, relaxed way. Overeat. Eat shit. Drink too much.

And enjoy the rest of your days of moderation.

God knows we’ve got plenty of those bastards.

Sometimes it’s just about humanity: Stupid, glorious humanity.

And candy.

1. I’ve never been so tired in my entire life. I’m in one of those places where you just HOLD ON and tell yourself it can’t last forever. Because it can’t. And that’s why it’s manageable.
2. We moved in with my mom (go team!), to a town about 25 minutes away from our old town, which means it takes 30 minutes to get my kids to school in the morning. Let me tell you how much I enjoy that. Mmmkay? Oddly, we’ve been more on time this past week than when we lived 2 minutes from the school.
3. I don’t understand life.
4. Speaking of not understanding things, that youngest kid running around my house is the cutest little bundle bandit in the world. That’s what we call her: “Bundle bandit.” It fits. My friends call her “the bull.” That also fits. She likes to refer to herself in third person, particularly when she’s charging into the room holding some large object, like a stool: “HERE COMES THE GEORGIE!” (yes. She says “The Georgie.”)
5. In the past week she’s done so much cute shit I want to eat her. She discovered the word “similar” but has no idea how to actually use it, so she’s like “That’s a similar color” and the rest of us are like “What’s a similar color?” and Georgia looks at us like we’re about the stupidest excuses for humans she’s ever seen until she repeats, and enunciates: “That’s a SIMILAR color.” Then Rocket asks her the same question like seventy-nine more times until I squeal. Because as you  may have noticed, kids have a way of rapidly becoming uncute.
6. Georgie is going to be a dinosaur for Halloween (obviously). Ava is a 1950s girl. Rocket is dressing up as “Big Papa,” his paternal great-grandfather, who fought in World War II. Yeah. That’s what he is. His great grandfather as a soldier in WWII. Not sure where he comes up with this stuff, but it’s pretty rad.
7. After wearing her dino costume for a couple hours, Georgie joyously announced that next year she wants to be a “princess,” which surprised the crap out of me considering she calls herself a boy, insists she has a penis and prefers monster trucks and tools over all the other things. But I was like “Cool!” And she says “Yeah! I’ll be a big boy princess in a green dress!”
8. I really, really hope she doesn’t forget that next year.
9. You know what sucks? During difficult times, when you’re supposed to cling more tightly to your spouse and really help each other through the mire, my husband and I get so damn stressed out we pretty much can’t stand each other. Then we fight in really ridiculous ways. Sometimes we lie there in bed and tell each other really helpful things like “You’ve ruined my life” or “We’re never going anywhere ever ever ever.” Sometimes we discuss who’s the worse partner. But mostly we just focus on how much we hate our lives. Then in the morning we’re all “yeah sorry about that, homie.” We don’t actually say homie. Also, I MAY be more the one saying the ridiculous horrible things. Winning at marriage, people. That’s what that is.
10. So now we’re figuring out how to cram 5 people into two rooms and fix up our house to sell, and I’m still looking for work to bring in some more income, though there are lots of interesting things happening on that front (much of which is delayed, of course, by the aforementioned fun). All fun. Lots of fun. Yay fun!
11.  Yeah, I’m whining. Hell yeah I’m whining. Sometimes life fucking bites because it’s just hard and complicated and exhausting. Yeah I know we don’t have real problems and yeah I know we have lots and lots and lots of “blessings,” but I insist on my right to bitch about moving 5 people into 2 rooms in your mom’s house (even if she is amazeballs) because basically you can’t afford your life and need to get the fuck out.

Let’s look at some pictures. I love you guys. I’ll be back writing regularly in no time. STAY WITH ME PEOPLE.

Don’t fail me now.

he moved the entire house himself, except for our Cal King bed. Because, well fuck. Why not?

these two are damn cute

at the school harvest festival, she ate chocolate. The end.

it’s that dimple I tell ya.

i die

Have a great Halloween, and I can’t wait to get a couple pictures up of Rocket as “Big Papa.” He did the whole costume himself and it’s pretty damn cute.

xoxo,
Janelle

So let’s talk about Maria Kang, the “What’s your excuse” flat-abs lady.

