11/09/2025
As a mother, I am heartbroken for the world my children are growing up in.
Not only do they see horrific things happening—they see people celebrating those horrific things.
We’ve raised them to be courageous. To stand up for what they believe in. To speak their truth, even when it’s hard. To have difficult conversations. And then they see someone brutally murdered while doing just that.
And what follows? More hate. More blame. More division.
But division isn’t getting us anywhere. The extreme sides aren’t accomplishing anything.
You can believe in 2nd amendment rights and believe that we need stricter gun laws.
You can realize that making guns completely illegal won’t stop dangerous criminals from getting their hands on
them—while also believing it shouldn’t be super easy for anyone to just buy one.
You can understand that taking guns away from everyone but the government isn’t the best idea—while also knowing that something drastic needs to change.
Access to guns is a problem. But guns aren’t the only problem.
One party says it’s the guns.
One party says it’s mental health.
Guess what? It’s both.
We have a gun problem in America.
We also have a mental health crisis in America.
And on top of that, we have a severely divided political system that is growing more extreme and more polarized every year.
Instead of joining together to combat these huge problems—
🔹 mental illness
🔹 lack of proper support
🔹 a broken healthcare system
🔹 the isolation and disconnection of our modern world
🔹 accessibility to semi-automatic weapons—
We stand on opposite sides pointing fingers, convinced the other side is the problem.
But the truth? We are all part of the problem in some way.
There are extreme Christians who spew hate while quoting the Bible. (But not all christians do) There are far left who preach love and tolerance, but then hate anyone who disagrees with them. (But not everyone on the left is that way) But everyone in between has a part of this. We’ve all been caught in the division at some point. We have all looked and listened with judgment and assumption instead of curiosity and compassion.
Meanwhile…
Kindergarteners are practicing their first active shooter drills.
Bulletproof backpacks are on school supply lists.
And mothers like me fear for their children every single morning when they drop them off at school.
We’ve heard the story of the ants in the jar. If you put red ants and black ants together, they’re fine—until someone shakes the jar. Then they fight each other, never realizing the real enemy is the hand that shook it.
We are the ants. And the jar has been shaken. And we’ve been fighting each other for far too long.
Your neighbor with a different political sign in their yard? They aren’t the enemy.
The coworker flying a flag you disagree with? Not the enemy.
The real enemy is the corrupt system that profits off of our division. While we argue about the same few issues, lobbyists for corporations are persuading underpaid legislators to pass bills that serve profit—not people. Health insurance companies have power over treatment- not Drs. The system keeps people down instead of enabling them to move up.
While we rage at each other on social media, 1,800-page bills get pushed through Congress that none of us have read, deciding where our tax dollars go.
While we keep choosing sides, ancient old men in power make decisions not for us, but for the box they’ve chosen to fit into.
Profit has been chosen over people. And we keep falling for it.
Reminder: You are not your political affiliation. You are not your religion. You are a human living among other humans.
And every single one of those people has something in common. They love someone. And someone loves them.
They were the child someone prayed for.
They are the partner someone hoped for.
They are the grandparent someone admires.
I don’t believe we will see a move in the right direction until people on both sides stop focusing on hate and blame and start focusing on love.
Until we remember that, we are just ants in a shaken jar—fighting each other instead of fighting back at the hand that shook it.
