"I don’t know who this lady is... she waved at him and he made his way up to her. I thought their interaction would be the same as last time but I was wrong. "
"I felt the tug on my sleeve and looked down to find him standing motionless. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t make out his words. His quiet body in the noisy room caught me off guard. I bent down to find his voice."
TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information about stillbirth and infant loss, which may be triggering to some.
I was not well prepared for what it would be [like] to have a miscarriage. I figured there would be blood, but I didn’t realize how much. I assumed there would be cramping, but I didn’t know it would be so intense.
I had vague ideas of what it would be like to have a miscarriage, but there was one part I had given no thought to.
I had no idea there would come a point where I would have to decide what to do with the remains of my baby.
I had never imagined being in a situation where I would have to choose how to “take care” of the life that ended inside of me. It’s an impossible decision with no right answer.
What was I supposed to do with the baby my body rejected?
I am one of the ones who flushed. In fact, I’ve flushed twice. I’m saying this out loud because it’s one of the parts of miscarriages that is still heavily cloaked in shame and contempt. It’s the part of the story that you often skip over. When you do share the details, you worry that your listener will be disgusted with what you have done.
I am done worrying what others will think. All I can do is hope that those who turn away, never have to make the same decision I did.
The first time I flushed was in the bathroom of my old apartment.
Just three days before I had been standing on that same worn linoleum floor staring at two blue lines.
Now, I stood hand poised over the silver handle saying my silent goodbye and wondering if I should wake my husband. Was this something we should do together? Was this the kind of thing that couples share? I did it alone. Not because I wanted to, but because I had never done this before and I never wanted to do this again.
Six months later, I flushed again.
We were two hours into our road trip to Maine. We had stopped at the usual place so we could stretch our legs and buy junk food. The days before had been a steady stream of blood and cramps and worry.
But that morning it had all stopped. No more blood. No more cramps. No more worry. Optimism crept back in — my baby was okay. I didn’t know for sure, but I felt like I was carrying a boy and I felt like he would be fine.
He wasn’t fine.
My hands caught him before he hit the water.
In my hands was my baby — the size and shape of a small water balloon and the deepest shade of scarlet. Holding my bundle, carefully swaddled in toilet paper, I pushed open the door and leaned out. My eyes frantically searching for my husband because this time I didn’t want to be alone.
Our eyes met and he rushed back to the restroom door. He looked down at my hands and lifted his eyes to meet mine. There, reflected back at me, I saw my fear and my heartbreak and my last grasp at denial. Maybe this was something else.
I wanted it to be anything besides the end of another pregnancy.
We had already dreamed so many new dreams for this baby and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to those dreams. Not there.
But, we did. Again, I stood on an unremarkable tile floor and said goodbye. I watched as everything I ever wanted swirled around and around … and down.
I shuffled out of the convenience store, traumatized by what had just happened. At the time, thinking I was traumatized because I chose to flush. Now, knowing I was traumatized for a different reason.
I was traumatized because having a miscarriage is traumatic.
The trauma does not just lie in the horrors of watching dreams and children die; the trauma comes in the questions we face and the decisions we must make about the most difficult moments a person will endure.
I wish I had an eloquent answer for why I flushed. I don’t. I just flushed. And because I don’t have the answers and because those moments hurt so very much, I choose to tell my story.
Hoping that somewhere another woman will read this. Hoping it will be a person who can say “I flushed too.”
I came across a pair of house-boots the other day. My wife’s in fact. They were worn but sturdy. They were familiar yet imposing. They instantly conjured up vivid images of my time in the military. Weathered and beaten jump-boots, rack-side by a sleeping marine. Sturdy, slip-proof, and steel-toed boondockers, bunk-side by a sleeping sailor. Or most vividly, the spit-shined and tightly laced, bloused and ready to roll, combat boots of a sentry without distraction.
Here they were, right outside the door of our 1-year-old son. Brown, fuzzy on the inside, worn ragged but sturdy as fresh leather, covered in dog hair and the permanent crumbs of family life. Here they were, ready to roll. The door to my son’s room is, in fact, his mother’s post.
This is not the view I have always had of my wife’s house-boots. The bottoms of these boots are an impressive 1-inch-thick indestructible alien plastic, capable of untold damage to the male leg. I have the scars to prove it. On the couch when my wife falls asleep, her legs will migrate towards me and carry her sleep strength to my kneecap. Somehow it finds its way and just pushes.