You’ve probably seen the image that’s firing up the interwebs. If not, it’s this one.

Most of the critics are like “She’s shaming fat people!”

Or “I’m overweight because I have an illness!”

Or “She looks like that because of her genetics!”

And let’s get one thing clear: This broad and I would NEVER be friends. Just the sight of her kinda makes me want to break shit and run. She’s the mom I see from afar at the playground and I’m like “Oh God where ARE MY PEOPLE? WHERE?”

Then I look around furiously hoping there are other “mommy” options.

Judgmental and horrible? Yep.

That’s me. Just keepin’ it real.

So she calls herself a “fitness blogger and director of a fitness non-profit organization.” She also, incidentally, was born with such healthy pheromones she doesn’t smell when she sweats. She also has good skin and no leg hair.

Don’t believe anybody would say something like this publicly? Here’s the direct quote and source: “Honestly, I have no leg hair, I don’t smell when I sweat and I was born with good skin and healthy pharemones. (I think this has something to do with how I take care of my body!) Now everyone knows!! And NO, I am not going to post pictures!”

Um, yeah. I couldn’t be friends with somebody like this. I probably couldn’t even get through lunch with somebody like this. The pretentiousness, the self-appreciation. The “I’m doing it so why the hell aren’t YOU” mentality, the no-really-I’m-better-than-you attitude. Not my people.

Everything about that photo: The message, tone, perfect make-up. All of it. It just screams “MY GOD I’M SO GOOD and I just can’t for the LIFE of me figure out why you aren’t as good as me!”

No really why aren’t you?

The woman has made a life out of fitness. She has placed fitness above other endeavors, even making it her career. She says so: “I just made it a priority.” Well, yeah. Clearly. And her message is kind of like “Why haven’t you made the excellent choices I have?” Yuck.

And since she was doing “crunches” before school in fifth grade, she obviously has an innate interest in such things.

You know what I was doing in fifth grade? Inventing reasons to get out of running the mile. Also reading John Steinbeck and writing my ass off.

But I want to talk about this whole thing about her being “offensive” with the “What’s your excuse” message. I want to talk about the people claiming this woman is “bunching all fat people together by assuming they’re all making excuses.”

Newsflash, Einstein: MOST OF US ARE MAKING EXCUSES.

Yes, lots of fat people have medical conditions that prohibit them from eating well and exercising.

Wait. What? No, not really. That’s not really that common.

Okay, SOME people have medical conditions, genetic dispositions or other unavoidable ailments that cause them to be overweight.

BUT, the vast majority of fat people are fat because they eat too much and don’t fucking move their bodies enough. And if we want to get brutally honest, we could start asking ourselves how many of us use our illnesses as an excuse to not eat well and exercise.

Oh, snap. Ouch.

I held on to the fact that I was on crazy pills that made me gain 70 pounds in 3 months as an excuse for my weight THREE YEARS after I quit the damn medication.

Winning!

I’m so sick of this shit. Why can’t we be honest with ourselves? You know you’ve got excuses. We’ve ALL got excuses.

I am currently 40 pounds overweight. Why? Because I use food for emotional comfort. Because I’m lazy. Because I put other things before my health.

Because I have insomnia (which gets better when I swim laps but I don’t do that because I’m lazy and busy – EXCUSES), and for some reason when I wake up after having slept 4 hours for the 3^rd night in a row, I somehow determine that a scone and pumpkin spice latte is going to fix my life.

It never fixes my life. You know what fixes my life? Exercise.

But lately, I choose the scone anyway.

Yeah, I could reframe all the above-mentioned excuses into more convincing “reasons” for my poor health, but the fact remains: “I am 40 pounds overweight because of the choices I make and it will only change when I’m willing to FACE THE CHOICES I MAKE rather than try to convince myself my choices are happening TO me rather than FROM me.”

