This pregnancy with you has not been at all what I expected. You see, I found out about you just days before a new year started; that year is only half over but so far it’s been a year of challenge and growth not just for our family but somehow also for the entire world. It has been a strange and complicated time where unity and isolation have gone hand in hand, where we are collectively un-learning and re-learning.You will be born into a world that is in flux and I hope it all ends up for the better. We are fighting so hard to break down and dismantle the system that we have so we can build it all anew. For you, babe, and your siblings and your peers. 

I hope that the work we are doing now has long, long lasting effects that change the course for your generation. I hope you speak well to each other and are aware of the power of the language you use, I hope that you see and celebrate colour, that you laud each other’s differences the way humans are meant to, that you cheer each other on and fight for one another as though you were fighting for your own family. I hope you grow up knowing what it looks like to challenge wrongly held beliefs that have become the norm, what it looks like to admit when you’re wrong, to grow, and move forward, that you always knows that change is possible because you grew up amidst a continual transformation of thought.

I hope that you take medicine and science seriously, that you and your generation are miraculously able to find a way to save the planet we have failed to treasure, though time is running out. I hope that the women and men who lead your generation prioritize all of the things our current leaders are neglecting and if they don’t I hope you are enraged enough to march in the streets and burn and burn in anger until a new course is assured. There is no more room in this world for complacency, baby girl, and I hope you and your peers have all of the passion and rage and education that we have lacked. I hope that you rebuild what we are tearing down. I hope that you rise up where we have fallen short. I hope, I hope, I hope…