May is foster care awareness month. I decided to write about children in foster care, every day this month.
I am tired. I’m laying in bed. I’ve been on Zoom calls all day.
This is my post for the day, the fourth day. My first post has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook.
RFK is developing a national response to COVID-19. Particularly, we aim to support social workers in the hundreds of counties where we work. They are absolutely overwhelmed. And when they are overwhelmed, guess who received even more neglect?
They need us.
Children are separated from their biological parents because the courts are closed.
They need us.
Someone messaged me a few days ago and asked how I’m “holding up.” If I get discouraged or feel hopeless.
Yes, I do. I’m am exhausted. I broke down and cried during a staff meeting today. I’m the CEO. I’m supposed to be strong and in control.
But these children are being neglected and abused in ways they never have. They are dying and being raped. They are dying and being raped.
Trapped.
I can’t stop. We can’t stop.
Go to RFK.org and join our mailing list. Follow us on social media.
Because things break. Then they need fixing. They go wrong. Then they need to be made right.
A crooked painting. Flat tire. Drop your phone and the screen shatters. Things get crooked and punctured and cracked. Then we straighten, repair, fix.
Same thing with our bodies. Broken femur. High blood pressure. A new virus. So get a cast, change your diet and exercise, (hopefully) find a vaccine.
The word justice is simply that – the idea of fixing or bringing rectitude to a thing that is broken. Making something right.
Fixing it.
Social justice is fixing or brining justice to a social issue. After a hurricane, we bring food and medical supplies to victims. After September 11, 2001, we rushed to ground zero to bring physical relief.
Much philanthropy consists of people caring for people — feeding the hungry, giving clothes to the naked, helping the sick in body, advocating on behalf of the marginalized.
If you study the life of Jesus, bringing social justice to the poor, sick, oppressed, outsider — this is the great legacy of true religion, caring for widows and orphans, including speaking-up on their behalf to their oppressors.
A kind of social justice consumes my heart daily: social justice toward children.
Of course, children are always innocent and vulnerable, always. Those in foster care — our modern-day orphans — suffer perhaps the worst kind of injustice. It wasn’t a bomb or an earthquake or famine that caused their horror – it was their parent.
Neglect, abuse, then abandonment, from the one who was supposed to love, protect, nurture.
It is National Foster Care Awareness Month. I am writing a post each day of May. I wrote on the first and second.
During Covid-19, these children are suffering like never before. Incidents of death due to child abuse are escalating at alarming rates. In a March 24th piece in The Atlantic titled The Kids Aren’t All Right, the social injustice is made clear:
“For children who spend time in multiple households, rely on outside figures for guidance or mentoring..prolonged social-distancing measures will mean profound separation from some people who provide care.”
Because the sad fact is that nearly half a million children in the United States live in this system — a system where the severity of neglect and abuse rose to such a pitch that the government had to intervene — take the child away from its parent, or parents. In so many cases, to save the child’s life.
These children live in the shadows today. You don’t see them. You don’t really even hear about them.
Those we serve at RFK have been thrown against walls, beaten with bicycle chains, locked in closets.
Recently, I learned about two children in Illinois, brother and sister, 8 and 9 years of age, that were locked in plastic containers every night. In a cargo van — so the mother could earn money as a prostitute. We learned of their story at one of our intervention camps.
Why “new?” — because with COVID-19 reports of child abuse has dropped. Why has it dropped? — because mandated reporters (teachers, pediatricians, coaches) with their eagle-eyes, aren’t able to see the kids. They can’t see the bruises or the dissociation or the trembling.
On average, 5 children die every day from child abuse. Because of COVID-19, that average is on the rise.
Incidents of sexual abuse are also on the rise. For the first time ever, over half of the visitors to the National Sexual Assault Hotline were minors. Of those who called with concerns related to the COVID-19, 79% said they were living with their perpetrator.
I’m writing today to raise awareness. I will write every day this month.
For them.
For the children.
They need me. They need you. They need all of us.
Not everyone could adopt a child. But everyone can make a difference.
I don’t go to Starbuck’s too often. I do when I travel, though. I think because Starbucks feels familiar.
It felt familiar in Saint Louis last week.
It felt familiar in Louisville and Fort Collins and even in Sydney a few weeks before.
And don’t know of any coffee houses for locals that compare to my local, Kean Coffee.
I think Kean has the best coffee you can find. The owner, Martin Deitrich, was awarded this distinguished coffee lifetime achievement award. From the International Guild of Coffee. (I’m not sure if that’s the name of the guild but his award was a really big deal and he told me they’ve only given like 9 of them, ever.)
Anyway, I don’t want to write about coffee right now. I want to write about… waste. And guilt. And ethics — what should one do?
I hate wasting stuff. But not as much as mom. My mother has a scarcity mentality. Or, she had it before the stroke. She spent her life trying to save and conserve stuff. She didn’t waste anything. I’m not even kidding. She would rewash those cheap plastic cups. She saved those wires they put on bread bags. Her mother, my Nonna, would rewash those cheap paper plates —the white ones that always had stains on them after use.
Mom was always walking around the house turning off lights in every room.
One time I walked in and found her on the dining room table. Literally standing up — a 70-year-old lady swaying around — removing half of the bulbs in the chandelier. To “save electricity.”
She could have killed herself.
I’d hate to live that way if I’m honest. I am most certainly a conservationist, but not her version. I don’t lose sleep over the fact that Americans are the most wasteful people on the planet. I think Mom did. I even think her scarcity mentality about waste could have led to her stroke.