We were burglarized. We’re moving. We can barely pay our bills. I need every free moment to WORK. I’m a recovering alcoholic – I’m sensitive with an emotional nature (at least I’m not drinking!). My kids take all my time. My kids won’t eat healthy food.

Blah blah fucking blah.

Bullshit. All of it.

One day I stopped making excuses. I lost 60 pounds.

Then something changed and I’m back on the scone wagon.

Give me a minute. I’m sure I can come up with a few thousand reasons why I stopped losing weight.

But here’s what I really want to say: If you have a viable, accurate and real excuse for not eating well and exercising (and “I don’t really give a shit about fitness” totally works), then why are you all bent out of shape by her “What’s your excuse” question?

If you have an excuse you’re buying, that you truly believe, why the hell are you offended?

Why wouldn’t you just look at that poster and go “Well, I have ______” and move on with your life?

Because that’s not the way offense works. Things offend us when they hit a nerve we don’t like, when there’s a bit too much truth in the offender’s words.

I imagine most of the people all “offended” by miss perfect’s question have been holding on to the same tired-ass excuses for years and years and years and simply refuse to face it. It’s like being called out in a very direct way and they’re like “No! I have a REAL excuse and I need it validated by you because I really don’t believe it myself, so when you nod your head in agreement I can more easily overlook the fact that I’m selling myself tired lies.”

It’s hard to look at the shit we sell ourselves. It’s hard to look at the stories we believe.

We want our egos fed, our stories validated, our bullshit cosigned.

I want somebody to say “Oh Janelle, you’ve had ___ and ____ and this year’s been so tough for you, so don’t worry about losing that weight.”

But when I lie down at night and nobody’s around or I look at myself naked in the mirror or I feel the ache in my back or I get winded walking up stairs, I know it’s bullshit. I know for a moment I’m full of it, and I haven’t an excuse in the world. Of course I have time. If I made it a priority. Deep down, I know the truth about myself.

And I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one.

I don’t like that woman because she’s done what I’m not doing. I don’t like that woman because I’m tired of feeling like shit and I’m tired of my own excuses but here I am still doing the same old shit and she’s bringing it ALL to the forefront.

Yeah she’s obnoxious and I hate her.

Yeah if I saw her coming at me I’d climb a tree like a scared cat being chased by a pitbull.

But she’s right.

Yes, we have different lives. No, I will never look like her. And yes, her refusal to recognize the myriad factors that have contributed to her body/look is myopic and silly, but her question remains valid, and applicable to every single one of us in some area of our lives.

I may hate the delivery, but the message is real: “No really Janelle. What’s your fucking excuse?”

The day I’m willing to answer that completely is the day my life has a chance to start changing.

We’ve talked about baby sprinkles and push presents. And you know, I thought I might actually die from the cuteness of a baby sprinkle, and on many levels the push present makes me want to jab myself in the eyes with rusty nails. Wow, sorry, that was more graphic than I anticipated. But at least, people, the baby sprinkle and push present make sense on some level.

It’s a fucked-up level, but still, it’s a level.

I mean it never makes real sense to call something a “sprinkle” instead of a “shower.” That shit’s just wrong. And I maintain that the best “push present” around is the human that actually exits the vagina post-pushing, however, the “gender reveal party” is some next-level shit.

First of all, if you can’t call it what it is, you shouldn’t be having it. It’s a SEX REVEAL PARTY. Gender is a social construction. In other words, the “gender” of your child won’t be determined until your kid decides if he/she is a girl or a boy or both or neither. But “sex reveal” party sounds weird. And we all know people who unleash a box of pink or blue balloons to signal the genitalia of their little miracle are totally not into weirdness.

Reason number 1 it’s the stupidest shit ever.

But I should back up. Readers of this blog may not know what the hell I’m talking about (which is, incidentally, why we’re lovers). Anyway, it’s this thing where parents reveal the sex of their kid to family and friends in a party. A PARTY. Like they invite a bunch of people over and exclaim (via some totally cute method found on Pinterest): Boy! Girl!.  And then everybody pretends to care.

I’ve heard parents will like cut into a cake and the filling is either pink or blue.