Standing anywhere in the house, my wife will come in for a hug and her boots will find whatever my most vulnerable toe is that day, and crush it. In bed, in the middle of the night (yes, she sleeps in her house boots,) her legs will decide to go for a long walk. In this instance it’s important to note that the edge of these boots is like a hockey skate. That edge will find my shin, just under my knee, and it will shave downward as if cutting government cheese. All this to say, that I love these boots, and the day I saw them stationed outside my son’s room, I had never respected them more.
I am a father of 4. Saying that fills me with true pride. Three of those four children are from my first marriage. With my wife’s unwavering and sacrificial support, I have fought hard for my parental rights and time with those precious children. My wife has fought that fight with me. My wife and I fought long and hard to bring our son into this world. That itself was a true battle.
My wife is a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. She works in surgery and fights for the lives of her patients every day. As a stepmom, she fights every day to be the best influence and caregiver to her non-biological children. As a wife, she fights every day to have a marriage that transcends the status quo. My wife is a fighter and I have always known that, but as I stopped and looked at her boots stationed outside our son’s door, I realized she is more than a fighter, she is a sentry, a warrior mom.
How could I ever find the words to describe how much you mean to me? All the times you told me how much you loved me growing up, but never fully realizing the magnitude of those words until I had children of my own.
I am grown, married, and a momma to my own herd of children, but I’ll never stop needing you.
I’ll never stop needing the way you step in to help when I feel like I’m drowning.
I’ll never stop needing to hear your voice when I pick up the phone to call you and tell you about the most random things.
I’ll never stop needing you to hug me and pat my hair like you did when I was little.
I watched you sacrifice and put us first time and time again.
I watched you make sure our needs were always met first before your own.
I watched you give your all to make sure you raised good humans.
Momma, I’ll never be too old to ask you what you’re making me for supper on my birthday.
I’ll never be too old to sit on your couch with a cup of coffee while we visit.
I’ll never be too old to call you for advice and wisdom.
Dear mom, I’ll never be too old to stop needing you.
Thank you for everything you do for me every day. Thank you for mothering me still today.
A restaurant in New York City was surprised when a food order they received through the Grubhub app alerted them to a hostage situation. This is the story of how the kidnapped woman used Grubhub to get help.
24-Year-Old Kidnapped Woman Used Grubhub in Hostage Situation
At about 5:00 a.m. on June 14, 2022, The Chipper Truck, a restaurant in Yonkers that’s open 24 hours, received an order for one cheeseburger and one Irish breakfast sandwich. But when they looked at the “additional instructions” on the order, they found this message: “please call the police his going to call me when u delivered come with the cones please don’t make it obvious.”
In a Facebook post, The Chipper Truck posted an image of the message of the woman who had been held hostage.
Alice Bermejo, the owners’ 20-year-old daughter arrived at the restaurant shortly after restaurant workers received the message. Bermejo called her dad for help, as some of the message wasn’t easily understandable. Her dad told her to cancel the order and send the police to the address in Eastchester, which is part of the Bronx.
“‘Call 911, whether it’s fake or not, better to just get them out there,” the father told his daughter who was present at the restaurant.
The owners of the restaurant explained of the incident where the kidnapped woman used Grubhub to reach out, “”Better be safe than sorry.”
And it’s this reason The Chipper Truck is known as a sort of neighborhood watch.
Bermejo shared, “This added a new level and new meaning to that. I don’t think any of us ever expected anything like this.”
After speaking with her father, Alice Bermejo informed the police of the message, and authorities dispatched to check out the scene.
“That was the best thing for her. The police ended up showing up instead of a delivery driver,” said Bermejo.
When the police arrived at the Eastchester address, which is about three and a half miles from the restaurant, the suspect, Kemoy Royal, answered the door expecting a food delivery from Grubhub. But because the kidnapped woman used Grubhub to alert authorities, he was met by police who took him into custody.
The Chipper Truck’s Facebook post said, “Our staff responded immediately and called the police and she got saved. I’ve often heard of this happening but never thought it would happen to us. Thankfully we were open and able to help her.”
So often, we remember 9/11 as a horrible tragedy that happened 20 some years ago and killed thousands of people. What’s easy to forget is the survivor. There are those that there are those who lived it, truly LIVED it — like survivor Thomas Canavan, one of September 11th’s 27 survivors.
