The Decolonial Parent

a continuous work in progress

tend to your crops

Photo by Akil Mazumder from Pexels

The world right now is at a crossroads. So many paths are converging all at once that it seems more like a particularly chaotic interchange. We are right to feel anxious about it. How we navigate our way through these turbulent times will define our collective future, and we have enough recorded history behind us by this point that we know it could go either way. With all that we have at stake, we’d be forgiven for abandoning hope.

I want to invite us all to take a moment to breathe in deeply and summon every ounce of hope we can muster. With this hope, we will plant a seed inside ourselves way deeper than anyone could hope to find it. Whether that’s in the first light of each morning, or the first sip of coffee in the still dark. Whether it’s the steam from a sewer vent that melts even the coldest of snows, the final mile of our walk home when we get the first glimpse of our block, or the deep exhale of a downward dog, let us bury that hope in a place only we ourselves know where to look.

And let’s look. Let’s tend to this crop and nurture our seed of hope until the spring comes. Although we don’t know how soon that will be, and what greater perils we will face before it arrives, we shall hold fast. We plant our seeds in these priceless moments we experience each day so that they remind us in the same breath as we tend to them: there is still hope.