I wrote about parenting for The Guardian again, because I am a true masochist. Though this essay—which I actually filed with the editor several months ago—was (mercifully) not given a comment section in which an assortment of white boomers could lecture me about the shameful failings of millennial parents (specifically this millennial parent).
And the publication of this one brought many lovely and moving messages, from people who felt its thesis in their bones. It also brought me their misery, their exhaustion, their fears and illnesses.
Yesterday, I joined a Zoom collaboration between Plan C and Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights (an incredible organization for which I’m doing some social media and comms work these days). I was excited for a conversation and a community space full of elders—warm and safe and passionate and open and honest. Between the images and videos and updates coming out of Gaza, the IVF ruling in Alabama, the murder of Nex Benedict, and the general emotional distress of my day-to-day brain waves lately, I needed this gathering desperately. I was tasked with writing about our abortion pill knowledge-share after the talk, and with celebrating the quiet, loving, connections we were about to make with one another as people who’ve had abortions, people who are providing community care, people with a lot of collective pain and love to go around.
Instead, we were Zoom-bombed by some anti-abortion white supremacists.
These antis—who knows how many there were—had organized to infiltrate our community space by registering for the call under fake names and email addresses. Once admitted, they waited in camera-off silence through the group’s introductions—my jaw is clenched and I catch a full-body shiver whenever I remember this, and that many people on the call shared their first and last names and their general locations, not knowing these people were silently watching them—and then began to interrupt the speaker. They took turns un-muting themselves and hurling some of the most horrifying slurs and violent hate speech I have ever heard (and I’ve heard some, as everyone who goes to work in an abortion clinic has).
To hear Jew, C*nt, F*ggot etc. wielded in earnest vitriol, by multiple individuals in coordination with one another, alongside all the same old baby-killer, whore, murderer, the rape threats and the following me to my car and the praying for my death that I’m used to…it really fucked up my day.
I think it was not just the sudden and extreme violation or the feeling unsafe, which has lingered in many of our bodies and minds long after we shut the meeting down, but the knowledge that I am feeling this way while being among the safest people on this earth.
No one is, currently, forcing me to use a school bathroom with peers who want me dead. No one is denying me insulin, flour, water, a hospital, a home. No one is parking tanks alongside a car where I am trapped with my murdered family members. I am not visibly a target for Nazis when I am not in scrubs or branded clothing or near a workplace.
Some anonymous losers just tried to intimidate me out of talking about abortion. (They failed, by the way. We have rescheduled the call, in a different format with loser-proof security settings). That’s all.
And my nervous system still can’t come back to earth.
Abortion care workers and funders are long-accustomed to the post-burnout burn. To the campfire that’s almost entirely died out, tiny dim sparks barely visible, but still needs tending, your hands freezing and your eyes struggling in the night that just keeps going. To saying, or thinking, I can’t do this anymore just to keep doing it. I can’t do this for one more second, for minutes-hours-weeks-years of our lives. The wages and staff-to-patient ratios are, generally speaking, low. The work itself is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. The laws—and the losers who enforce them—are closing in, and the patients’ needs and numbers are growing and growing.
It’s too much for a workforce—mostly young, mostly women and queer folks, mostly broke and living paycheck-to-paycheck—to carry. But there’s nowhere to put it down.
I know parents are also dragging all of this ponderous, unwieldy luggage behind them over cobble stones and up endless flights of stairs (see above article). I know that kids are pulling it down the hallways of their murder-schools, and pretty much every American who is not wealthy and/or deeply committed to a pretense of individualism and a willful ignorance of current events.
We gotta stop, if not to put it down for a minute then to at least make eye contact with each other and laugh about something. There’s gotta be something to laugh about. Or dance to. Or sing along with. There’s gotta be some secret to whisper or some nice flirtatious wink or some tender forehead kiss or some “hey this made me think of you” or “here’s something new and cool and beautiful”. Gotta be. I need to lay down in a field of wildflowers or jump into the ocean naked or go to sleep in a hammock somewhere strangers can’t see or access, and it’s February in New England.
So! My doors are locked and I’m scared to be alone in my house or out in the world with my family and I still find my heart beating faster-than-the-usual-caffeine-fast. And also:
In the following days will come my 2024 Valentines to share with you, that have lately been making the carrying lighter or brighter or sweeter or—perhaps most importantly—funnier.
If you have ideas or requests, I’m all (shaken-up) ears.
The horrors persist, but so the fuck do we. Love you.
Have mercy, thank you for joining another zoom today after all that!
Hannah, I am SO sorry that this happened!!! I hope you're finding some safety and comfort. Sending love and solidarity your way. 💜💜💜