After crawling through over 75 feet of rubble (horizontally and vertically), Thomas made it out of the mass tragedy alive, but the story he lived to tell is much different than the one most of us can imagine from the footage we saw on our TV screens.
Kylee Tinney got a taste of what the real 9/11 was like when she engaged Thomas, a museum worker at the 9/11 Memorial, in a conversation that changed her perspective for life.
She shared her interaction with Thomas in a Facebook post that has now been shared almost 160,000 times by those whose lives have also been touched by this survivor’s powerful story:
“Our driver dropped us off near the 9/11 Memorial entrance. It was POURING down rain and the line was long so I ran to the nearest cover, which was by the museum exit door, while Clint went to buy tickets. Standing there was a police officer and a museum facilities dispatch worker. I eavesdropped on their casual conversation for a few minutes and finally mustered up the courage to ask them where they were on 9/11.
“The 47th floor of the North Tower”, the museum worker said. Thomas Canavan, one of twenty survivors of the collapse. Wow. He proceeded to tell me his harrowing story of being buried alive, crawling through 46 horizontal and roughly 30 vertical feet of rubble, making it out alive, severely injured (but not realizing it due to adrenaline) and sadly having lost the friends he started with.
We talked for 20 minutes as if no one else were around. I asked questions, and he gladly answered. One of the many things from that conversation that stuck out was that he said it’s so deceiving on TV when all you see is one cloud of dust and a small hole from the plane. The reality you don’t realize at home is that it was desks, file cabinets, chairs, staircases, elevators, and people falling down on him. The little holes in the Towers on TV from the planes were really 6 stories tall. The magnitude of this tragedy was so much more than most of us can imagine from our television screens. Something that’s hard for us to comprehend.
Clint came back with museum tickets for 11:30am. It was 10:45am so we were going to have to wait a bit. The rain had subsided by now. Tom without hesitation said, “You guys come with me.” He escorted us past the (still) long line, past the police officers, and told the security guards, “these are my two friends, let them in.” And without question we were quickly escorted inside, as if the President had just given orders. I could tell Tom was highly respected by everyone around. Before he left us, he told us to look for him in the museum; we would find his picture and the watch he wore that fateful day.
Sure enough, we found Tom’s watch displayed in a shadow box. From the impact of the collapse, his wristwatch stopped; a moment stuck in time. The eeriness and irony. Tom told me that was the last day he ever wore a watch. It’s easy to think of September 11 as just a terrible tragedy in our country’s history. We so often forget that these were/are REAL PEOPLE, many who still feel the effects every day. Even something as simple as not being able to wear a watch, because it brings back haunting flashbacks.
We spent two hours in the museum, but could’ve spent days. As we exited the museum we saw Tom not far away. We hollered his name and ended up chatting a bit longer. Before leaving he said in his Northern accent, “See us Yankees aren’t so bad after all. You never know what you’ll learn about people until you sit and talk to them.” This made me reflect a little…while I was talking to Tom, probably ten or more visitors came up to him and asked where is the bathroom, where is the museum entrance, nearest restaurant, and the list goes on. But I got the feeling that not many people took the time to ask him about 9/11: the reason we were all here. No one knew everything he had been through. I could only be thankful it was raining that day and I picked that particular awning to run under, or else I might have missed this happenstance and humbling conversation of fate. I can only hope he was equally as touched to share his story with us as we were to hear it.
When we told him goodbye, I let him know that we would bring his story with us back to The South, which is why I felt compelled to share with you today. I may never see my FRIEND Tom again, which makes me sad, but every September 11th I will fondly remember him and all of the other men and women who died and lived in the face of pure evil. As always, I am Proud to be an American.”
I lost my three-year-old, autistic son at the worst place possible: a water park.
He went down the slide, ran a few feet ahead of me, turned a corner and was gone. It was as quick as that. The only thing in front of him was a lazy river with a strong current. Even if he could swim, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
Courtesy Stephanie Hanrahan
I dove in and couldn’t find him.
I ran around and couldn’t find him.
I started calculating the seconds, the minutes. How long does it take for a toddler to drown? Whatever the answer, I was pretty sure we were past that.
Then, I found a lifeguard and screamed for help. It was the last day of the summer, the last ten minutes before the water park closed for the year. I’m sure everyone was mentally off the clock.
And yet, they showed up.
