I recorded this episode after one of the most sorrowful weeks I can remember. I wanted to be feeling joyful because it’s the holiday season, but you can’t force joy, and it’s very difficult to live in a country where we continue to have school shootings as though there’s nothing we can do to change that.
Of all the issues we face here, that’s the one that wrecks me in a way that is hard to describe. Part of it is having school-age children myself — my son is the age the Sandy Hook kids would have been — and part of it is finding it unfathomable that anyone is willing to continue to fail our children this way. It isn’t normal that both of my children have texted me during lockdowns. It isn’t normal that we now have kids who have been in more than one school shooting.
Then there was Bondi Beach, people fleeing for their lives, parents diving into pits trying to cover their children with their own bodies. When it seemed things could not get sadder, news of the Reiners stared to emerge.
There wasn’t a way to pull holiday cheer out of the hat, friends, and if that’s what you’re looking for, stick a pin in this episode. But if you are struggling with it all and in need of a good cry, then maybe this is for you. Either way, this is not an episode for little ears. I’m sending you a lot of love.
