Thread by @R_Denhollander

She was lost in her imagination, a princess dancing, on an adventure "in the woods". Then she turned around and lifted her little face and laughed, "But monsters aren't real, are they mommy?"

And time stood still as everything I hear, every day, flashed in my mind...

Her innocence and joy juxtaposed
against horrors that defy description and are far more common than we want to know. Against my own memories and everything I witnessed in a courtroom three years ago.

"Are monsters real?"

I could not answer her.

When you have seen, it changes the way you see everything.

When I see my children, I see the ones I couldn't save. When I see the ones I couldn't save, I see the children they were.

I see the names of the files on Larry's computer, and the millions of children they represent.

I want to smile and enter her imaginative play and be lost in the moment, and just hold her close and tell her monsters are just make-believe.

And I can't. She deserves for them to just be pretend. But they are not.

It is much easier not to see. To choose not to see. And ignorance is available for some who want it.

But people live what we don't even want to see. And in large part, they live it BECAUSE we don't want to see.

Choose to see.

Don't tell your children monsters aren't real.

Tell them you will fight them.

Tell them monsters can be defeated.

Then live like it.

For now, I knew the kind she meant, and I told her it was just pretend. But in small ways, and more as they grow, we show and tell the other message.

They are real. Choose to fight them.