People ran, whistles blew. A young man with an internal calm stayed with me and said they’d find my boy. In what condition, I wondered.
And then, after what felt like forever in mom panic mode, a young girl walked over a bridge carrying him on her hip. He had gone behind a building to play.
Courtesy Stephanie Hanrahan
There is no greater fear than losing a child. I lost mine—and we lived to tell about it. We are the lucky ones.
I dress my children in neon when we’re out in public. They’re always wearing floatation devices, but it was required he take them off to go down the slide, so we followed the rules and did, which is why for those unfortunate few minutes he was unprotected. I wish I could say I was distracted by my phone, or talking to a friend, but my eyes never left his body. And yet, he is fast, and he was gone. Guilt has kept me awake every night since.
Courtesy Stephanie Hanrahan
The minutes he was missing are a blur to me, but what I do recall is bodies running, and swimming, and calling after my son. Those who were employed by the water park, and those who were bystanders. Mr. Rogers once gave the sage advice to, ‘look for the helpers,’ when you’re scared, and he was right. We can’t do it without our community. Who knows what would’ve happened to my boy if systems weren’t in place and people didn’t care.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a village to save one too. These babies belong to all of us, and we have to ask for help when we need it—and even when we think we don’t. Whether it’s a lost child, an infant who won’t sleep, or a teenager who’s suicidal, it’s too much to handle alone. We have an obligation to look for the helpers.
Likely they’re hiding in plain sight just waiting to rescue us.
Courtesy Stephanie Hanrahan
**This story was written by Stephanie Hanrahan, published with permission.
“I was a newly single 22-year-old who had decided to take a belly dancing class with one of my girlfriends and her mom. As we were checking out at the front desk of the rec center, I saw a flyer about co-ed volleyball. I had played volleyball in high school. It was a passion of mine, so I was interested in finding out more information. The lady working the desk had an open spot on a team and asked me to come to their next game to try-out. I went to that game and loved playing again. It was there that I met a guy named Mario, who also played on the same team. Mario told me that he played for another co-ed team at the local YMCA and asked me if I wanted to come play with them as well.
I met my ex-husband in a church gym and I was hooked the minute I laid eyes on him. The next 5 years were filled with lots of love, tears, addiction, abandonment, fear, strength, courage, and love. It all sort of fell into motion the day I rolled my ankle. My best friend Anna was there and I managed to hobble over to her, with some help. My ankle was pretty swollen so I knew I needed to get it checked out. Anna took this opportunity to play match-maker by blurting out, ‘Hey A’Jay, why don’t you walk Mandi to the car.’ And so he did. She gets me to the ER and I get a splint and as we’re on our way out we see A’Jay’s sister and her husband, walking out the doors. They said they were trying to see how I was, but they didn’t even know my last name to ask for any information from the front desk. After that night, we spent almost every day together.
Anna and Shavonne knew there was a connection between myself and A’Jay and tried their darndest to get us together. I can’t recall exactly how it all happened, but eventually it did. We moved from just friends into an actual relationship. At this point in my life I was living with my best friend, Anna, her husband and their twins. The five of us eventually moved into a house together and A’Jay and my relationship got a little more serious. October 15, 2009 was the day my life changed. During a Grey’s Anatomy commercial break we were in the garage for a smoke break.
I vaguely remember the conversation we were having, but I vividly remember my best friend Alison looking at me and telling me, ‘I’m going to need you to take a pregnancy test.’ So, we paused the show and went to the store to grab a couple of tests. We all crammed into the bathroom and I pee’d on the stick. I had never been so scared in my life. I was 23 years old, living with roommates. I could not have a baby with someone I had only been dating for a few months. I flipped the test over and just laughed. It was positive. I couldn’t believe it. I was freaking out, but I thought everything would be okay.
Courtesy of Mandi Booker
One of the first times I knew something wasn’t right was a couple months later on New Year’s Eve. We went out to a friend’s house and since I was pregnant, I was the Designated Driver. My partner drank a whole lot that night and he got really irritable. That night he ended up getting his brother-in-law’s car when we got back home and taking off. This was the beginning of a very long road. I should’ve heeded the red flags, but I waved them off. The following month I was able to get myself into a 1-bedroom apartment and he came to live with me. Valentine’s weekend my sister, her boyfriend, and my nephew came in town to visit. He had just gotten a new car so the three of them decided to go out to a bar and I stayed home with my 1-year-old nephew.
