My baby girl cried herself to sleep last night. I held her as she spoke of all her fears and her observations of the the world we live in.

She sobbed as she talked of how we are killing each other and the world and kept asking

“What is wrong with us?”

She talked of how we hurt each other, animals, the rivers land and sea, the very air we breathe, the little babies dying, she talked of all the hunger in the greed.

“When will it all stop?”

“Will it only end when humans have destroyed everything and everyone? The world must hate us so much. We hurt her so much. She is in so much pain. It hurts so much.”

Her sob hurt me.

“This is why God doesn’t answer any prayers anymore, because we are just horrible.”

I held her tighter.

I let her download all her fears, her thoughts onto my shoulder which is already aching from the weight of all my other babies’ fears and mine.

She spoke and sobbed for over half an hour of her short 9 year old life. She spoke of all the horrors of the world that I didn’t even know she knew about.

I whispered to her of the things we must be grateful for. I talked of flowers and the chicks, our demon cat and loyal dog who snored at our feet. Our family, the sun, the moon, the stars, the perfume of our roses, the tiny things living in the garden, ice-cream, stories of leprechauns and fairies.

“I want to meet a fairy. We probably killed them too along with unicorns and dragons. We probably killed them all. Why can’t our leprechaun do something? He wants to do good, he sees it all too, but his hands are tied, they don’t let him, they won’t let him do the good he wants to do!”

I didn’t know who she spoke of and then I realised she meant our president. “Don’t call him that, that’s not nice he wouldn’t like that.”

“How do you know? He really is a Leprechaun, he’s where he is to do something about it. He really wants to help, but his hands are tiny” She looked down at her own.

I let that be. She needs some magic, we all do and if thinking he’s a Leprechaun who might do something with his tiny hands then…I let it be.

I told her there are so many good people in the world, that the good outweigh the bad, there are more of us, all the while wondering was I right…

Today I saw a tweet about babies washed up on the beach because their families were trying to get them out of the hell they were living in and bring them somewhere safe but the somewhere safe didn’t want them so the babies drowned and I don’t think I was right…

Why did that not stop the last time we saw a baby washed up on the beach? Was the image of him in his red and blue not enough?

Why are there more?

“What is wrong with us?”

I think my baby girl who sobbed herself to sleep is right and I don’t know how to make it better. My heart is broken.

“When will it all stop?” 💔