Ohmygod how cute. Hold me while I attempt to recover from the cuteness.

But now, things are changing! According to our trusty pal BabyCenter, “Cutting into a cake with pink or blue filling is so two years ago. A “gender reveal” extravaganza, on the other hand – complete with games, favors, and a Pinterest board? Now you’re talking!”

Oh god help us. Games. Yes, please. Let’s play games relating to the sex of your unborn baby.  Fascinating!

They continue: “The gender reveal party trend has exploded in the last year…Why the boom? The economic hard times may have something to do with it. ‘People are looking for reasons to celebrate.’” (more BabyCenter)

NO. No no no no no.

This is not it. This is not the reason people are throwing gender reveal parties. The reason people are throwing these parties is because they have become so materialistic and self-involved they fail to recognize the single fatal flaw with an event like this:

NOBODY CARES AS MUCH AS YOU DO about whether your kid has a penis or vag.

Maybe your mom.

Nope. Nevermind. Nobody. Not even your mom. Even you mom doesn’t care as much as you do.

Those are some shitty odds, dude. And yet, it’s a fact. Truth. Written in stone. To illustrate, I made a graph.

This means you are asking a bunch of people to come over and celebrate a detail with absolutely no bearing on their lives. In the lives of other people, the sex of your kid deserves an “oh, cool,” a passing nod, a mention to their husband or wife “So and so’s having a boy! She’s totes bummed cause it’s her 4^th boy, but whatevs.”

Yeah. Not sure what happened there but I felt it necessary.

You aren’t even celebrating the CHILD. You aren’t really even celebrating the sex of the child. Rather, you are celebrating YOURSELF. You’re like “Hey everybody! Come watch me learn something I care about even though you don’t!” Or, if the parents already know the sex (though the “hottest trend” is to have the doctor write the sex on a piece of paper and then it’s revealed at the party to the parents too! OMG HOW ADORABLE!”), then you’re asking people to take time out of their lives to celebrate a piece of information without any personal connection or meaning, and it’s even less interesting because they don’t even get to WATCH YOU give a shit.

“I command you to come to my house and celebrate nothing, because it means something to me!”

Yay! Fun! Balloons!

I see it as an excuse to buy shit and do adorable things with paper and cupcakes and mason jars. And that’s cool. I do it for my kids’ birthdays. But that’s kind of semi-logical because celebrating people’s LIVES makes sense. But celebrating their GENITALIA?

Nope.

It’s another commercialized invention just cute enough people buy into it.

“Need some ideas for your gender reveal party?” (Oh yes, please, all-consuming mindless materialistic America, give me some ideas!)

You can use a “fun theme!” like “pregnancy cravings (think pickles, ice cream, and potato chips) or ducks (hang up a “waddle it be” banner).”

PLEASE FUCKING SHOOT ME.

You should for sure ”Make those teams commit!…Ask everyone to wear either pink or blue, or provide gender-specific accessories, such as pink and blue bead necklaces, pins, leis, or temporary tattoos. One inspired couple gave out cardboard mustaches and lips on sticks.”

Make it stop. Please.

“My friend is going to make cake pops, but only one will have the colored center,” says one BabyCenter mom. A particularly creative idea comes from Tiffany: “We had a huge Easter egg hunt, and one egg had a slip of paper inside that said, ‘It’s a boy!'”

I just can’t.

Baby showers celebrate new life. People can relate to that. Mother blessings celebrate the transition to motherhood. People get that. Bridal showers, bachelor parties, birthday parties…these are ritual events signaling movement in life, new birth new growth new chapters. These events resonate with something in me, something that’s facing new moments too. Maybe I’ve been there. Maybe I’m waiting for it.

This nonsense? It’s celebrating nothing. It’s like the vacation party in the 1970s were Sue and Rick invite their 30 friends over to watch a slide show of their trip to the Grand Canyon, only in this scenario, all the guests act SUPER INTERESTED because duh! It’s baby stuff! Whee!