Fast forward to 1:00 A.M. and my phone rings. It’s my sister trying to get into the apartment complex, or so I thought. When I answered the phone, it was a police officer, and my heart sank into my stomach. She started asking me questions about A’Jay, like his name and date of birth. The three of them end up getting arrested that night. The next day, as I am 6 months pregnant and with a 1-year-old, trying to bail them out of jail, I find out that A’Jay can’t be bailed out of jail because he has a warrant for his arrest in New Mexico and he is going to be extradited. My heart is broken. My mind is blown. My world is crushed. I have no idea what I’m going to do. I didn’t tell anyone outside of family and a couple of friends what was really going on. I kept up a façade so that I didn’t have to explain anything.
It’s not everyday that you get to see your baby brother being born. But 12-year-old Jacee Dellapena was able to do much more than just SEE her brother Cayson make his grand entrance into the world. Her hands got to make it happen!
Her mom, Dede Carraway, wrote about the experience on Facebook:
“Jacee wanted to attend Zadyn’s birth 18 months ago but we felt she was too young to attend. So this pregnancy her dad and I discussed it and decided it might be a good learning experience for her!”
After hours of waiting in the delivery room, the time came for Dede to start pushing. It was the big moment, but Jacee was worried that she was too short to see the delivery over the bed.
“My doctor, Dr. Walter Wolfe, then suggested, ‘Jacee why don’t you suit up and come deliver the baby?’”
Dede said at first she was shocked. But as long as her husband Zack didn’t mind, then it was okay for Jacee to “go for it!”
Dede says the epidural wasn’t working too well, and the contractions were so painful, but seeing the expressions on her daughter’s face is what got her through labor.
“Concentrating on her face while I pushed helped me so much!”
Once she was ready, Dr. Wolfe put Jacee in front of him, wrapped himself around the back of her, and put her hands on the inside of his. He guided her, but literally let Jacee do the entire delivery!
“I actually, like delivered him, like, he let me actually push down and pull the baby out,” Jacee said. “I was like, ‘Wow, like I’ve played fake doctor before, but this is, like, the real thing, this is the real deal.’ I was really nervous.”
Dr. Wolfe helped Jacee through the entire process, including cutting the umbilical cord, while Dede’s husband Zack captured the incredible moments on his phone.
Dede gave birth to her third child, seven-pound, six-ounce baby Cayson.
She says the experience was more than she could have ever imagined.
“We were all very emotional and it was like no feeling I’ve ever felt. It’s not every day your eldest child at 12 years old gets to deliver your last child.”
If there’s anything Princess Diana was known for other than her ravishing fashion and her infectious smile, it was her devout charity work.
The late Princess of Wales spent decades serving the community and beyond, and it’s her service to others that continues to lead her legacy today, even 26 years after her tragic death.
YouTube
In a special episode of Songs of Praise, the program set out to explore the inspiration behind much of Diana’s charity, which many believe to be her much-less talked about Christian faith.
Throughout the episode, friends and colleagues who spent extensive time with Diana are said to speak openly about how the Princess had “stronger faith than people give her credit for.”
Mike Whitlam, former director general of the British Red Cross, worked with Diana on numerous charity campaigns, including her famous landmine trip to Bosnia.
He says the Princess had a strong religious conviction that he believes helped motivate her remarkable charity work.
“She wanted to put love where there was hatred, and make a huge difference to people’s lives so that they could live a better life,” he added. “When you talk to people about making the world a better place, there are not many people who think it’s doable. She did.”
Tracy Borman, joint chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces, says Diana’s compassion and charity work “absolutely reflects very Christian values too.”
In recent years, other members of the royal family have been outspoken about their deep Christian faith.
Diana’s ex-husband, Prince Charles, has reportedly addressed the religious persecution of Christians and other minorities around the world on a number of occasions.
In 2016, Queen Elizabeth II called Jesus Christ “the King she serves.”
It wound up being the title of the book The Servant Queen and the King She Serves, written by Mark Greene and Catherine Butcher.
The tribute “focuses on the Queen’s own words to draw out the central role of her trust in Jesus Christ in shaping her life and work.”
“The Queen has served us all her adult life, with amazing consistency of character, concern for others and a clear dependence on Christ,” Mark says in a statement regarding the book. “The more I’ve read what she’s written and talked to people who know her, the clearer that is.”
