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I wrote the following in response to a former schoolmate who is a police officer. I’ve decided to post it here instead of sending it to him directly, hoping that it could do some good:

My heart goes out to you right now. I can see from your posts that you are hurting right now. I think it’s safe to say that we all are. As a nation.

Every few years the ill treatment of Black Americans by police officers around the country gets some light, and then Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives and Blue Lives Matter comes up and Black voices are drowned out. It seems to me that police officers on the whole are the scapegoats for a broken system that doesn’t respect Black bodies. It hurts to be the scapegoat.

I don’t believe that all police officers are evil or bad. I believe that many, in fact most, go into law enforcement in order to be helpful in their communities. I believe that was your intention, in fact.

That said, there’s obviously a problem with our system overall when people of certain skin colors have to tell their children to be wary of the police and give them “rules” about how to conduct themselves— putting their licenses in plain view in their car so there’s no question about them reaching for an invisible gun, having to put a stuffed animal on the back window to suggest they have a family so they’re not pulled over for driving a car that they “shouldn’t” be able to own, etc.—in an effort to remain alive in a system that is constructed against them.

I read your post expressing concern about talking to your son about your safety when going to work. I want you to think, please, about all the families in this country who have this fear every day of their lives, not because of their beloved profession, but because of their skin color. Of all the mothers and wives who have to worry that their sons and husbands won’t return home today because of experiences like George Floyd went through. It’s horrifying that his family had to lose him like that, and even more horrifying that there’s a recording of it that has been viewed around the world. Even worse is that if it hadn’t been for the video and ensuing protests, there would have been no justice for an unnecessary death. None.

I have the privilege of friendship with some amazing families, and it absolutely kills me inside to think about how their sons—smart, funny, cute—just like our own—may be killed or mistreated for jogging, for driving home after work, for living their Black American life.

We grew up in a largely white town with only one Black student for a couple of years. The Latinx students and others passed, and the openly Jewish student was regularly ridiculed. With that background, we are not in any position to fully understand the situation for people of color in our country, and we have certain biases we are not aware of.

You are obviously a leader in your community. It is my hope that you can look at your pain as a part of the pain that everyone is feeling right now and has been feeling for most of our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not, and determine how we can have effective change that benefits everyone, not just those who look like us.

It’s not an easy task. I’m engaged in this very hard work because I want my son to understand what his friends have ahead for them so he can be an ally and anti-racist. And, so we can learn how to undermine the systems in place that were created to continue inequality and racism.

We need to do more than say the Derek Chauvins of the world are the outliers and otherwise, there aren’t issues, because that’s unequivocally false. We need to make change that eradicates the school to prison pipeline that is the reality of too many American citizens and stop blaming the victims for their victimhood when we can take a long hard look at history and strive to do better. Seeing how we can create law enforcement that helps everyone, no matter their skin color, to feel safe and protected seems, to me, like a great way to start because it interrupts the pipeline.

I feel for, and understand, your pain, and I wonder if you can turn that pain into empathy for those in your community and the rest of the country who feel it even more acutely and have for their entire lives for generations.

This morning, I witnessed my child being tickled, and then after he hit the person who was tickling him, he was asked, “Why did you do that? I was only tickling you.” After the event ended, I set a boundary within our family to end tickling altogether.

Tickling is a complicated experience, so let’s talk about it.

• When we are tickled by another person, that person generally has a position of power over us.
• Tickling usually happens between a small person and someone much larger (and older).
• We usually laugh while it’s happening.
• It’s generally an uncomfortable experience, despite the laughter.
• When we say, “Stop,” people frequently don’t, because the laughter suggests that we actually enjoy it.

I’ve had to step in before when someone was tickling my son to say, “He said, stop, so please listen to him.”

Today’s experience caused me to think about what I’m trying to do in raising my son and how tickling fits in. Let’s start by saying that tickling someone else is VERY enticing. I mean, we want to make cute small people giggle uncontrollably, and that’s a big pull. The thing is that enough people tell us to stop for us to get the message that we don’t really like being tickled. My own history of being tickled caused me to no longer feel ticklish, it was so uncomfortable. And, in spite of the message being there, we still do it.

With all this, I try hard to avoid the urge to tickle my son, whose intense laughter sends thrills through my body. I want him to laugh—hard and often. And my fingers get that tickly itch, and I work to quell it.

Let’s think about why we may want to stop tickling our children.

I’m going to get deep here. We live in a rape culture. This kind of society functions on the opposite principles of bodily autonomy—it says that certain bodies are for me to dominate. These bodies may be young and small, female, with darker skin, having alternative sexual identities, or with identified or unidentified disabilities or mental illness. This also happens to men and boys, as people sometimes forget. Rape culture seeks to control these bodies and does so through physical threat and violence. Sometimes, this threat appears benign, as with tickling, a childish game. When we think about it, tickling is not something that children innately do with each other—it is taught.

Wow. Where did that come from? How does rape culture fit in with tickling?

Well, think about it. We start tickling young children, and we enjoy their laughter. Many of us also enjoy being able to control the situation where we get to choose when this action ends, which is often after many protestations and requests for the tickling to stop. I have witnessed the enjoyment of domination that I mention here. Have you?

Whether the child is feminine, masculine, or as yet undefined, there are specific messages that are relayed.

