On Caring for a Child Who is Not Yours

Have you ever clipped a toddler's nails?

Then you know the feeling. You wait until she's sleepy. You cradle one tiny hand inside yours and clip only the white part. She wiggles. Your heart stops. You are trying to prevent the smallest possible hurt to someone you love.

Tonight, somewhere, another mother is holding her son's hand. His legs are gone. Policies carried out in my name helped make the strike that took them possible. She holds his hand with the same care I hold my daughter's.

That is the connection between us.

Whether you are a parent, a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, or someone whose family has four legs or leaves instead of children, you know this instinct. We protect the vulnerable almost without thinking. We notice when someone is hungry. We reach out when someone is frightened. We do these things because another person's suffering matters to us.

Yet somewhere along the way, we are taught that our concern should stop at the edge of our own family, our neighborhood, our country. We hear words like collateral damage until they begin to sound ordinary. They are not. Every statistic is a child whose hand someone is holding.

When people hear the word activism, they often picture thousands of people filling city streets. Those moments matter. But activism also lives in the quiet choices we make every day: where we spend our money, what we refuse to support, who we hold accountable, and whether we decide that someone else's child is worth our time and attention.

Joining Boston Indivisible was one way I chose to channel my pain into action. I haven't changed the world. But I have learned that change rarely begins with extraordinary people. It begins with ordinary people deciding that small acts are not too small.

The system depends on our believing that individual actions don't matter. History suggests otherwise. Small acts have a way of finding one another until they become something impossible to ignore.

We clip those tiny nails because even the smallest hurt to a child we love feels unbearable. No one has to teach us that instinct.

A child who is not ours deserves the same care.

If you've been wondering what you can do, come to a Boston Indivisible meeting. You don't need to have all the answers. Just bring the same hands you would trust to hold a child's.