A few years ago, she was doing a wedding. She was a florist. As a part-time thing. And she had all these white five-gallon buckets for the flowers. Like 20 of them. And after she made all the bouquets, there were all these empty buckets in her garage, half-filled with water. I saw her carrying one of them into the back yard. They were pretty heavy. Each one probably had three to four gallons. And one gallon of fresh water weighs over 8 pounds.
So I ask my 70-year-old mother who’s lugging this 30-pound bucket of water, “Mom, what are you doing? Do you need help?”
Mom didn’t ever really like help with things. She was kind of a martyr in a way. So I just jumped in to help her because I didn’t want her to break her back.
In her garage was a sink. So I grabbed one of the buckets. I went to empty it (in the obvious place where anyone would empty a bucket of water). Mom intervenes: “Don’t waste the water, you can use it to water the plants in the back yard!”
She was serious and emotional. Scarcity mentality does that to you. I’m not even kidding, it can make you almost crazy.
Three to four gallons of water costs way less than a penny. And there was no drought; we were past that. So I’m like, “Mom, seriously, a gallon of water costs about $.001 cent!” I can be pretty logical sometimes and as I get older I’m realizing that sometimes emotion can dwarf logic. But I wasn’t thinking about that, I just didn’t want to carry all these buckets to the back yard to save an entire penny.
And then she, in the martyry way of hers, grabs it out of my had, “Fine, I’ll do it myself,” and she starts lugging it away so she could live by her scarcity mentality
“Okay Mom, I’ll conserve that water!” I didn’t have to, but the thought of watching her would have made me feel really guilty and I hate feeling guilty, especially when it comes to my mom. I think most sons don’t want to feel guilty for letting their moms down.
When I go to Starbucks, when I travel, I always ask them to not give me a plastic lid. But it’s not not in the spirit of my conservationist mother. I like to drink coffee and everything else out of the glass or cup. Those lids get in the way. I don’t use straws. Not because of my mild conservationist proclivities and mom’s indoctrination, but because I just prefer to sip out of the cup. It tastes better.
Last week in Saint Louis, I told the barista, “No lid please,” but then she quickly slipped one of these sleeves on the cup. I almost inturrupted her effeciency. But she pretty much had it already slipped on so I didn’t want to be one of those kinds of customers that’s always so picky about every little thing.
But while I was drinking my grande latte with an extra shot and whole milk (why would anyone ever drink nonfat milk?) I kept thinking about that sleave.
And the Starbuck Lady on it.
And I felt the Starbucks Lady’s eyes were Mom’s eyes — glaring at me, with that guilting look of hers, the one she used when I didn’t want to save her that penny.
Don’t you dare dare throw away this sleeve.
I stressed for 10 minutes about this utterly insignificant first world problem — or not so first world problem. Me and my overthinking — or not over thinking — about this shred of recycled paper.
Two simultaneous thoughts — “Don’t disappoint mom who is staring at me and “This sleave is utterly insignificant to the issue of global waste.”
I finaly stand. I returned the sleeve to the barista: “I won’t need this anymore.” She shoots me an “oh brother” look.
I felt I did the right thing, the barista did not.
I’m in a meeting with Royal Family KIDS’ National Directors from around the world: Ghana, Namibia, Poland, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, the UK, Australia. All work with children of trauma.
The stories I’m hearing of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. Orphans living in Lord Of The Flies institutions with teen ringleaders bartering young girls like chattel to get drugs.
In some countries, there are no child protective services to keep the children safe. Refugee children living in tents. Children walking hundreds of miles with parents trying to seek asylum in safe countries. Four-year-olds wandering the streets.
But in the midst of hearing these realities, my mind drifts back to my own home.
Mostly what I’m thinking about are the millions children of privilege, “protected” by parents believing them too good to fail, stressing external success at all costs, shielding them from the painful realities of the real world. The facade of the “top university.”
Making sure their children stay away from “problem” children whose poverty or lack of education or broken home or blue-collar parents won’t lead them upwardly toward “success.”
Making sure their children spend more time on teams or with tutors or with coaches or in safe church youth groups — “safety,” versus the danger of a holistic life. Worse, the parents who will at all costs give their hight schoolers free reign to alcohol as long as they secure their desirable university.
Keeping them away from the poor kids. The neglected, abused, abandoned.
I once had a choice to send my own children to the local public school where 70% of the children were English learners from south of the border. Poor kids. The other choice was protecting them through homeschooling, or the local private school with all the children of rich white families.
I went to an expert for advice: A professor friend from UCLA who was on a panel of the UC Board of Regents, dealing with undergraduate education in the UC system. He was educated at the most elite private schools in France and did his Ph.D. at Oxford.
“Send them to the PUBLIC school. The diversity and dissonance and culture and language and the diverse sociological and economic standing will educate them far more than anything else.”
We obeyed; we tried the public school.
For one whole month.
Then I chickened out.
In any case, off they went to private and charter schools.
It could have been because I liked the status of sending them to the “better” schools, if I’m honest.
I was guilty, too. I wanted everything to be certain. Especially the well-being of my children. I want to “protect them,” too.
But I’m realizing that what we think is best, often isn’t. The brokenness of humanity and close proximity to pain and grief is perhaps the greatest education of all.
Richness has a poverty about it, poverty a certain sense of wealth.