Though she’s been gone for 25 years, Princess Diana remains a beloved and iconic figure for many throughout the U.K. and across the globe.
Ninety-eight suspects in both the United States and Australia are under arrest in a child sex abuse case that first gained public attention with the shocking murder of two brave FBI agents in Florida in 2021. Special agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger were fatally shot while attempting to serve a warrant on a suspect in Sunrise, Florida. Their tragic murders didn’t stop their important work, however. Instead it gave their fellow agents motivation to move the case forward and even expand it into an international probe.
Now all those efforts have come to fruition with arrests in two countries, thousands of miles apart. The alleged perpetrators are said to have taken part in an illegal online platform where members collaborate to share child sex abuse imageson the dark web.
Australian Federal Police, working in conjunction with the FBI, have arrested 19 suspects and removed 13 Australian children from harm over the course of their investigation. Two suspects have already been sentenced and the remaining suspects cases are making their way through the Australian justice system. Meanwhile in the U.S., the FBI has arrested 79 suspects and 43 of them have already been convicted of various child sex abuse charges.
Close cooperation between the agencies was very necessary to get these criminals behind bars. “The success of Operation Bakis was only possible because of the close working relationship between the AFP-led ACCCE [Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation] and the FBI, and our dedicated personnel who never give up working to identify children who are being sexually assaulted or living with someone who is sharing child abuse material,” said Australian Federal Police Commander Helen Schneider in a statement.
The FBI agreed with that sentiment. “The complexity and anonymity of these platforms means that no agency or country can fight these threats alone,” FBI legal attaché Nitiana Mann said in a the FBI’s statement. “As we continue to build bridges through collaboration and teamwork, we can ensure the good guys win and the bad guys lose.”
The Australian authorities also commented on the sophistication of the platforms used by the abusers, as well as their vast technological knowledge. They said suspects “used software to anonymously share files, chat on message boards and access websites within the network” and that the lengths that these alleged offenders went to in order to avoid detection makes them especially dangerous – the longer they avoid detection the longer they can perpetuate the cycle of abuse.”
Just hearing how vast the network perpetuating child sex abuse material are and how sophisticated and crafty the perpetrators are fills me with dread and makes me shudder. As we’ve seen from the senseless murders of Agents Alfin and Schwartzenberger, these horrible abusers will even commit murder to avoid arrest. But then I read again, that nearly 100 bad guys were arrested by the tireless efforts of the good guys in both nations, with dozens of children saved, and I feel some hope.
Kudos to all law enforcement fighting the good fight to protect our children!And let’s not forget that we can be in the fight with them. If you see something, say something! Let’s all do our duty and report any suspicions we have of anyone using child sex abuse material.
Even though I am smack in the middle of, well, middle age, I was excited to go see the Barbie movie when it came out a few days ago. Why? Well, yes, because I did play with Barbies as a child of the 80s, but mostly because my 16-year-old daughter (who incidentally, did not play with Barbies) was excited to go with her friends. And she invited me along.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in parenting teens, it’s to always say yes when they ask you to tag along. Even if they really just need a ride and someone to pay.
The Barbie Movie Surprised Me
I had zero expectations for the Barbie movie, and therefore, my expectations were wildly exceeded. But, they would have been even if I had my hopes up high. The movie is simply fantastic. Enjoyable from start to finish despite a few extraneous scenes with Will Ferrell (I love him, they just weren’t necessary.) But the parts I truly did not see coming that wrenched my heart in two were centered on motherhood, of all things. I had no idea any themes on motherhood would be featured in the movie, and boy were they ever. Specifically, there was a whoooole dynamic with a mom and a grumpy teenage daughter.
Sitting next to my own teen daughter in the theater, it was hard to keep from visibly reacting when the main mom character, Gloria, played brilliantly by America Ferrara, touches her daughter lovingly on the shoulder only to be shrugged off. It was all too real, the scenes between them when her teen daughter Sasha cannot wait to get away from her mom, or rolls her eyes at her, or doesn’t hide her obvious disdain for her ordinary mom-ness.