Also, do you have a shower too? If so, do you demand people to come over to your house TWICE to celebrate your offspring? I read about a woman who had a gender reveal party for her fourth child. Oh good lord.

Can you imagine how little interest there was in that event? Not only are you making me get excited about your FOURTH kid, you want me to celebrate its SEX?

Let’s examine a graph of people’s interest in your pregnancy based on the number of offspring, just to get a little perspective.

Are humans really so out-of-touch they haven’t realized that everybody else is busy thinking about themselves and their lives, and if you’re gonna be like “Hey let’s celebrate me!” it better be for a decent reason?

I mean if you’re gonna drag my ass to your house and force me to wear a damn pink pumpkin (cause it’s October!), it better be a major life event (not a miniscule detail skirting a major life event).

Wait.

OMG. Are there people that enjoy this shit?

There are people that enjoy this shit.

There are. Aren’t there?

There are people that are like “Yay! Katie’s having her reveal this weekend! I’m so excited!”

I’ll never fit. I hate the world.

Now I know what some of you are like: “Oh come on, it’s just fun! Who cares? It’s a reason to celebrate! It’s one more reason to have fun and celebrate our babies! There’s no problem!”

Yeah, there is a problem. The problem is that it’s fucking stupid.

Why isn’t that enough?

Why isn’t the fact that it’s self-absorbed and inane sufficient reason to outlaw it all together?

Right. Because it’s just so cute. It’s just so cute and crafty and we all dig crafty cute shit! We’re women! We craft! We’re crafters! We like wearing summer dresses and giggling and celebrating our existence!

I’ll tell you what, harbingers of Satan wherever you are inventing crap like this, I’ll think of a few “creative” things you can do with that pink-filled cake pop, and then we’ll talk about my gender reveal party.

Mmmkay?

Cool.

Hey son.

What I want for you is to stay soft.

It’s really un-American of me. It’s really against what “men” stand for, you know. All that machismo badass shit.

The world will eat a soft man alive. For breakfast. Fucking pathetic weakling.

That’s what they’ll say, but I don’t care. I will not harden you. I will not break you. I hold between my mama hands your giant gaping sensitive heart. I refuse to abuse it.

The softness in you. It will remain, intact. As much as it can, anyway.

Not because I made you that way, or even envisioned you that way, but because you came that way. Really it’s none of my fucking business.

My job is to not destroy what you are.

You arrived in a birth that felt like the sunrise, and stayed with a light in your gut or behind your eyes, of pain and love and humanity and some weird empathy or clarity that manifests when I want to beat the shit out of people and you say something loving, pierce to the heart of compassion so fast and sure I see my own hardness like a flash across a shocked brain: He is soft. You aren’t. Don’t fuck this up.

You barely spoke until you were 3.

You almost never cried.

You played and watched and loved and watched more and curled in close, to me, daddy, your grandma and grandfather.

You were always soft. When I say it, it sounds like an insult, in a culture like ours. “The boy is soft.”

But they don’t see you.  

They don’t see you in your scarf, the one you picked out in the women’s section of Old Navy, the one you didn’t wear to school yesterday because you know the kids will make fun of you. They don’t see your locks of curls hanging across eyes that hold mine in another time and space. They don’t see the boy sleeping on our floor and curled against his dad, still, always, forever until you don’t need it anymore, because your dad is soft like you, but was maybe almost hardened somehow, by life, and knows it, and wants differently for you. 

We will not break you.

We will not make you leave.

At the playground, you said, there was a boy with a “really weird face” and he was alone, so you sat by him. I asked if you talked or played with him. You said no, I just sat there by him, because he was alone.

And when I asked you what the hell was wrong with that one kid who was so obnoxious in your class, and I thought the little bastard was exactly that, a little bastard, without blinking you said “His parents divorced and he doesn’t get to see his dad anymore. I think he wants people to think he’s tough.”

You’re soft, kid, and I’m hard.

