I found this entry in one of my old journals recently. It was dated May 30, 2020. I remember writing it, but rereading it now felt like finding a time capsule I didn’t realize I buried. The handwriting alone gave it away. Tighter. More urgent. The kind of writing you do when you’re trying to get the thoughts out faster than your heart can process them.
At the time, I had no idea that parenting through a pandemic and racial unrest would turn out to be just the opening chapter of a much longer, heavier story we’d all be living in this country. Back then, it still felt like an anomaly. A crisis season. Something we would eventually put behind glass and label with a date.
Here’s what I wrote that day. No editing. No polishing. Just the rawness of it:
“Today at lunch, we sat around the dining room table and watched the NASA SpaceX launch. At dinner time, we all gathered and watched our city go up in flames during the riots. My heart is broken. My beloved Indy is hurting.”
Even now, that contrast makes my chest tighten. Lunch was hope. Dinner was heartbreak. One screen showing humanity reaching for the stars. Another showing how deeply fractured we still are right here at home. Same table. Same family. Same day.
I remember the surreal stillness of it. Plates cleared. Kids asking questions. Adults pretending not to have answers. Not because we were ignorant, but because we were afraid. Afraid that if we said the true things out loud, they would lodge somewhere permanent. That our children would carry them like shrapnel. The whiplash of hope and grief at the same table. One screen pointing us toward the stars, the other reminding us how badly we wanted to protect the ones sitting in front of us.
I kept writing:
“As a parent, having conversations about injustice and inequality has been some of the hardest ones I’ve ever had to have but at the same time, I feel so strongly that we have a responsibility to teach our kids how to love our neighbors.”
That sentence still feels true in my bones. Those conversations were hard then. They’re still hard now. Maybe harder. Because time didn’t magically heal everything the way some people hoped it would. If anything, the volume got turned up. Louder opinions. Sharper edges. Less patience. More fear.
And still, the responsibility didn’t disappear.
I wrote this next part almost like I was talking to myself, trying to figure out how to even begin:
“You don’t know where to start? Start in your own home. Stop laughing at the racist jokes your grandma still tells. Don’t know anyone who isn’t just like you? Broaden your circle. Get to know someone who doesn’t think or talk like you.”
Reading that now, I can feel how urgent it felt. Not theoretical. Not academic. Practical. Messy. Personal. The kind of work that doesn’t come with applause or a hashtag. The kind of work that makes family gatherings uncomfortable and forces you to examine the parts of yourself you’d rather ignore.
Because here’s the thing we don’t love to admit: we like the idea of changing the world a lot more than we like the reality of changing ourselves. We dream big. We want sweeping transformation. We want to be on the right side of history without having to rock the boat at the dinner table.
But real change almost always costs us something. Comfort. Approval. The illusion of peace. The ability to pretend we didn’t hear that comment or notice that pattern or benefit from that system.
I kept going in that journal entry, and honestly, this is the part that feels even more relevant now:
“Have conversations with your kids about the realities of the world we live in – the world they are getting launched into. Teach them that their actions and words can be used for good or bad and they get to decide what part they play.”
That phrase “the world they are getting launched into” hits differently now. Because it’s true. Our kids aren’t waiting on the sidelines. They’re stepping into this world whether we feel ready or not. And we don’t get to choose the timing. We only get to choose how honest and how intentional we are as we prepare them.
We don’t get to protect them from everything. But we do get to equip them. With language. With empathy. With the courage to notice harm and the humility to admit when they’ve caused it. And with discernment. With the skills to ask better questions, research and verify what they’re told, and form opinions rooted in care, not caricatures of others.
I ended the entry with what felt like both a challenge and a plea:
“Have a family or group of friends that have “just always behaved like that”? Break the cycle. YOU can make the decision that this doesn’t continue with you.”
