Which of my beliefs are of my own creation and which were programmed into me? - Glennon Doyle

When we hand our children phones we steal their boredom from them. We are raising kids with commodified views of sex, lack of real connection, filtered concepts of what it means to be human. As a result we are raising a generation of writers who will never write, artists who will never doodle, chefs who will never make a mess of the kitchen.

So I will commit to showing up with deep humility and doing the best I can. I will keep getting it wrong, which is the closest I can come to getting it right. When I am corrected, I will stay open and keep learning. Not because I want to be the wokest woke who ever woked. But because people's children are dying of racism, and there is no such thing as other people's children. Hidden racism is destroying and ending lives. It's making police officers kill black men at three times the rate of white men. It's making lawmakers limit funding for clean water and poison children. It's making doctors allow black women to die during or after childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women. It's making school officials suspend and expel black students at three times the rate of white students. It's making judges incarcerate black drug users at nearly six times the rate of white drug users. And — because of my complicity in this system that dehumanizes others — it is dehumanizing me. The fact that the programmed poison of racism was pumped into us may not be our fault, but getting it out is sure as hell our responsibility.

So we say, "Maybe it's safer to just stay here. Even if it's not true enough, maybe it's good enough." But good enough is what makes people drink too much and snark too much and become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation until they lie on their deathbed and wonder: What kind of life/relationship/family/world might I have created if I'd been braver?