Sometimes I get a lump in my throat when I’m with my children. I look at their chubby limbs and am fortunate that my family has never known hunger; I hold them as they cry over a skinned knee and feel grateful they’ve never felt worse; I talk through a playground fight, thinking how lucky we are to live without fear of oppression.
Most women reading this blog are part of the global and historical fraction of women with access to education, free speech, first-world medical care, and enfranchisement. It’s good to be a Western, 21st century woman and mother.
A few days ago, I scrolled through images of Syrian refugees clutching children, babies, some of them, as they made the dangerous, weary way to a better life. They are helpless, desperate, and vulnerable. I sometimes wonder how I would respond to the hardships so many women have faced: childbearing and illness before modern medicine, war on my doorstep, oppression, hunger, and so on.
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