Dear Wanderer,
Has it struck you how much the war in Palestine—and colonial projects throughout history—have been wars on children? That, after killing tens of thousands of children over the past seven months, the Israeli army is carrying out a ground invasion of Rafah at this very moment, where over 600,000 children are sheltering? That stealing children has been and still is a tool of colonialism, from the forced “re-education” of Indigenous children here on Turtle Island to the now publicly-known “disappearance” of hundreds of children of Arab Jews brought in to Palestine as settlers during the formation of Israel (they were taken by the State from their parents and given to European Jewish settler families to erode Arab cultural influence)? Have you noticed that it is university students who are speaking out the loudest, risking their lives and bodies and futures, and facing militarized police brutality that is a thinly-veiled version of the campaigns of violence in Gaza and elsewhere?
I have.
And have you noticed, Wanderer, how tightly the eldest generation is holding on to their power? I have.
We need the wisdom and guidance of our elders, but part of what they are supposed to impart to the ones who come after them is how to do all the things they’ve learned to do for the community: how to make decisions, how to step into power and how to step down when your turn is over. Part of being an elder is the passing of power to the next generations. But this is not what is happening.
In the “West,” the transfer of power is enacted by force. In our oldest myths subsequent generations—of male leaders—come into power by castrating and killing their fathers. Saturn/Chronos does this to his father Uranus, and subsequently Jupiter/Zeus does the same to his father Saturn/Chronos. The reason for this is that Saturn is eating his children. He is threatened by them and the power they might inherit, and so he kills and eats them as soon as they are born. It is only with the help of the Mother Goddess that subsequent generations come to power, as in the way Zeus’ mother Rhea hid him until he was strong enough to challenge his father (he then wanted to marry his mother, but she refused so he turned in to a snake and raped and killed her but that’s a story for another day).
What I’m saying is, the peaceful transfer of power to the next generation is not in Western “civilization’s” cultural blueprint. It’s only becoming more clear as time goes by. The horizontal organization of “power with” being enacted by the generation that is coming of age right now—a requirement for resistance on the level that we are witnessing—is a threat to the institutions that have held hierarchical power through countless means that flow into every aspect of our lives, and they know it.
Children are the hope of a people, the key to the future—and they know it. That’s why children are being killed at this very moment in Gaza, in Sudan, and in the DRC where they are literally worked like slaves; why children are taken away from their families; why children are being beaten and shot with rubber bullets (which have metal cores and can kill) as they chant “we are students, please don’t hurt us” by militarized police at universities—schools—across the Turtle Island.
But you know what? We know it too. My generation, the Millenials, the Gen-Xers, who were never given power by our elders, who instead had everything taken from us by our elders (the elders who are now brutalizing our children as we speak), know this better than anyone.
This is why we have done what we have done. We have done the opposite of what our parents have done to us. Instead of trying to kill our fathers, we have put everything we have into healing ourselves so we can raise empowered, principled, courageous, supported, compassionate, intelligent children. And we did it. We’re doing it. We have poured everthing we have into empowering our children and it is working.
Those of us with privilege have taught our children to use it for the benefit of everyone. Those of us who were abused have taught our children that their bodies belong to them and every body deserves respect. We’ve taught our children to protect each other, accept each other, to feel compassion for the suffering. We’ve taught them that we are one with each other and the Earth and that is why they will not stand for the violence they are witnessing. They can feel a heartbeat from across the world, and they can feel it when that heartbeat stops.
Not only that, they have us behind them.
The powers that be are doing what they’re doing to protect their colonial/capitalist investments, but do you what we have invested in? Our children. And we will do all this and more to protect our investment in them. We will continue to give them everything we have because they are everything we have.
I realized this after my husband shared this Tiktok with me (just click the link okay, I’m old and dk how to embed). I had been grieving my own childhood deeply for weeks after deciding to open myself to memories of my mother and the time after her death when I was 9 years old. I had distanced myself from these memories for many years because they were just too painful, but I realized that I was losing my memories of my mother by not tending and cherishing them. I decided to start writing about her. Getting back in touch with those memories opened up a huge, old wound, the grief of which was interfereing with my life and health, and which I didn’t know how to move on from.
I just kept seeing the little girl I was then sitting in a closet reading, surrounded by books, clothes, the general mess and chaos that was life after she died. Books were my sole lifeline. I felt for the first time in my body the difference between the time when I had my mother and the time after I lost her. I saw how my life shut down, receded, lost the trajectory it could have had, had she been there to help me grow up. It was becoming difficult to imagine what the point of the life I had instead could possibly be.
But when I saw this video I suddenly understood what it all had been for. All the years where I had no support, suffered depression, anxiety, neglect, abuse, undiagnosed ADHD, dissociation, self-hatred, poverty, failure and grief in isolation were suddenly worth it. My inner child, the little girl in the closet reading, trying desperately to shut everything out and survive, looked up and did a dance of joy. Because when I became a mother I swore my children would never go through what I went through. They would never be unsupported, would never lack someone caring about them, would never have to navigate the world alone. And I worked so hard to become the kind of parent they deserved. And it has ALL been worth it.
My children are the ages my sister and I were when our mother died. I see them just beginning to blossom, to emerge from the cocoon of childhood gradually, and how much they depend on me to help them do this safely. This was the exact point at which my life was shut down, where I was forced back inside myself, just when it was time to start opening up. For all the ambitions I used to have, I am completely fascinated by this moment in their lives. I am so happy to watch them, to help them, to talk and listen to them because the little girl inside me has no idea how this is supposed to go—how it looks when you start growing up with your mother at your side, and that little girl is transfixed.
She is so grateful to the student protesters right now, showing us all how it’s done, showing us what all our suffering and hard work has been for: them. So they will be able to do what we could not, be what we never had the chance to be. They will usher in a new world where we protect and care for one another without depending on violent institutions. So let’s help them create it. Support them any way you can. Donate supplies and money, offer services and skills you have, give them encouragement, and continue to speak out!
As they keep reminding us, what they are undergoing is but a fraction of what the children of Gaza suffer every day. Let’s invest everything we can, everything we have in them. They are giving us back so much more. They are our beating heart.
Love and solidarity,
Sasha
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