Sometimes I want you to be hard, because I worry for you, or you bring pain in me, when you fold into yourself almost paralyzed when I raise my voice, or you come home telling me about the girl at P.E. who said “Don’t sit by me” and I get mad, really mad but then you say “She always misses play time on Friday because her little brother needs her to go to his classroom. I think that must be hard for her.”

You feel empathy. I feel rage. I feel a bit of rage at your empathy. I’m silenced and I learn from your heart.

Sometimes I wonder where you come from. Sometimes you really piss me off, the way you match your sister’s fiery screaming temper with a gentle voice, or a quick tear. Sometimes you yell back, but not without trying a lot and a lot of gentle, first.

Gentle. You. Rocket.

And when you cry because daddy’s been working too much and I’ve been fighting all day with kids and mess and work and my brain and stress and then your tears, your tears falling on freckled cheeks, for a moment I want to yell Damnit kid just toughen up! THIS IS LIFE! I don’t have time for this shit.

You are the kid who was made fun of by their dad and maybe mom. Don’t be a wimp. Don’t be a crybaby.TOUGHEN UP.Don’t be a sissy.BE A MAN.Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.

And one day, you were the boy who stopped crying.

I will not be the force slapping the last tear from your eye.

But I will never baby you. I will never cater to you or stroke your ego or let you whine and snivel to get your way. I will make you work. I will make you face your fears and suffer and keep on going. The sensitive ones have to fight too, kid.

But I will never crush or fault or smash you for the gentleness that takes my breath away, that feels pretty foreign sometimes, the way you’re all heart pretty much all the time. The way you walk up to me with those dimples and say “Mama, can we cuddle” and you bury your face in my chest. Still. In the morning when you wake up you roll onto my side of the bed, without a word, and I roll onto my back and you put your head on my shoulder. I kiss your curls. Just as I’ve always done. 

You’re 8 years old now.

I won’t turn you away. I won’t toughen you up. Ever.

You are the kid who takes a stuffed white seal to class and gets teased.

You are the kid who doesn’t fit.

You are the dyslexic kid, the only one who can’t read yet. But when a girl asks you about it, “Why don’t you read?” You snap “None of your business.”

You know who you are. You are not weak. You are so strong you sword fight and wrestle and wear embroidered flower purses and beg for ballet lessons, maybe simultaneously.

You are so strong YOU WORE YOUR SCARF TO SCHOOL TODAY, told me “I don’t care what they say.”

I watched you walk away and wished for a second you would fight. At 2:30 I’ll pick you up and ask “How did it go, son?” and I already feel fear.

They’ll tell you it’s weak, to love and feel and cry. To live open and exposed. To see more than the rest and act on it, feel it.

They’ll tell you you aren’t a real man. That you’re something else. They won’t say it directly. They’ll say it in advertisements and characters in movies and “the American way” and the hot men that always get the hot women.

But the bravest thing you can do, kid, is to keep that softness intact, to let that heart stay open for all the pain it will entail. The love, the desperation, the agony. That’s some crazy badass shit right there. To fight and work and serve with a sensitivity that could leave you wrecked at any moment, real and in love and raw.

Most of us are too afraid to do anything of the sort. One day we look around at the pain of this world and the black inside and we snap shut, Boom. Done. You’re out. I’m in. Nothing’s getting through. I did it. I was 8 or 9 and standing in my unicorn bedroom looking into my white mirror over my dresser and I said out loud, quietly, but aloud: “This will not break you, Janelle. Nothing will EVER break you.”

I made a decision that day, in response to a pain I won’t explain now. That moment. That day. I would never need another soul. I was in control. Nothing would ever hurt me again. I was wrong, of course, but I was hard. I would die hard, like the movie. Ha. See what I mean?

My wish for you, son, is that you stay soft.

I pick up your face and see the face of a boy who knows something, beyond hard and soft or good or bad and it’s not my job to shove you into the mold of the world.

My job is to loosen my grip on myself, my hard edges and old ideas, to fit beside you, and hold the softness I almost can’t find in me.

So yeah, America, I’m raising a soft one. I’ll leave it up to you to raise the tough guys.

And when you meet my boy, I hope you love his scarf.