• I don’t have control over what happens to my body.
• “No” doesn’t mean “no”; “stop doesn’t mean “stop.”
• I can make decisions about what happens to another person’s body.
• I don’t have to listen when someone else says “no.”
• Others might not listen when I say “no” or “stop,” and that’s okay.
• I don’t think I enjoyed that, but I’m not sure because the other person said it wasn’t a big deal and suggested that I enjoyed it because I was laughing—did I actually enjoy it? I must have. I doubt my own truth.

Do any of these messages sound familiar?

Personally, I want to live in a compassionate society. One where people’s bodily autonomy is respected and where people don’t use their position of real or perceived power against anyone else. I believe this starts in my home. There are a lot things that I can do to help change the system of oppression and suppression that we live in, where some bodies are harmed and killed every day, because we are given messages from a very young age in our own microcosm that we don’t own our body and that others may do with our body as they see fit.

When I advocate for my son in this way in our home, there are several things happening.

• I teach both the children in my home that they have worth.
• I model advocacy of self and others.
• I help myself to change my own behaviors that have been ingrained since childhood.
• I teach that vulnerability is okay when I share about what I struggle with.
• I illustrate the importance of questioning norms that we are expected to blindly follow.

I hope that we’re able to look at some of our behaviors more critically, especially the ones that seem benign at a glance and think about how they contribute to society as a whole. Every one of us is charged with making our society what it is, both positively and negatively. It is on us to determine our impact. The question of whether to tickle could be a great place to start.

Reality is tough to face right now.

It feels like our lives have been flipped upside down and torn apart from the inside.

Most of us are still adjusting to a new normal. This new homestay situation that we’re facing has disrupted our routines, our lifestyles, and our finances. Our children have had to adjust en masse to online education, and many of us have had to figure out a way of living that includes intense isolation from our support system.

Daily, I see people who are standing too close to others, kids playing together in close proximity, and large gatherings of people at parks. All while the numbers of people who are contracting COVID-19 are growing steadily. From what I can tell, there are a lot of people who are having a difficult time with a sheltering-in-place reality. These people may be experiencing denial of our current situation.

There are also people who are staying in their homes, limiting contact with everyone, including close friends and family, and wearing masks out in public.

In all these people, there may be a variety of levels of acceptance of reality. When we fail to accept the current moment as being exactly what it is without adding to or subtracting from it, we find ourselves experiencing unending suffering. Now, life has suffering from time to time. That’s a harsh reality. And, we’re currently in a situation that can cause suffering. However, we don’t have to experience unending suffering right now.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) says that we have four choices when we’re experiencing suffering:

1. Change the situation
2. Change how we perceive the situation
3. Accept the situation
4. Stay stuck in our suffering

As I said earlier, when we attempt to avoid reality, we can increase our suffering, or cause unending suffering. When we practice Radical Acceptance, we reduce the suffering to pain that is more manageable. In addition, when we practice Radical Acceptance, we can make choices about how we respond and make changes to our thoughts and emotions regarding our situation. This allows us to move forward more effectively.

When we practice Radical Acceptance, we are saying that we understand these three concepts:

1. Reality is exactly what it is
2. Everything has a cause (even if we don’t know exactly what that is)
3. Life can be worth living, even when there is pain

How Do We Practice Radical Acceptance?

Before we answer this question, let’s look at what Radical Acceptance is not, and what it is. Radical Acceptance is not resignation. When we choose to radically accept our situation, we are not suddenly saying that we like the situation, nor are we showing any form of approval– that would be invalidating. Instead, we are choosing to accept reality in the moment with our entire being—with our minds, and our hearts, and our bodies. That’s why we call it “radical”– it takes our entire being, and not only a part of us.

And we do this by following these steps:

1. Observe that you are not accepting reality
2. Gently remind yourself that the reality is exactly as it is and no different
3. Describe what you are having a difficult time accepting
4. Identify changes that you can realistically make to the situation or to your perception of the situation
5. Describe how your life will be different after you Radically Accept this situation
6. Describe how you will celebrate your freedom from suffering
7. Turn your mind toward Radical Acceptance over and over again

Some Things to Remember

This list sounds easy, right? Well, if acceptance of uncomfortable realities was easy, then we wouldn’t have to talk about this skill at all. We would simply accept all situations that come our way, without avoidance and without suffering. This is not what we usually do, and we have good reasons.

It’s important to note that while we are in the process of accepting reality, we will find ourselves experiencing difficult emotions—sadness, anger, fear, regret, disappointment, frustration. We will find ourselves, most likely, somewhere in Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, or depression. There may be parts of the situation that are easier to accept than others. That’s why it’s important to sit down and create awareness around what we are having a difficult time accepting.

In short, Radical Acceptance requires mindfulness of painful emotions that we have been attempting to avoid experiencing. When we begin the process of Radical Acceptance, we will need to feel these negative emotions in order to reach acceptance. When we do this, we find that these emotions don’t last in a single moment for as long as we expect them to, nor for as long as they do when we attempt to avoid them.

Lastly, Radical Acceptance is not a one-time deal. It’s necessary to practice over and over. We do not wake up each morning and face each moment with Radical Acceptance. Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves to turn our minds toward acceptance of a painful situation over and over again.

When we do this, we find that the situation that was once intolerable is now tolerable, and we may even be able to find some meaning in it.

This is a difficult skill to use, and it is worth the work. I promise.