HELPER.

I am empathetic. I always have been. I can remember article headlines from when I was a child and weep now. I can recall nightmares I had when I was young and they can still choke me, a 36 year old mother and wife in broad daylight. It’s why I can’t watch anything intense and have to be very careful about what I take in through media.

I recently started a show that was suggested to me to start after I watched Bridgerton three times and ran out of things to rewatch. It was WAY too intense for me. The violence, rape, death, sadness…it was all too much. It haunted me. Unfortunately, I also get completely swept up into unfinished stories. I hate it. It’s why I’ve stayed up until the early morning hours to finish a book or a show or read spoilers so I can sleep knowing how things ended. This show has been that for me.

In this show, at the point I am watching, the main characters are back in time. They’re in the late 1700s in the American colonies. I’m watching them take in the horrors of slavery and watching them try to take a stand. They try to save lives. They try to fight for humanity. And I am overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed listening to how these people speak of the natives and the slaves. How they are regarded as less than most pets today. I don’t understand. In the same way I can’t comprehend evil and child abuse and human trafficking and war. I can’t wrap my brain around not seeing the humanity in another.

What was the “American Dream” for some, was (and is) a nightmare for others. This isn’t so far in the past. You reap what you sow right? And the fields on which America has been harvested, were sown with pain. I’m not saying all Americans are evil or awful. And yes, I know this is not the only country in the world building on horrors beneath our feet. But I am wondering, can America be different? It’s not enough to say that the land is fine now and to walk in confidence of our own personal kindness. If we want the harvest to be different, we have to tear up the roots. We have to tear up the ground and heal the disease. It will take tears and work and pain, but I believe that the humanity of others is worth it.

I hope that back then, that I’d help, that I would have hidden and freed and fought. I hope I wouldn’t have been satisfied with my own lack of hatred. I want to be the person now, that I hope I would’ve been then when the foundation was being laid. I could’ve been born anywhere, in any time, and suffered more horrors than I care to think about. But I wasn’t. I was born with fair skin in a country and time when I have more freedom and opportunity than so many others. I want to take the privileges I’ve happened upon is this life lottery and use them to be a helper.

I think one of the most important things I can do is ask, “how can I be a help?” I watched in this show, as this woman’s best intentions almost caused dire repercussions for the very people she was trying to help. I think it very much matters that we look at other humans and not only ask how we can help, but to believe them. Being a helper is not about feeling better or being nice. Being a helper is not about feeling guilty. Being a helper is about laying down ego and setting aside defenses and trying to do what we can to see and fight for the equal humanity in others.