Breaking cycles is exhausting work. It means being the awkward one. The one who speaks up. The one who doesn’t let harmful things slide anymore, even when it would be easier to laugh it off or stay quiet. It means choosing long-term integrity over short-term comfort, again and again.
And then this, which still feels like the heart of it all:
“Be a good human. Your kids are watching you. They are learning from you. They will imitate you. That’s how you change the world. You change YOUR world and it in turn has a butterfly effect.”
We put so much pressure on ourselves to do something grand. To fix everything. To solve problems that took centuries to create. No wonder we feel overwhelmed. No wonder we burn out.
But what if the work was smaller and braver at the same time?
What if changing the world actually looks like changing the tone of our homes? The way we talk about people who aren’t present. The courage to say, “That’s not okay,” even when our voice shakes. The willingness to let our kids see us wrestle with hard truths instead of pretending we have all the answers.
Our influence is strongest where our reach is closest.
The way we parent in seasons of incivility matters more than we’ll probably ever know. Not because we get it right all the time. We won’t. But because modeling humility, empathy, and accountability teaches our kids how to navigate a world that desperately needs more of all three.
I closed that journal entry with this line, and it still gives me chills:
“May 30, 2020 is a day that my grandchildren will one day study in their history books. These photos are 59 years apart yet they feel exactly the same.”
2020: SpaceX Crew Dragon Launch
2020: Protests in Indianapolis
Our kids are older now. Young adults. Taller than me. Carrying their own convictions and contradictions and questions about the world. And the surprising thing is this: the weight of those conversations didn’t disappear just because they grew up.
It changed shape, but it never left.
Back in 2020, I worried that telling them the truth too soon would scar them. That if I named injustice out loud, it would lodge somewhere permanent and I would be the one to blame. Now the fear looks different. Now I worry about saying too much or too little. About stepping in when I should step back. About offering guidance when what they really want is space to wrestle things through on their own.
The questions don’t arrive the same way anymore. They don’t come neatly framed at the dinner table. They come sideways. In car rides. In late-night texts. In half-sentences that start with, “I don’t know how to say this…” and end with silence while they wait to see if I’m still listening.
And here’s the part that humbles me most: I don’t get to protect them by managing the world anymore. I can’t curate what they see or who they encounter. They are already living in it. Making sense of it. Carrying its weight in ways I can’t always see.
So protection looks different now.
It looks like listening more than lecturing. Answering the question they actually asked instead of the one I’m afraid of. Trusting that the values we practiced when they were younger still matter, even when I’m no longer standing right beside them to reinforce them.
The instinct hasn’t changed. I still want to shield them. I still want to soften the blow. I still want to absorb the hardest truths on their behalf. But adulthood doesn’t allow for that kind of sheltering. Love doesn’t either.
What I can do is stay present. Stay honest. Stay steady enough to say, “I don’t have a perfect answer, but I’m here with you while you figure it out.” I can model how to hold complexity without becoming cruel. How to stay engaged without losing empathy. How to speak up without forgetting our shared humanity.
The methods change. The calling doesn’t.
History will remember the fires. The headlines. The dates. It will argue about causes and assign blame and archive the images for future generations to study.
What it won’t record is what happened inside our homes. The pauses before answering a child’s question. The fear of saying the wrong thing. The quiet courage it took to speak anyway. The small, unseen decisions to raise humans who could sit with discomfort instead of running from it.
That work doesn’t trend. It doesn’t make the history books. But it shapes what comes next.
We don’t raise children in theory. We raise them in real time, with imperfect words and shaking voices and a deep desire not to be the ones who break something fragile inside them. And still, we show up. We course-correct. We choose care over convenience.
That story is still being written, not in sweeping moments but in ordinary ones. Around familiar tables. Through conversations that don’t wrap up neatly and sometimes come back years later. In the slow, unglamorous work of choosing to stay present when it would be easier to check out.
Protection was never about silence. It was always about presence. And even now, especially now, that’s work I’m still willing to do.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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