A warning to the easily upset, this comic references some really terrible no good stuff that happened to an actual kid, so take care with the links.

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Recently, I read about the murder of an eight-year-old boy, whose mother and her boyfriend tortured him to death… because they thought he was gay. And then my world shut down for a few hours because I couldn’t wrap my head around the magnitude of evil that exists in this world.

I was soft of heart before I had Momo, but now every time something like this comes up, I am struck by such a ferocity of emotion I can’t even describe it. As parents, we are everything to our children, we are their whole world — how can anyone take that terrible responsibility, that terrible power, and abuse it? I think about Gabriel’s last moments on this Earth, the confusion he must have felt, how he died in pain and fear, wondering why the people he literally trusted with his life could do this to him. How he must have tried everything to make them stop hurting him.

And! Just! To top it all off! The outrage I feel, that people will torture their own children just because they suspect they’re gay!? How could you?! I have spent a goodly portion of my life fighting homophobia, and then something like this reminds me, horrifies me, that there’s still so much work to do. That this is the world Momo will inherit, and I am trying my best but people keep doing evil shit.

So, yeah. I’m hugging my daughter for a lot of reasons this week (#metoo), and finding it a lot easier to let the little things that irritate me slide, because it’s making me realize that nothing in the world matters more to me than her knowing that I love her and I’m always on her side, no matter what.