Things with my daughter aren’t that dramatically bad, but we have our moments. I love her so much and so enormously, and I can no longer express it by showering her with kisses or enveloping her in extra-long hugs. It’s just not appropriate anymore. So I have all this emotion and nothing to really do with it! And sometimes it hurts when I feel that she sees me not as a person, but as a means to an end. Or when she discounts each and every suggestion I make to her as if it is the worst or stupidest idea she’s ever heard. My life experience, the fact that I was once a teenage girl myself, doesn’t carry any weight with her. Not yet. So, some of the scenes between Gloria and Sasha felt achingly familiar.
Without giving away too many spoilers, as the movie progresses, and as the mom and daughter try to help save Barbieland from a Ken-induced patriarchy, the teen daughter begins to see her mom in a new light, especially after Ferrara’s character gives a heartfelt monologue that incudes these words:
“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong…I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”
There’s a lot more great content in the middle of that speech that I didn’t include there, and I hope you will go see the movie and hear it for yourself! In truth, Ferrera’s character said all the things I want to tell my daughter about being a woman. Things I have said, things we have talked about, things we will talk about in the future. But the fact that they were reinforced to her in this format, in a fantastic movie by one of her favorite directors, well, I did not mind that at all. Thank you, Greta Gerwig!
As if that weren’t enough, there is a scene toward the end of the movie that totally did me in. Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, played masterfully by Rhea Perlman, tells Barbie how she was named after Handler’s own daughter, Barbara. Then she says just about the truest words I’ve ever heard spoken in a film:
“We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.”
I couldn’t help it. I turned my head fully and looked at my daughter.
She kept her gaze fixed on the screen, but she couldn’t help herself. She felt me staring at her, and she smiled. She smiled really big.
I think she got me a little bit that day, and I’m grateful.
So yeah, this movie was about a doll. But it was about so much more that I didn’t expect. It was about the inherent challenges being a woman in America today, about crushing expectations, about loving yourself for who you were created to be, and perhaps most poignantly for me, it was about cutting your mom some slack, because after all, she’s a person, too.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: parenting kids in the digital age is hard. It’s also full of pitfalls that most of us couldn’t have imagined when we first considered starting a family. Thanks to the advent of artificial intelligence, those pitfalls are getting steeper and deeper, and many parents may want to consider how they share family photos online.
A terrifying new ad by telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom is driving this point home in a super-dramatic way. The ad definitely uses “shock value,” to get its message across, but sometimes you have to shock people into admitting reality. Change is hard: none of us wants to admit that our past actions no longer work in the present, but here we are. As the ad points out, just about anyone with access to our kids’ photographs can use AI to steal their identities or worse, either now or in the future.
As an example, the haunting ad portrays the story of Ella, a nine-year-old girl whose parents have shared plenty of innocent photos of her online. We see how AI is used to create an older, completely deepfaked Ella based on just one photo of her from age nine. The fake adult Ella moves and talks just like a real person, has a passport and a credit history, and is pretty much indistinguishable from an actual human adult. She tells her horrified parents that their uninhibited postings of her online when she was a child has had some unimaginable consequences thanks to AI and internet strangers. They are some of the worst outcomes a parent can imagine, from identity theft to the creation of child sex abuse material.
The ad was definitely made to terrify parents, which I don’t love, but its message is true: we all need to be much more careful about our online images than we have been. It mentions that most parents have online social media “friends” that they don’t actually know in real life, and that in my opinion is one of the first things that needs to change that we can easily change ourselves. Locking down accounts and making them private won’t solve all the security risks of living life online, but it does make you less accessible, and every little bit helps.
People with bad intentions can (and do!) even use AI to fake a loved one’s voice and make fake ransom calls, so although it may seem crazy, having a code word with your family members to verify identity if they are ever in trouble is another thing we all need to consider. No parent is capable of being calm when they get a phone call with their distressed child’s voice on the other end. This is why having a plan in place before hand is key. Being able to say, “Baby, just tell me our family password,” before you give in to any ransom demands could save your family a ton of heartache if AI is involved.
As the mom of one young adult, a teen, and a tween, I am not sure what to think. Do I go back and delete every photo from when I first got Facebook in 2008? Or do I just move forward more cautiously from here on out? One thing I do know is that if I had it to do all over again, I would be more careful. Hindsight is, after all, 20/20.
If nothing else, grown-up fake digital Ella gives parents of minors these days a lot to think about. Maybe we didn’t know what we were doing then, but now we do. We can’t un-know it, and we need to move forward with the knowledge that the digital footprint WE create for our children could haunt THEM for years to come.
