I woke up at 4 AM from a dream that left my body clenched. Something about escaping a detention center. Something about holding circle time for preschoolers.

The kind of dream that isn’t really about the story —
it’s about the feeling.

Needless to say, my efforts to go back to sleep were not successful.

The 4 AM thoughts of doom and gloom and despair were a little too strong for my nervous system to simply drift back into slumberland.

I heard my daughter making noises in her room, so I went to snuggle her.

She was half-asleep, talking softly from inside her dream.

I placed my hand on her chest.

Her heart was beating fast.
Her breath a little quicker than usual.

And instantly, my mind did what minds do:

Are we going to spend the next couple months in the hospital?

She’d had a headache the day before — unusual for her — so I kept her home from school. I wanted her close.

But there she was, perfectly safe. Just dreaming. Laughing out loud. Chasing unicorns.

And I lay there with my hand on her little heart, feeling tenderness and responsibility flood through me.

How do I raise you in a world that is changing so rapidly?

At Waldorf, I learned that anthroposophic wisdom names something simple about childhood:

In the early years, children need to feel the world is good.
In the elementary years, they are nourished by beauty.
And only later, in middle school, as they grow, do they begin to meet truth.

Goodness.
Beauty.
Truth.

Not as concepts.

As something we embody around them.

Because children don’t just listen to what we say.

They live into what lives in us.

They grow inside the atmosphere of our hearts.

So my job is to let goodness live in my heart.

To let beauty live in my breath.

To tend warmth at the center of the family —
the hearth, the orbit they move within.

Their little bodies cannot hold the full weight of the world’s atrocities.

But they can hold love.

They can hold care.

And that means, sometimes, choosing love looks like taking a break from the regularly scheduled doomscrolling…

and showing up instead.

Feeding someone.

Calling a friend. Or making 5 calls.

Being part of a community. Shopping local.

Making a public comment. Learning how to comment effectively.

Letting goodness be real. Slowing down and letting goodness land in my body when I notice it.

Love is not a copout from action.

Love is the action.

Love is the active rebellion.

A discipline.

A daily choice to stay human in a world that hardens us.

Not in a Pollyanna way.

In a clear-eyed way.

I choose love despite my heartbreak.

I choose love so my children know, in their bones:

The world is still good.

The world is still worth loving.

PS: She told me this morning that her dream was about a duck circus and a clown duck.

PS 2: This substack always lifts my spirits when my belief in humanity is wavering.

with love,
(include me)

Vanda