Parenting Communicates Our ANti-racist Values
Support for the Essential Work of Parenting
How we raise our children shapes who they will be as adults. This is not a new awareness. But it matters deeply.
Anti-racist practices and non-violent communication convey our values to our children. When we affirm the worthiness of these practices, we reflect their value in the broader community. We cultivate our inner voice by expanding the range of voices we value. How we speak to our children becomes their inner voice. When kids don’t see themselves reflected positively—or at all—in picture books, media, teachers’ faces, and public spaces—the message is one of rejection, not embrace. We build their resilience, and our own, by amplifying leaders, artists, mentors, educators, other parents and community members who prioritize social justice, civil rights, non-violence, and compassionate communities.
Consider tapping into these folks, who've been doing this work for some time:
Black books matter :: Celebrating Black Boys :: The Conscious Kid
Race & Child Development :: Melanie Chung Sherman, therapist & transracial adoptee
Hand in Hand Parenting :: Parenting to reduce racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of hate
Helping kids develop healthy political views :: Mercedes Samudio, therapist + parent coach
How bodies hold + heal racialized trauma :: Resmaa Menekam, therapist, author & trauma specialist
Adoption Mosaic :: transracial parenting support :: Astrid Castro, author, speaker & transracial adoptee
We're being called to a threshold in this moment of activism for racial justice. On one side, there is ignorance about the ripple effects of racism and oppression. We are past that point. On the other side, there’s collaboration and solidarity toward reform. We are glimpsing some of that light from here. I’d like to draw your attention to the Messy Middle—where we're struggling with the intensity of visible abuse, greater awareness, activism, and a visceral global response.
To move out of the messy middle, we have to gather a conscious momentum, shifting the needle from status quo to active practices of non-violence. Old cultural assumptions and hierarchies--our hand-me-down compass & guidebook--are broken. We didn’t invent them, but we need to update them.
We have to spend time in the messy middle. It’s where we have space to hear each other, where we adjust what we’ve come to accept. Let’s acknowledge the sense of fear and overwhelm. We can’t wish those feelings away. They belong here. They are our teachers and our gut check.
Substantial change won’t be tidy, orderly or predictable. But a reset will touch us all. Our communities will find a new set point, and our children will carry forward the values we demonstrate in these surges of social change. With any grace, they will continue to shape cultural shifts that better support them and their neighbors through generations to come.
We must equip them with the skills to carry on, modeling how to sit with uncertainty and unwieldy questions. We must help them see and hear one another, reserving space and judgment, as their integrity grows with them. We must equip them to live in bodies that can digest and make use of trauma, tension, and protective instincts.
This is a moment of crisis. But it's not new. This moment calls for stamina, vision, and tender care.
I am here to support you in raising children who are proud and confident in who they are, with empathy for others and self-compassion. I’m here to back you up, taking care of yourself, your children, your neighbors, your clients, and your tender heart. I’m here to listen as you sort out what you think and how you feel, and what you want to share with your children. So you can keep going. So we all can keep going.